Baylor History Professor Robert Reid Passes On

Robert Reid

and

Ann Miller

(Image from Baylor Proud)

A few readers might recall one of my posts on Baylor history professor Robert Reid, along with a humorous anecdote about him that turned out to be mere rumor, but rumors of his death, unlike those of Mark Twain's, turn out not to be greatly exaggerated, for he passed away on April 8th at the age of 88. I learned of this only recently.

Professor Reid -- like English professor Ann Miller, with whom he is depicted above (and who passed on some years back) -- was a great teacher, very knowledgeable and very entertaining. I took his Western Civilization course rather late in my Baylor years, when I was a junior, and he asked me to be his grader for my senior year, but I had to turn him down because I'd already accepted an identical request from another history professor, Dr. James Vardaman. That job, by the way, entailed reading student papers and grading those, as well as adding comments and providing advice (just to make clear that I wasn't grading the teachers). Professor Reid told me that Vardaman had been his own reader many years before, the best he'd ever had.

Anyway, I was sorry to learn of his passing, though he wasn't quite so old as I had expected, for I had imagined him to be in his 90s.

This sort of news, sadly, is becoming more frequent as I grow older.