Royce L. B. Morris (2005)

Royce L.B. Morris was born in Calhoun County, Mississippi, in 1938. He graduated from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1961, where he joined Eta Sigma Phi. He subsequently taught Latin from 1962 to 1965 at Cleburne Public Schools in Cleburne Texas before receiving an M.A. in Classics from the University of Mississippi in 1966. His wife of 48 years was his high-school sweetheart. He followed his professor, William H. Willis, from Oxford to Durham, where he received a Ph.D. in papyrology in 1975. He ended his collegiate teaching career where it began, at Emory and Henry College, after thirty-two years of service during which he was awarded an NEH grant, received the college's Excellence in Teaching Award, was elected president of the Classical Association of Virginia, and in 1973 established a class in the Art and Archaeology of Rome that included a trip to Italy. The class has offered a remarkable opportunity for a generation of students who mourn the passing of their guide and mentor. He died on March 29, 2005.