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In Memoriam | Winter 2009

In Memoriam: Faculty & Friends

Notices sorted by graduation date

Harry Harrison Combs of Woodstock, Va., died Sept. 3,  2009. Mr. Combs worked for the U.Va. Athletic Department and his responsibilities included assisting visiting coaches with press conferences.

Merrill D. Peterson of Charlottesville died Sept. 23,  2009. Mr. Peterson was a history professor, former chair of the history department, dean of the faculty of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University and a noted Jeffersonian scholar. He gained widespread recognition with his first book, The Jefferson Image in the American Mind,  which was awarded the Bancroft Prize from Columbia University and the Gold Medal of the Jefferson Memorial Association in 1960. Mr. Peterson also wrote Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun and “Starving Armenians”: America and the Armenian Genocide,  1915-1930 and After, among others. His book Lincoln in American Memory was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1995. In 1996, Mr. Peterson joined the Peace Corps and served in Armenia. Mr. Peterson’s awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, fellowship in the National Endowment for Humanities and National Humanities Center and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Virginia.