Previous

||

This Issue

||

Next

AROUND THE QUADS

IN MEMORIAM: Remembering John Garraty

By Yanek Mieczkowski ’89 GSAS, ’95 GSAS

Editor’s note: This is a condensed version of Mieczkowski’s tribute. To read the complete text, please go to Columbia College Alumni.

The historical profession lost a giant with the passing of John A. Garraty [’48 GSAS], the Gouverneur Morris Professor of History emeritus. The author and editor of numerous American history books, Garraty was one of the most prolific historians of his generation. I worked as his last research assistant, and I once asked him the secret of his prolificness, as if expecting him to reveal some mysterious formula or regimen. In addition to his writing, he had a family, taught classes, vacationed at a Paris apartment and even ran the New York City marathon. Amidst all this activity, he still wrote copiously. “Where do you find the time?” I asked.

“Time?” he responded. “Time is a question of priorities. Only the dead have run out of time. They’ve met their final deadline.” I began to laugh, because it seemed a curious way to answer my question. But when I laughed, Garraty put up his hand. “No, I’m serious,” he said. “If something ranks high enough as a priority, you’ll find the time.”

Time ran out for Garraty on December 19, when he died at his Sag Harbor, N.Y., home of heart failure at 87. But he leaves a wealth of work for readers to contemplate. The New York Times obituary on Garraty focused almost exclusively on a project he completed during retirement, the massive American National Biography. His textbook, The American Nation, was first published in 1963 and is in its 12th edition. It became a best-selling college text, and Garraty published a version for high school students, too.

In 1989, Garraty began the “1001 Things” series with 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About American History. The series has grown to comprise titles on the Civil War, the South, Women’s History and Irish-American History. In addition to describing biography in The Nature of Biography, Garraty wrote volumes on the lives of Henry Cabot Lodge, George Perkins, Woodrow Wilson and Silas Wright. He also wrote The Great Depression and, with Eric Foner [’63], edited The Reader’s Companion to American History.

For his two-volume work, Interpreting American History: Conversations with Historians, Garraty interviewed 29 eminent historians, including Richard Hofstadter, Arthur Link, Richard B. Morris, T. Harry Williams and C. Vann Woodward.

Garraty received his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College in 1941 and worked during WWII as a Merchant Marine swim instructor. In 1948, he earned his Ph.D. from Columbia and then taught for 12 years at Michigan State University before returning to Columbia, where he was a professor for 31 years until his retirement in 1990.

Yanek Mieczkowski ’89 GSAS, ’95 GSAS chairs the Department of History at Dowling College in Oakdale, N.Y.

Previous

||

This Issue

||

Next