Louise Price Hoy (2010)

Louise Price Hoy, Marshall University (July 4, 2010)

LOUISE PRICE HOY was born in Mullins, West Virginia on November 11, 1920 to Cyrus Christopher, a manager of coal company stores, and Eva Louise Price. She received a B.A. in Latin from Duke in 1939, then earned the M.A. ((1945) and Ph.D. (1952) from Bryn Mawr, where she was the last student to write a dissertation under Lily Ross Taylor. She taught at Swarthmore College and Case Western Reserve University before returning to her native West Virginia and Marshall University in 1963, where she chaired the classics department for 24 years. Her sophisticated education did nothing to dispel the memories of the disadvantaged rural populations she met in her youth as her father’s job required her family to move back and forth across the state. She knew the value of Latin and she knew how to bring Latin to the students and to inspire her students to do the same. Her research specialty was Latin pedagogy. She taught overloads, trained her students both to be teachers and researchers, and generously supported both financially and personally the teachers and students who received insufficient support from their schools. It was estimated that by the middle of her career at Marshall, she had trained virtually every high-school Latin teacher in West Virginia. She was a longtime CAMWS vice-president for West Virginia. She died at the age of 89 on July 4, 2010.