Oliver C. Phillips, II
1929-2010
Oliver C. Phillips, Jr. was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on October 23, 1929. He received a B.S. in Education from the University of Kansas, an M.A. from the University of Missouri, and a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Chicago in 1962, with a dissertation on the influence of Ovid on Lucan. He maintained his ties with the University of Chicago by contributing reviews to Classical Philology through the late 1960s and early 1970s. He began his career as a teacher in the public schools of Kansas and Missouri, then joined the faculty of William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, in 1963. In 1964 he was appointed to the faculty at the University of Kansas where he remained until his retirement in 1994. He received a Mortar Board Award for teaching in 1978, was a Visiting Professor at Cologne in 1983, and was given a CAMWS ovatio in 1993. He continued teaching after his retirement and was a contributor to the online Suda project. He married Shirley Lease on June 6, 1954, with whom he had two sons and five grandchildren. He died at the age of 80 on February 20, 2010, in Lawrence, Kansas.
— Ward Briggs