Remembrance of Phillip R. Shriver

A Remembrance of Phillip R. Shriver by his colleague, Jay W. Baird.

[Dr. Shriver, Professor of History and President Emeritus, passed away on April 23, 2011.]

It is an honor to reflect on Dr. Shriver's role both as an historian and a teacher. His memory is larger than life, and rightfully so. Seldom in the course of Miami University's history have the roles of scholar and teacher blended so beautifully as they did in his life.

I remember when in the late 1960s during his annual address at the start of a school year, he told the faculty, and I quote: "You are paid to dream." He himself set the example for this noble dream. Although Phil Shriver was a realist, he was also a romantic at heart. In one sense, he lived in an earlier America, when the native peoples and early settlers roamed the woods, meadows, and streams that greeted you today on your way to this celebration of remembrance. He was as much an anthropologist as an historian, and he was attracted to historical excavations and the world of Indian artifacts.

Phil Shriver was a naturally happy and optimistic man. He loved the view from his last office in the History Department in Upham Hall overlooking Bishop Woods and was delighted to live in rural Oxford, far from the noise of the hectic city. Despite his degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, Phil Shriver was a modest man of the heartland.

He never lorded it over his colleagues who might have envied his education at three of America's greatest universities. Instead he remained what he always was--a man who loved the past and who brought the joy of living into every classroom he entered. When life's disappointments and the irritations of often petty university politics weighed him down, Phil Shriver always remembered why we were here--for our students, for their education and for the joy we scholars take in our research and writing. He spread the word by establishing campuses in Luxembourg and in our neighboring communities of Middletown and Hamilton as well.

Dr. Shriver carried himself with a dignity and quiet confidence that was admired by his students and colleagues. This was due in no small part to his experiences during World War II as an officer aboard the S.S. Murray, in the South Pacific theater. There was little to fear in life after one had looked death in the face during the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and his ship was present in Yokahama Harbor when the Japanese signed their surrender in August 1945. For him the horrors of war also had lessons of life to teach. He viewed the opportunity to educate the young men and women who would be future officers in our R.O.T.C. programs as a sacred trust.

Dr. Shriver was fated to lead the university during the crisis period of the student revolution against the Vietnam war, a period of great challenge which peaked in 1970. What a man he was to lead us through this crisis without the grievous bloodshed suffered at Kent State University. How bravely he kept the peace here, walking the campus among the unruly crowds, sometimes deep into the night, reasoning with the disillusioned at the Sundial. He understood the students and they understood him. The bravery he demonstrated and his composure under fire kept the peace here at that most difficult time and will be long remembered.

Because of his broad life experiences, Dr. Shriver had an intellectual maturity which transcended historical fashion. Over the course of his five decades in the classroom, historical fads spread widely. These included the "New Left" history, psycho-history, Marxist and Neo-Marxist history, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, Modernism and Post-Modernism. There were countless other theoretical constructs all of whose adherents were certain that only they had the proper insights to truly interpret history. Their language often consisted of tortured prose understood only by those initiated into the mysteries of their particular school of thought.

On the other hand, when students entered Dr. Shriver's classroom, they escaped all of this and encountered history as it really had been lived--as a narrative, a story often framed within a moral tale. There they learned that the most important intellectual lessons need not be phrased in opaque jargon. In a Shriver classroom, depth and meaning lay in simplicity, bonded by character and endurance. His unforgettable lectures were delivered in an almost lyric style and bathed in elegance. One could see his eyes shining as he was totally immersed in the subject and in the joy of teaching. When the last student who studied under Phil Shriver dies somewhere around the year 2080, when we are all gone and when the last remembrances told to children and grandchildren have faded away, his moral simplicity will live on and his memory will endure.

And what will it be that is remembered with such fondness as the years roll by? We will remember that for Phil Shriver, history took on a moral dimension. He touched our souls deeply. He spoke not only to our minds and intellect but to our hearts and senses as well. One former student told me that she felt so warm and safe listening to him. It was as if she were at a campfire deep in the night, hearing a great tribal leader lend meaning to the challenging questions of the universe. Through Dr. Shriver, she said, she learned that history tells us why we are here and helps us search for truth. The words cascaded from him like a river of song. He spoke to us where we live, and we were captivated by the grand melody. At heart, he made so many of us want to be better people.

Perhaps Dr. Shriver's most beloved lectures dealt with Miami's favorite son, William Holmes McGuffey, the author of the McGuffey Readers, who became the Schoolmaster of the Nation. His Readers have sold over 130,000,000 copies, second only to the Bible. It is clear why this is so--because they taught the values so dear to Americans in crystal-clear historical vignettes. They were based on the love of God and country, of family and work, of character and duty, of honesty and frugality, of kindness and consideration of others, of moderation and sobriety. The Readers taught the young generation to recognize the difference between right and wrong, to avoid temptation and to know that righteous guilt was a good thing. To help the sick and suffering, the poor and hungry and those depressed and in mourning, and to treat others as we ourselves would want to be treated. These may have been McGuffey's values but they were also the values of President Shriver and they lay deep in his heart.

Above all, it was Dr. Shriver's love of family which characterized him. Who could not be moved when he quoted Charles Dickens' tale of the "Death of Little Nell," found in one of McGuffey's Lessons. It was a Christian message of hope recording the death of a precious, gentle, noble little girl who was only four years old. And I quote: "No sleep so Beautiful and calm, so fair to look upon. She seemed a creature fresh from the hand of God." When Nell died, she stretched out her arms to her heartbroken father, and said: "When I die, put me near something that has loved the light and always had the sky above it."

This is how we will remember Phil Shriver too, a man whose selflessness and timeless qualities touched us all. He will live on here wherever we look on this beautiful campus.

Dr. Shriver was not only a good man and a good teacher, he was a great man and a great teacher. He was a man who knew how to live and knew how to die.