Kate Gartner Frost, professor emerita of English at the University of Texas in Austin, died of cancer July 25, 2010. She was 71.

Frost received a bachelor’s degree from Barry University in Miami in 1962. Awarded a national Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for prospective college teachers, she earned a Ph.D. in English from Princeton in 1974. D.W. Robertson and Thomas P. Roche Jr. *58 were among her professors.

She was a scholar of the English and European Renaissance. Moving to Texas in 1974, she retired from the university 34 years later. The recipient of several awards for her teaching, Frost was known for her intellect and wit in the classroom plus her commitment to her students. One colleague recalls that she “pulsated with a Rabelaisian joie de vivre  and sent gales of laughter gusting across the room.”

Frost was a past president of the John Donne Society, and had been completing editorial work on the Songs and Sonnets for a John Donne Variorum (an edition of his works with notes by contributing scholars). Her first book was also about Donne and his Devotions.

Frost is survived by her sister, Rita Joan Monti; her brother, Thomas Frost; two nieces; and two nephews.

 Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.
Graduate Class of 1974