Morris Ruggles Brownell III ’55

Ruggles died March 14, 2007, at Renown Medical Center in Reno, Nev., following a valiant struggle against several diseases.

He came to us from Middlesex School. Senior year he roomed in Little with Dick Rawls, Moses Williams, and Hunter Ingalls.

Rug majored in English and pursued the humanities program, thanks to the direction of Professor Bob Goheen '40 *48, his freshman adviser. Following graduation he had the lifetime experience of six months before the mast on the topsail schooner Albatross en route from Rotterdam to San Francisco.

He will be remembered as a consummate scholar who taught English at Tufts, Cornell, Oxford, and the University of Nevada, where he was chair of the English department. Our classmate was committed to the learning of all students and the indissoluble connection between teaching and scholarship.

Rug was the author of three award-winning works: Alexander Pope and the Arts of Georgian England, Samuel Johnson's Attitude to the Arts, and The Prime Minister of Taste: A Portrait of Horace Walpole. A fourth book, Boswell's Ballads, written with his late wife, Melita, will be published later.

Rug will be greatly missed by his friends, colleagues, and especially by his daughters, grandchildren, and the Brownell family. To them all, the class extends deepest sympathy.