News & Events In Memoriam

October 13, 2008

The Amherst community is invited to gather in remembrance of Jordan Moore-Fields ’11 at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 19, in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall. A formal memorial service will be scheduled for later in the semester.

The following is a statement from Amherst College President Anthony W. Marx.

I write with terrible news, which some of you may have heard already. Jordan Moore-Fields ’11 of Oak Park, Illinois, died on Sunday, Oct. 12, in a car accident that took place on Interstate 91 just north of Springfield. He was returning to campus from Baltimore, where he and three other Amherst students had gone to visit a friend. The three other students sustained minor injuries and were taken to Baystate Hospital, where they were treated and released.

Listen to an audio recording of the celebration of the life and writing of David Foster Wallace ’85

September 14, 2008

David Foster Wallace ’85, a towering figure in modern literature who died Friday, Sept. 12, in Claremont, Calif., was remembered by one of his English professors as an unassuming student of both prodigious talent and productivity, while a roommate recalled Mr. Wallace as a close friend who was serious and sincere as a student at Amherst. 

“It was an enormous privilege to work with David during his senior honors project in English, which became nothing less than his first published novel, ‘The Broom of the System,’”  said Dale E. Peterson, the Eliza Clark Folger Professor of English at Amherst.

May 5, 2008

Douglas C. Wilson ’62, longtime Amherst College public affairs officer and editor, died May 5 at his home in Amherst. He was 67. A former Washington journalist, he served his alma mater for 27 years before retiring in 2002.

Prior to joining the college’s administration in 1975, Wilson worked for 13 years as a reporter for The Providence Journal, first in Rhode Island and later as Washington correspondent. On Aug. 7, 1974, he was the first newsperson to report Richard Nixon’s decision to resign as president – a breaking story for which he received the Merriman Smith Memorial Award from the White House Correspondents’ Association.  

Wilson edited Passages of Time: Narratives in the History of Amherst College, an anthology of essays on the college’s history, which was published in December 2007 by Amherst College Press. He wrote eight of the 28 essays, most of which appeared in Amherst, the alumni magazine which he had edited.