Wilfred Healey Stone
Aug. 18, 1917-June 11, 2015
Stanford, California
Submitted by Nancy Carleton

Professor Emeritus Wilfred (Will) Healey Stone, 97, who lived on the Stanford campus for more than five decades, died at home on June 11, 2015, with his wife, Ruth Carleton, by his side and their cat, Chloe, and dog, Sally, nearby.

Stone was born on Aug. 18, 1917, in Springfield, Massachusetts, to the late Clara Ella Gilbreth and Lester Lyman Stone. Stone graduated from Springfield's Classical High School in 1935. Descended from an English ancestor who settled in Cambridge in 1635, Stone's father's illustrious forebears included Lucy Stone (the suffragette) and the poet John Greenleaf Whittier (related through his mother). Stone's father's work life, as described in Stone's memoir essay "Bones of Contention," published in The Sewanee Review in 2004, was often difficult, and after dealing with the failure of at least two farms but finding some success as a grocer and butcher, he struggled through the early years of the Great Depression and died young in 1934. Stone's mother lived until 1958, and Stone himself outlived all three of his siblings, Les, Ruth and Stanley. Stone's essay mentions that his older sister Ruth told him she remembered welcoming his arrival as bringing a little extra sugar on the ration.

During his youth, Stone was haunted by images of World War I, and like many others of his generation became a pacifist. The threat of Hitler's rise in the 1930s and 1940s led him to shift his position and decide to enlist in the U.S. Navy, which he did on Jan. 23, 1942. After completing flight training as a qualified naval aviator, he was assigned to the Aeronautic Organization of the Navy, where he served as a blimp pilot in the American Theatre, an experience he wrote about in various memoir essays. Honorably discharged on Dec. 30, 1945, he continued his service as a lieutenant in the Naval Reserves of the United States from the late 1940s through the 1950s.

An example of the best of 20th-century humanism, Stone earned his bachelor's (Cum Laude, 1941) and master's (Magna Cum Laude, 1946) degrees in English at the University of Minnesota. He received his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1950. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for study at the University of London in 1949-50, as well as two Guggenheim Fellowships. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1950 and served as director of freshman composition from 1962 to 1964. Stone's specialty was 19th- and 20th-century literature, with a special focus on E.M. Forster. He was perhaps the very first in the U.S. to make Bloomsbury an academic subject ("a dubious distinction," as he put it). He received the Dinkelspiel Award for his innovative contributions to Freshman English and undergraduate education at Stanford. His published works include "Prose Style: A Handbook for Writers" (with J.G. Bell) and "The Cave and the Mountain: A Study of E.M. Forster," which won the Commonwealth Club of California Gold Medal and Christian Gauss Prize of Phi Beta Kappa--Best Book in the Humanities, 1966. Other areas of university and community service included serving in the University Senate (1969-71), as Chair of the Student Conduct Legislative Council (1983-84), and on the Mellon and Fulbright Selection Committees (1969-86), in addition to giving talks and keynote addresses at universities and high schools around the country.

Inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, Stone taught one summer at a Freedom School in Jackson, Mississippi. During the 1960s and 1970s, he was a leading faculty member participating in teach-ins to mobilize opposition to the Vietnam War and remained committed to issues of peace and social justice throughout his life.

Stone was selected for a yearlong residential faculty appointment at the Stanford-in-Italy campus at Florence in 1966-67, based on his exceptional ability to bring the European literary canon to life for his students. His young family accompanied him, and his children remember this period as a unique and wonderful time in a center of Western culture.

Stone retired as a professor emeritus in 1986; he continued to publish articles in the Sewanee Review and elsewhere; one of them, "The Balloon Man," was awarded the Monroe K. Spears Essay Prize for the best essay published in the magazine for 2007. The Wilfred Healey Stone Papers are archived at the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University; some of the items stored there are correspondence and unique photographs pertaining to his work on E.M. Forster, including 39 letters from Forster and notes from interviews conducted with him in 1957-58, and with members of the Bloomsbury Group, among them Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, Leonard Woolf and David Garnett.

Stone married Cary Lee Laird, the mother of his children, in 1954; they divorced in 1970. In 1985, he married Margaret (Margy) Aiken, who predeceased him in 2003; his ashes will be interred alongside Margy's at Alta Vista Memorial Park in Palo Alto.

In addition to continuing to publish articles during his retirement, Stone was also active in the Peace and Social Justice Committee at the First Congregational Church of Palo Alto, where in 2008 he met Ruth Carleton, with whom he spent the final six and a half years of his life, proving it's never too late to find true love, and you even get a second shot at it. They relished road trips to Hornby Island near Vancouver Island, where Will and Margy had once built a home; on the way there and back, Ruth and Will would visit friends and relatives and stop in Ashland, Oregon, to attend multiple plays, just last fall taking in seven of them. Will also enjoyed participating in an active book club and attending opera and theater with Ruth. He loved wit and had a keen sense of humor, appreciating the most delicate of ironies and the most bawdy of jokes. He loved good food and fine wine and eagerly anticipated his evening gin and tonic as well as his morning ritual of breakfast and coffee with Ruth as they read aloud to each other from The New York Times, including on his last morning. Together they doted on their dog and cat companions, part of a long line of dogs and cats lucky enough to share Will's home and lap.

Stone is survived by his wife, Ruth Carleton of Stanford; his son, Dr. Gregory Stone, daughter-in-law, Dr. Cynthia Stone, and grandchildren Colin and Derek Stone, all of San Antonio, Texas; his daughter, Dr. Miriam (Mimi) Lee Stone, and grandchildren Ava and Hannah Lewis, all of Seattle; and Ruth's children, Nancy Grimley Carleton, of Berkeley, and Jeff Grimley Carleton of Palo Alto, along with granddaughter Melissa Elizabeth Carleton; and a large circle of beloved friends and extended family. Will was justifiably proud of the accomplishments of his children (both highly regarded doctors) and grandchildren, all of whom are multi-talented and full of promise as they launch into their adult lives.

Stone was diagnosed with congestive heart failure in late 2014. As for all other maladies, he simply wanted to know, "How do you fix that?" He appreciated the care provided by his doctors at Palo Alto Medical Foundation, as well as by Pathways Hospice. Will remained intellectually present until the end, and Ruth's loving support allowed him to die at home as he wished. Will was an inspiring model of how to age not just well but exceptionally well -- remaining active, vital and thoroughly engaged even as he neared his 98th birthday this summer, which he didn't quite reach. His life energy was so strong that even after he accepted hospice support in early May, everyone kept thinking he'd somehow make it to 100. Will attributed his longevity to his evening ritual of gin and tonic, though what struck many of his loved ones was his gift for being fully present while always happily planning for the next hour, the next day, the next year. He honored the past, embraced the present and strove to enter the future fully.

Tags: veteran, teacher/educator, public service