{"id":10969,"date":"2015-07-16T14:19:30","date_gmt":"2015-07-16T19:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=10969"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:07:53","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:07:53","slug":"kassons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=10969","title":{"rendered":"And the Kassons go rolling along"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"John<\/a>
John and Joy Kasson have done just about everything together in life, including retiring this summer from the university they have called home for the past 44 years.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

F<\/span>or much of its history, Radcliffe College was a kind of poor stepsister to its proud and privileged big brother Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

Even in the 1960s, Harvard refused to share its facilities equally with Radcliffe, but men and women mingled freely in the classroom and in many extra-curricular activities.<\/p>\n

This could have been the moment in history when John and Joy Kasson met and fell in love.<\/p>\n

After all, John, who graduated from Harvard magna cum laude in history in 1966, shared three large lecture courses with Joy, who graduated from Radcliffe with honors in American history and literature that same year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI like to think about all the times we must have walked by each other,\u201d John said.<\/p>\n

But they didn\u2019t meet until the summer of 1967 \u2013 in Salzburg, Austria, of all places. Both were there to study German as a requirement for Yale graduate school. They met at the American Express office. They had lunch and talked. And 48 years later, they still haven\u2019t run out of things to talk about.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was interested in Joy from the moment I saw her,\u201d John said.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve done just about everything together since then, including retiring this summer from UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences, a place they have called home for the past 44 years.<\/p>\n

\u2018The power of memory\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n

Joy grew up in Highland Park outside Chicago. The daughter of a chemist, she went to Radcliffe believing she was \u201cspeeding toward a career in science.\u201d<\/p>\n

But at 19, she took a summer job in a science lab and her career plans hit a bump.<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked around and saw women feeding the lab animals and men who were the scientists who worked late into the night while their wives were raising their kids,\u201d Joy said.<\/p>\n

Joy knew she wanted a family and a career, so she switched her major to American history and literature that fall. \u201cWhen I made that choice, it became the path I was going to walk.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>
Some 48 years after they met, the Kassons say they still haven\u2019t run out of things to talk about.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

John\u2019s interest in the humanities is rooted in his childhood in Muncie, Indiana. He grew up in the same house with his parents, grandfather and a great-grandmother, born before the Civil War, who had once danced with Chester Arthur and befriended the widow of Ulysses Grant.<\/span><\/p>\n

He learned from his relatives at a very early age the \u201cpower of memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the time he was 8 or 9, John wanted to be a criminal lawyer like his hero the famous \u201cattorney for the damned,\u201d Clarence Darrow.<\/p>\n

But in his junior year in college, he decided to interact with the legal system in a different way. That spring, he taught American poetry to inmates at a nearby prison.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like falling off a log,\u201d John said. What made it so easy, he realizes now, is that he was the only person outside their families to treat the inmates as people, not criminals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018I need to keep doing this. This is fun.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

A collaborative leader<\/span><\/h3>\n

Joy and John married in June 1968 at the Yale Faculty Club on the New Haven Green.<\/p>\n

John earned his Ph.D. in American studies from Yale in 1971, and Joy earned the same degree a year later.<\/p>\n

The Kassons came to Carolina in fall of 1971. John had a tenure-track position in the history department, but Joy\u2019s position as an English instructor seemed like a career ladder without rungs.<\/p>\n

Yet, she immediately gained the attention of Townsend \u201cTowny\u201d Ludington, the director who co-founded the American Studies Curriculum in 1968. In 1973, she became an assistant professor in American studies and the program\u2019s first fulltime faculty member. For the next 42 years, American Studies was her home.<\/p>\n

Along the way, she and John started a family. Their son, Peter, was born in 1977; their daughter, Laura, in 1983.<\/p>\n

Joy also took on more administrative duties. From 1974 to 1980, Joy was chair of American studies, a position she held again from 2001 to 2011. In 1990, she became a full professor in English and American studies. In her second term as chair, she oversaw the curriculum\u2019s 2008 establishment as the Department of American Studies and the approval of its doctoral program.<\/p>\n

Longtime colleague Marcie Cohen Ferris said Joy has a commitment to excellence in her own work as well as cultivating it in others. As an administrator, she built on the program\u2019s strengths by recognizing and seizing opportunities for collaborations across campus.<\/span><\/p>\n

Throughout her career at Carolina, Joy has received numerous honors, including five teaching awards since 1985 and the University\u2019s Thomas Jefferson Award in 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cJoy has a strong sense of duty about what she owes as a kind of citizen of the University and other communities,\u201d John said. \u201cSo when people ask her to do things, she doesn\u2019t say \u2018no\u2019 lightly and she says \u2018yes\u2019 far more than she says \u2018no.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A relentless curiosity<\/span><\/h3>\n

Joy talks about her husband\u2019s \u201cnimble and deep scholarly imagination,\u201d which allowed him to write books on wide-ranging topics like Shirley Temple, Houdini and Coney Island at the turn of the 20th century.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m always looking for a subject that has a hook to it \u2013 some element that is going to make people want to read about it,\u201d John said. Sometimes his wife helps him find the hook. \u201cWhen I was stuck on this project I was calling \u2018the rise of the smile,\u2019 Joy suggested I could organize it around Shirley Temple.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result \u2013 \u201cThe Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and 1930s America\u201d \u2013 explored how Temple\u2019s smile and that of President Franklin D. Roosevelt helped buoy the nation through hard times.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is perhaps more remarkable, Joy said, is he has been able to write these books along with countless articles and book reviews even though he can\u2019t read them unaided.<\/p>\n

He has been legally blind since 1991 \u2013 a handicap he believes has made him a better lecturer because it forced him to prepare relentlessly and rely on his memory rather than notes.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018A magical moment\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n

The couple\u2019s thoughts of retirement came slowly, almost grudgingly.<\/span><\/p>\n

John finds it physically demanding to sit for hours hunched over a computer screen reading enlarged text. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the same way, Joy said, she has less stamina than she used to have staying up past midnight preparing the next day\u2019s lecture. She was also coming to the end of a three-year stint as the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Scholar for Carolina Performing Arts. (See related story at go.unc.edu\/Xj39G.)<\/p>\n

If there was ever a time to step away, she thought, this year could be it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, the decision to retire this summer was almost as difficult as the one they made together to come here.<\/p>\n

In 1971, Joy had never been to Carolina before, but her attachment to the place began to grow on their first house-hunting visit to Chapel Hill that summer. The couple took an evening stroll past the Old Well toward Franklin Street. \u201cThe fireflies were out,\u201d Joy recalled, and as the flickering light illuminated the dark campus, \u201cit was magical.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a moment that, for both of them, seemed almost like falling in love again.<\/p>\n

Read a University Gazette story about other faculty retirees.<\/p>\n

By Gary Moss, University Gazette<\/em><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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