James Todd Day ’70

James, who was with us enthusiastically through our 40th reunion, died Aug. 24, 2021, in Columbia, S.C., after a long struggle with primary progressive aphasia robbed him of his beloved French language, then his life.

He came to us from Webster Groves, Mo., where high school bored him. While combating that at Princeton in the Chapel Choir and the lightweight football and wrestling squads, he took French 101 out of curiosity, and the legendary department of Maman O’Brady and his adviser Jean Macary took over his soul. His thesis addressed “Religious Ideas of Voltaire.” A Ph.D. followed at Penn, then a distinguished career teaching French while gathering culture in Beaujolais, on the Riviera, in Dijon or Paris, and in Martinique. 

He put his Chapel Choir tenor to good use in the great French Gothic cathedrals and in Carnegie Hall. His final 28 years were at the University of South Carolina, where he won teaching awards and spent a five-year term overseeing the ETS AP French program. He presented his research on Stendhal at a London colloquium.

James is survived by his wife, Pam; his children, Allison and Jeremy; his brother Roy; and nieces Meagan and Haley. Each time we hear the beauty and power of the great ideas he taught in the language of Stendhal and Voltaire, we will think of them, and most especially of him.