In Memory

Christopher Noble Horton died Saturday, January 1, 2005, of leukemia (AML) at John Dempsey Hospital in Farmington, Connecticut, after a fierce struggle with the disease over more than eight excruciating months. He was valiant to the very end, his dying synonymous with his middle name.

Chris grew up in rural Saddle River, New Jersey. After graduating from Amherst in 1958, he served in the Army in Korea and earned a Master’s degree from Wesleyan University. Passionate about the visual arts, philosophy, and teaching, Chris developed programs and taught innovative courses in painting, theory, and experimental studio for 30 years at the Hartford Art School of the University of Hartford. In 1997, he received the University’s Roy E. Larsen Award for Distinguished Teaching. He retired in 1999 and was named a professor emeritus of experimental studio.

Chris leaves his wife, Sherry, and sons Joshua–and daughter-in-law Allison–and Tobiah. He also leaves his brother Timothy (Amherst ‘61), and his family.

Having spent three years “rooming together within two feet of each other,” as our fellow roommate Dave Stephens recently put it to me, we got to know each other well: what follows are some of the things I remember most vividly about Chris. First of all, he was a big, strong guy at 6'2", weighing over two hundred pounds, and a first-rate athlete. His specialty was putting the shot, the object of which is to muscle a sixteen-pound ball of iron farther than anyone else. One day I watched him closely during practice; watched as he curled his fingers around the shot, cupping it gently in the crook of his neck, like a concert-master cradling a Strad. Then he spun full tilt and launched the shot explosively, at the same time letting out an almost bestial roar. What stuck with me over the years was how powerful he was, how disciplined, how intense, and how determined to put forth his very best–in which respects he never
changed.

Another way Chris remained constant was in his championship of the new-and-different, the out-of-the-ordinary, as in his introducing Dave and me to the music of Shostakovich and Stravinsky, who could have been from another planet. Through him, too, we made the acquaintance of the Freudian psychologist Wilhelm Reich–and to the possible efficacy of Reich’s “Orgone Box” in enhancing and husbanding our abundant youthful supply of “stored energy;” i.e.,what is now called testosterone. Dave and I had our doubts about this business (though we were intrigued), but it was
typical of Chris then, and throughout his life, to test the edges, to “get people going,” by espousing the unusual, even proposing the outrageous, in order to push his students into examining and challenging the status quo. It became a hallmark of his teaching style; it marked his conversation with family and close friends as well.

In our junior and senior years, Chris and Dave and I lived on the second floor of Psi U, looking out over the spacious lawn and venerable sycamores in front of the house. In our livingroom was an old fireplace, no longer operational but warmly decorative. Shortly after we moved in, Chris carved the word “Averaducci” on the lintel–as a way, perhaps, of making this part of the house our home. “Averaducci” isn’t a real word, but was Louis Armstrong’s version of “Arrivederci” as belted out in the movie “High Society,” a favorite of ours. It means goodbye, of course, but only until we meet again. So I’d like to end this piece with a heartfelt “Averaducci, Horts,” and a promise to meet again soon–very specifically, at the public celebration of your life and work to be held at the Hartford Art School on June 26, 2005.

Skip Fitchen ‘58