Ray Lorenzo Heffner

HEFFNER

Posted By: Tara (email)
Date: 12/6/2012 at 14:11:23

Ray Lorenzo Heffner, 87, died November 28, 2012 at Lantern Park Nursing & Rehabilitation Center.

According to his wishes no memorial service will be held. Memorials to Ray’s memory may be made to the Iowa City Animal Adoption Center, 4852 Sand Road; Iowa City Hospice 1025 Wade Street; or the Johnson County Senior Center, 28 S. Linn Street.

He was born March7, 1925 in Durham, N.C., and spent his early years in Baltimore and in Seattle, where he graduated from Broadway High School. At the age of 16 he entered Yale University as a scholarship student. During World War II he served in the U.S. Navy 110th Construction Battalion in the Central Pacific. After the war he returned to Yale, where he earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Scroll and Key, and the Elizabethan Club.

He began his forty-two year teaching career in the Department of English at Indiana University where he taught from 1954 to 1966. During that time he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Although he held a number of academic administrative positions during his lifetime – Vice President and Dean of Faculties at Indiana University, Provost at The University of Iowa, and President of Brown University, and served on state and national boards such as the Surgeon General’s Committee on Nursing Education, the Iowa Humanities Board, and the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools as an examiner and consultant – he preferred to be remembered as a good teacher.

Upon his retirement as Emeritus Professor of English at The University of Iowa in 1996, he spent his happiest years as a volunteer teacher at the Johnson County Senior Center, where he taught 3-4 courses each year until he retired in April of this year because of ill health. During those years he enjoyed teaching a wide variety of courses ranging from Greek, Medieval, and Renaissance literature to Nigerian novels and James Joyce’s Ulysses.

He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Ruth; a son, David Todd Heffner, and his wife, Elizabeth of North Liberty; a son, Christopher Dabney Heffner, and his wife, Marsha of Belleville,IL; and three grandchildren, Christopher Todd, Lindsey Elise, and Jaclyn Nicole Heffner.