Stewart Gilman Flory was, with his late first wife, Marleen Boudreau Flory, a regular and welcome presence at CAMWS meetings. Born in New York in 1941, he received both his A.B and Ph.D. degrees from Yale. His dissertation, “The Archaic Smile of Herodotus: His Personality Revealed in Anecdotes,” was excerpted in Arion in 1969 later to be revised and published as a monograph in 1987. His publications, largely in AJP and TAPA dealt with Herodotus (8 articles) and Thucydides, but I can recommend his cultural and historical study of Medea’s ominous handshake in the 1978 volume of TAPA. After a stint teaching at Amherst College, he and Marleen were called in 1978 to found a classics department at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, where he taught for over 30 years. He embodied the refined and debonair values of the liberal arts education and the liberal arts educator as evidenced by the Friday afternoon Faculty Shop Talk series, begun by him, in which faculty from all disciplines present their research, answer questions, and then enjoy convivial refreshments and conversation. He received two NEH Summer Grants for study abroad and in 2010, he and the other half of his department, Will and Patricia Freiert, were honored with the establishment of the Flory-Freiert Fellowship that would support travel and study for Gustavus Adolphus students. A ready wit, a sophisticated traveler to Greece & Italy, a voracious reader in multiple fields, and an expert cook, Stewart embodied the refinements of classical study in shaping and maintaining a useful life.
Stewart died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s Disease on November 27, 2020, in Minneapolis.