Anyone attending CAMWS meetings in the 1970s and 1980s would be familiar with a sizeable presence among us, wide in breadth of interest and accomplishment, and prodigious in generosity, affability, and high spirits. William Norbert Nethercut graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1958, after which he enrolled in the voice program at the New England Conservatory of Music. He spent two years developing a musical career singing the roles of Figaro, Count Almaviva, Don Giovanni, and many others, crowning his performing career with a solo recital at Carnegie Hall in 1966. In the meantime, he returned to academics as an instructor and assistant professor at Columbia from 1961 until he completed his doctorate at Harvard in 1963 with a dissertation on Propertius, written under the mighty guidance of J. Petersen Elder. After reaching full-professor status at the University of Georgia, Bill moved in 1975 to Austin where he served in the University of Texas department for over 40 years. Bill’s numerous articles on Virgil contributed to the re-evaluation of the poet that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s and of course continues to this day. He wrote a seminal article on the structure of Propertius 4 along with 16 other articles on that poet. He also wrote significant articles on Catullus, Lucretius, and Apuleius among others throughout the 1980s. Many of his articles began as papers delivered at CAMWS meetings. In the 1980s he developed an interest in Egyptology and refocused his scholarship on that field, while he continued his devotion to the training of students who would continue in his footsteps. It is estimated that he mentored hundreds of students who went on to teach Latin at the secondary and collegiate level and twenty of his students went on to careers in Egyptian Studies.
Bill Nethercut died in Austin, Texas, August 14, 2020.