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Jack Foner, Black Studies Pioneer
Historian Jack Donald Foner H '82, who at Colby helped to found one of the nation's first black studies programs, died December 10, 1999, in New York at 88. Foner taught at Colby from 1969 to 1976 and returned as a visiting scholar in 1983 and 1985.
In the 1930s, teaching history at what is now Baruch College in New York, he was caught up in a pre-McCarthy Red scare, and in 1941, along with his three brothers, he was blacklisted by New York's Rapp-Coudert Commission. As a supporter of anti-fascist forces in Spain, a champion of the trade union movement and a campaigner for civil rights for African Americans, Foner was accused of being a communist, but he refused to testify before the commission, according to his obituary in The New York Times.
In 1993 he told Colby magazine he considered the episode "honorable experience" and said, "there was really no evidence to support it. It was just mass hysteria." In 1981 the New York City Board of Higher Education apologized to Foner and other victims of the Rapp-Coudert Commission, terming the events of 1941 an "egregious violation of academic freedom."
But for almost three decades Foner was shut out of academe and had to support his family as an entertainer. He was a drummer and comic who worked with Paul Robeson and Harry Belafonte, and he maintained a friendship with W.E.B. Du Bois, all of whom suffered from the blacklisting of that era. Although Foner did some freelance lecturing, he was unable to launch his academic career until Colby hired him in the spring of 1969 to teach history.
Foner was born in Brooklyn on December 14, 1910. He earned a doctorate from Columbia University. His best-known book is Blacks and the Military in American History (1974). He is survived by his wife, Liza; a son, Eric, who is the Dewitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University and president of the American Historical Association; two brothers, Moe and Henry; and a granddaughter.
Flora Rideout Philbrook '29
Flora Rideout Philbrook '29, August 11, 2005, in Dighton, Mass., at 98. A housewife, she assisted her late husband with the churches he served as reverend in Massachusetts and Vermont. An avid painter and gardener, she was a member of the Rehoboth Garden Club and the Old Colony Historical Society. She is survived by two sons, Wayne Jr. and Jeffrey, and one grandchild.
Ruth Y. Young Forster '30
Ruth Young Forster '30, May 28, 2005, in Southern Pines, N.C., at 96. She received a master's in education from Boston University. An educator for more than 30 years, she spent 26 years teaching in New York state and was headmistress of Elmwood Franklin School in Buffalo. She is survived by a daughter, Natalie Kellogg, a son, Peter Johonnott Kellogg, seven grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, and two sisters.
Winona Berrie Peters '31
Winona Berrie Peters '31, October 12, 2005, in Augusta, Maine, at 96. She was a high school teacher in Fairfield and Waterville for 37 years and, with her first husband, owned and operated Mullen's Jewelry Store. She was a Sunday school teacher, deaconess, and treasurer at her church. Predeceased by two husbands and a brother, Albert W. Berrie '38, she is survived by a son, Douglas Mullen, a daughter, Linda McPhail, a sister, six grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren.
Ethel Watt Curtis '32
Ethel Watt Curtis '32, July 22, 2005, in Skowhegan, Maine, at 94. She taught at Skowhegan's Bloomfield Elementary School for many years, was a 65-year member of the Kennebec Valley Grange, and was active in her church. She is survived by four sons, John, Danal, Philip, and Kenneth, 12 grandchildren, 22 great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren.
Emery S. Dunfee '33
Emery S. Dunfee '33, June 13, 2005, in Orange City, Fla., at 93. He earned a master's from the University of Maine and a doctorate from Columbia University. He served as a high school physics teacher and principal, the State of Maine Supervisor of Science, and professor of physics at the University of Maine at Farmington. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he is survived by his wife of 69 years, Edna, a son, a daughter, five grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and a brother.
Patrick Brancaccio
Dec. 31, 2019, in Waterville, Maine, at 85. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., he was the first in his family to receive a college degree, from Brooklyn College, and later earned an M.A. from Ohio State and a Ph.D. from Rutgers University. He started teaching at Colby in 1963, and for 40 years taught 19th-century American literature, modern American drama, detective fiction, and Italian fiction and film in Colby’s English Department, which he also chaired. He introduced black studies at Colby in 1964 and went on to co-found what would become the African-American Studies Program- of the first in the country-and served as its first director 1971-83. A scholar of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, he also had a passion for African literature and taught for a year at the University of Madagascar as a Fulbright lecturer. He directed Colby’s program in London for several years, and, after he retired, he ran the Jan Plan program in Verona, Italy, for 13 years and was a frequent lecturer for the Friends of the Goldfarb Center seminars in Waterville. He wrote poetry, was an avid photographer, and appreciated good wine and food. Survivors include his wife, Kate Cone ’76, three children, six grandchildren, and a sister. He also leaves three step-children and three additional grandchildren.
David C. Driskell, H’00
April 1, 2020, in Hyattsville, Md., at 88. An influential African-American artist and art historian, a prominent voice in the art world, and a friend of the Colby College Museum of Art. At the time of his death from the coronavirus, he was the Distinguished University Professor of Art at the University of Maryland, where he achieved international recognition for his expertise and scholarship in African-American art. A multimedia artist, he studied at Maine’s Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the 1950s and taught at Talladega College as well as at Howard and Fisk universities. He authored five exhibition books and published more than 40 catalogs from exhibitions he curated, including the groundbreaking 1970s work Two Centuries of Black American Art: 1750-1950 at the Los Angeles County Museum. He served on the Colby Museum Board of Governors from 1994 to 2003, and his encouragement was key to the establishment of the Lunder Institute for American Art. In 2017 the Colby Museum awarded him its Cummings Award for Artistic Excellence. The museum holds six of Driskell’s works, including Blue Pines, 1959, an example of the frequent motif of trees in his work. Survivors include his wife, Thelma Driskell, two daughters, five grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
Ansel A. Grindall
April 29, 2020, in Waterville, Maine, at 96. A longtime employee of the College, he worked for more than 40 years in Colby’s Buildings and Grounds Department (now Facilities Services), working his way up from driving buses and sanding roads to superintendent of the department. Known affectionately as “Mr. Colby”, he was awarded an honorary bachelor’s degree in 1985, the first the College awarded, prior to his retirement. He was a Boy Scout leader, member of the school board, and a volunteer with the Winslow Fire Department for 43 years. He was an avid reader, a carver of decoys, a Mason awarded an honorary Thirty-Third Degree, and an active member of his Baptist church. He leaves his wife, Dorothy, two children, four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
H. Alan Hume, M.D.
Feb. 20, 2020, in Augusta, Maine, at 93. Colby’s former medical director and friend of the College, his generosity led to the Colby-Hume Center on Messalonskee Lake when he donated a 10-acre parcel of land to the College in 1991. Born in Virginia, he graduated from the Episcopal Academy in Pennsylvania before joining the Navy, serving from 1944 to 1946. He earned his medical degree in 1953 from the University of Pennsylvania and became a surgeon, working in private practice and also in various roles in hospitals, including chief of surgical service at Presbyterian-University of Pennsylvania Medical Center. He moved to Maine in the mid-’70s and worked as a surgeon, as chairman of the Department of Surgery at Taylor Hospital, director of emergency medical services for the State of Maine, and as chief of staff at Mid-Maine Medical Center. He was Colby’s medical director 1990-2000 and was on the Board of Visitors. At the Colby-Hume Center, he built and equipped a woodworking shop and a blacksmith’s shop and created Jan Plan courses, including the popular furniture-making course. Along with his wife, Dorothy, he opened their home to dozens of Colby pre-med students who lived with them during summer work-study programs. Colby’s crew teams practiced on Messalonskee Lake, also called Snow Pond. The Humes acted as “godparents” to the teams and were in large measure responsible for the teams’ ability to achieve varsity status in 1993. He received a Colby Brick Award in 2006. Survivors include his wife of 50 years, Dorothy, three children, three grandchildren, and a brother.
