Arthur Frederick Stocker
1914-2010
Arthur Frederick Stocker was born in Bethlehem, PA, on January 24, 1914. His family moved to New York City when Arthur was five and he retained the elegance, charm, and cheerful cosmopolitan Republicanism that bespeak the silk-stocking Manhattan of his youth. He attended the public schools there, graduating from George Washington High School in 1930. He graduated from Williams College summa cum laude then was on to Harvard where he received an M.A. in 1935 and a Ph.D. in 1939. At Harvard, one of his teachers, Edward Kennard Rand was at work on the manuscripts of Servius and he directed dissertations on Servius for a number of students, including John J.H. Savage, Frederic Wheelock, and Arthur, among others. These dissertations earned their authors co-editing credit on the first volume of the "Harvard Servius" in 1946. Arthur wrote a vivid and sympathetic account of Rand for The American Scholar in 1982. With his Sheldon Travelling Fellowship for 1939-40 was canceled with the outbreak of war, Arthur took a position at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, but was eventually called up for service in 1942. He spent most of the war in the headquarters of the Second Air Force in Colorado Springs, Colorado, as an Historical Officer. In 1946 he began his career at the University of Virginia, serving until 1984, with stints as chair of the Classics Department (1955-63; 1968-78), Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1962-6), secretary of the academic faculty and secretary of the general faculty. He was President of the Classical Association of Virginia (1949-52), the Southern Section of CAMWS (1961-3), and CAMWS (1970-71). Past the age of 50, Arthur married Marian West, a Latin teacher at St. Catherine's School in Richmond upon her retirement in 1968. She died on July 3, 1997. Arthur was a devoted member of many cultural and historic preservation societies in Charlottesville and could give unforgettable tours of the campus and the University cemetery. At the time of his death he was the senior ex-president of CAMWS and the last of the "Harvard Servius" group. He died peacefully at the great age of 95 at the Westminster-Canterbury of the Blue Ridge on January 13, 2010.
— Ward Briggs