Armour Institute of Technology - Cycle Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

Page 17 text:

Tti Memoriam Cbomas Conant Roney. Since these pages have left the press death has again entered the ranks of the Faculty of Armour Institute of Technology. On Saturday. May the twentieth. Professor Roney died. His sudden death came to all his student friends as a great blow, and it will be some time before the great loss to Armour Institute of Technology, and to the community, can be realized. The short biography printed in these pages, before his death, can give but a faint idea of his work and influence in the large sphere in which he moved. From the hour in which he was invited to become Dean of the Faculty, to the hour of his death, he grew and strengthened in the presence of the vast opportunities which he so clearly saw in our Institution, and all the riches of his heart and brain, all the conscience, and culture, and devotion of his character have been given unstintedly to the transformation of the wealth supplied by our noble Founder, to things of immortal worth. Mr. Armour’s philan- thropy was greatly enriched by the identification of his gifts of money with such a man as Professor Roney. He had the peculiar genius of the teacher, and broad, inspiring conceptions of education. In his brain was the scholar's method; in his heart the love of truth which made him desire above all things that his students should get a love for the truth. His aims reached the height of a student's character, and the high ideals of character which he taught, and lived, are not the least of the legacies which he has left to the rising generation, with which he came in such close contact. His boundless enthusiasm and unswerving loyalty to duty, upon whose altar he made himself a sacrifice, will ever serve to strengthen all who knew him. Pledged to great aims, he was emancipated from the smallness even of little duties. To him they were large with possibilities. In the history of education there is no more pathetic or inspiring fact than the episode given in the last days of our Dean’s life, in which, in order that his classes might continue a course in Tennyson’s “ In Memoriam,” he was actually committing to memory, from his wife’s dictation, those thousands of lines. As we think of this career cut off in the prime of a strong manhood, the reality of our loss surpasses the persuasion of Tennyson’s lines. No one who knew Professor Roney could help knowing that he was waging a battle with the dark. His spirit did not quail, yet it shrank before the possibility of oncoming blindness. Yet he went where duty called him. There was a Miltonic grandeur about him as he moved on, conscious that he himself was losing the sight by which he obtained visions of the brightness and glory of earth. To us he was always the same genial, sunny, laborious man, whose heart plans, ever supported by that fertile brain, revealed a rich character and a fearless faith. His deep artist nature was ever striving to get his students to look beyond the limits of our all too practical education. It has been our great privilege to know him and to reap the benefits of his true. pure, and strenuous life, and we are assured that he lives in the fullness of the future in which he so firmly believed. We are indebted to President Gunsaulus, of whose address at the funeral service the above is largely an adaptation.—Ed.