Ross was born in Dallas in 1934 to Crystal Ross and Lewis Meriwether Dabney Jr. ’21. He died Nov. 1, 2014, in Easton, Md.
A Renaissance man, Ross graduated summa cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa at Princeton. He later earned a Ph.D. in English literature from Harvard. He taught English at Smith College, the University of Virginia, and Mount Holyoke College before going to Sweet Briar College, where he found great satisfaction in the students’ academic caliber.
A learned oenophile, he would press abandoned apples in his cider press to the delight of his children. Also a craftsman, he worked wonders with wood. Ross raced log canoes for 30 years and enjoyed his dogs and the outdoors. He played the lute and classical guitar, spoke several languages, and read prodigiously. Until disease took his mind, he was always a teacher, showing his children how to find edible mushrooms, butcher a deer, sharpen a chainsaw, and read Blake.
He kept in touch with his students, loved books and history, and could recite pages of Chaucer, Hopkins, Yeats, and Blake. The cruelty of Alzheimer’s was particularly unfair to him.
Ross is survived by his wife of 54 years, Charlotte; their children, Susan ’84, Barbara, Joan, and Frances; 12 grandchildren; and his brother, Lewis M. Dabney III.