LITTLE ROCK — When Jeannie Whayne joined the history faculty at the University of Arkansas in 1990, she found an unofficial adviser in Willard Gatewood.
Whayne, now a tenured professor of history at the Fayetteville campus, admired the way Gatewood taught, interacted with his students and conducted research.
“I looked at Willard and I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do,’” Whayne said. “I patterned myself on Willard. He was very generous man. An excellent mentor. He was a superb scholar.”
Gatewood, a former UA chancellor and a retired distinguished professor of history, died Sunday at the Butterfield Trail Village retirement co m m u n i ty i n Faye tt e - ville. He was 80.
Gatewood, who had cancer, spent his last weeks in hospice care receiving former students and colleagues, said Whayne, who thanked Gatewood in the introduction of her latest book, Delta Empire: Lee Wilson and the Transformation of Southern Agriculture.
The book is scheduled for release next month.
“Willard read two drafts of that book,” Whayne said. “He commented on it extensively. I’m just really sad I couldn’t put a copy in his hands.”
Gatewood, who was born on a farm in North Carolina, earned three degrees at Duke University and taught U.S. and Southern history at UA from 1970 until his retirement in 1998.
During his tenure, he received the university’s distinguished research award and teacher of the year award.
“He was the consummate gentleman scholar and was a trusted adviser to many chancellors,” UA Chancellor G. David Gearhart said in a statement.
Gatewood served as chancellor in 1984 and 1985, and he initiated the first steps toward the restoration of Old Main and the establishment of the Sturgis Fellowships, now among the university’s most prestigious undergraduate scholarships.
He also co-founded the University of Arkansas Press.
“Willard was all that’s good about a university,” said Dan Ferritor, who succeeded Gatewood as chancellor. “It really is as simple as that. The world has lost a great guy.”
In 1994, Ferritor awarded Gatewood the inaugural Chancellor’s Medal in recognition of “excellence in teaching, scholarship and service to the university.”
Gatewood wrote, cowrote or edited 14 books, including The Governors of Arkansas, which in 1980 became the first book published by the UA Press, and Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, a 1990 work that served as the culmination of his research interest in black history.
In 1986, he was elected president of the Southern Historical Association.
Margaret Bolsterli, a retired English professor at UA, took her manuscripts to Gatewood while writing two memoirs about growing up on an Arkansas cotton farm.
She spent 15 years writing the first one, Born in the Delta, and admitted that she considered quitting, but Gatewood offered her encouragement.
“I would think I was finished and he would read it,” Bolsterli said. “There would be more to do, and I would do it.”
She described him as “the most generous scholar I’ve ever met.”
Thomas DeBlack, professor of history at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville, studied under Gatewood as a doctoral student at UA in the early 1990s.
“He was a gentleman and a scholar,” DeBlack said. “That term is bandied about a lot, but he personified that. He was a true Southern gentleman. Dr. Gatewood was demanding but in a very gentle way. He never tried to browbeat you or beat you over the head intellectually.”
Gatewood deserves credit for ongoing scholarship in Arkansas history, said Tom Dillard, head of special collections for UA Libraries at the Fayetteville campus.
“Willard Gatewood said that Arkansans should define themselves and not let [those] out-of-state do it for them,” Dillard said. “He generated a great deal of interest in the state in doing research on the state. He made sure that information got out.”
Information for this article was contributed by Brenda Bernet of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Arkansas, Pages 8 on 10/25/2011