Memories of Jonathan Rossie

Jon, you were assuredly among the best of SLU and the history department. Thank you for all of your professional devotion and contributions, and personally for all your mentoring during my years as a junior colleague and subsequent chair. I still cherish all the memories and discussions we shared either in your office or mine, especially about history and its significance, always abetted by the aroma of your pipe smoke. My wife, Mary, and I deeply appreciated your, and your wife Kelli's hospitality and generosity of spirit over so many years. Our lives intersected in many intriguing ways, and I count myself very fortunate to have known you both as a colleague and a friend. Asante sana.  David T. Lloyd, Professor Emeritus History

I was Jon Rossie's student having taken several courses with him in Early American History. He was a master teacher, the kind of teacher who left one feeling that the class hour ended too soon. I couldn't wait for the next class meeting. And I also couldn't wait to tackle the next reading assignment because the course bibliography was so diverse and interesting. Yes, we read Bernard Bailyn on the ideology of the American Revolution, but Jon also assigned historical novels, such as Kenneth Roberts's Oliver Wiswell. He often framed this history from the Canadian and Loyalist perspective, which gave us wonderfully fresh insights on the formative years of America's founding. His creativity was a way of "doing" history that stood apart, surely distinctive from how it was taught at other colleges and universities.

One hasty whimsical recollection is of Jon lecturing in a west facing classroom of Cook (now Piskor) Hall. He was standing by the long windows with the shades up, and a late afternoon winter sun beaming its light upon the professor just above his waist. He was a smoker, like many members of the History Department in those years, so he kept a book of matches in his shirt pocket. Somehow, with the sun briefly pouring upon him, the matches ignited. He calmly patted himself, suffocated the instantaneous burst, and avoided having his shirt catch fire. Jon just kept on lecturing, maintained his focus, and never commented on the phenomenon we had just witnessed. He clearly loved what he was doing at St. Lawrence and he made that passion for history come alive for his students, inspiring several of them in the 1970s to enroll in graduate school.  Bill Fox, President Emeritus