[owm] OWM Obituary for John F. Oates

[Laura Wendell]

For those of you wishing to send your condolences to Rosemary, her 
address is as follows.  I have also included a copy of the obituary 
chronicling John's impressive career.

Rosemary Oates
Forest at Duke
2701 Pickett Rd
Durham, NC 27705

John F. Oates, 71, died at the Forest at Duke in Durham, NC on Saturday, 
June 24, 2006.

Oates was Professor Emeritus of Ancient History and Classics at Duke 
University. He is recognized as one of America's outstanding 
papyrologists and a leading expert on Egypt in the Ptolemaic period. He 
was born in 1934 and educated at Yale University (B.A. 1956,M.A. 1958, 
Ph.D. 1960). Oates was awarded a Fulbright fellowship for Study at the 
American School of Classical Studies in Athens in 1956-57, and was 
Honorary Research Assistant at University College, London, in 1965-66.

After teaching at Yale, Oates moved in 1967 to Duke, where he played an 
important role in the building of the Department of Classical Studies 
and the revival of its graduate program. Oates served the department as 
chair from 1971 to 1980, and simultaneously served the university as 
chair of its Humanities Council (1975-79). He played many important 
roles in the profession at large, including four years as president of 
the American Society of Papyrologists (1976-80). He was actively engaged 
in the work of the National Humanities Center, of which he was a trustee 
from 1977 to 1988. Regionally, he was vice- president and trustee of the 
Triangle Universities Center for Advanced Study, Inc. (1975-90), chair 
of the North Carolina Humanities Council (1980-82), and president of the 
Southern Section, Classical Association of the Middle West and South 
1974-76). In all of these activities, and in the work of the many other 
committees and councils on which he was called to serve, Oates gave 
generously of his time and energy.

Oates made three remarkable and lasting contributions to the discipline 
of papyrology, all of which reflect his strong commitments to standards, 
to transparency, and to making papyrological information accessible to 
both specialists and beginners alike. First, he produced, in 
collaboration with R. S. Bagnall, K. Worp, and the late W. H. Willis, 
the Checklist of Papyri, Ostraca, and Tablets, which has now gone 
through numerous print and electronic editions. Most recently, a 
Checklist of Arabic Papyri has supplemented the earlier volume. This 
bibliography provides a standard for reference to published papyri that 
is now universally recognized, thus eliminating confusion and providing 
cohesion and clarity to the entire discipline.

Oates made a fundamental contribution to papyrology by co-founding with 
Willis the Duke Data Rank of Documentary Papyri, a fully searchable 
electronic corpus of previously published Greek and Latin texts found on 
papyri, ostraca or wooden tablets. Oates was instrumental in designing, 
obtaining funding for, and supervising work on a scholarly instrument 
whose fundamental novelty and great value has been to enable scholars, 
wherever they may be, to access a vast body of documents that can be 
searched, compared with new texts, and much more easily studied for 
their historical value.

Finally, Oates, in collaboration with Duke University Library, oversaw 
the creation of The Duke Papyrus Archive as a pioneering resource that 
presented in digitized form almost 1400 pieces collected since the 
1940s, primarily written in Greek, with smaller numbers of papyri 
written in Latin, Demotic, Coptic, and Arabic. This resource permits 
easy worldwide access to high-resolution images as well as metadata for 
the entire Duke collection. Duke'swas the first major collection to go 
online, and the creation of this resource was nothing short of a 
revolution in papyrological research.

As a teacher, Oates was a mainstay of his department, teaching ancient 
history at every level for nearly four decades, introducing many 
graduate students to the discipline of papyrology and the importance of 
documentary studies for the understanding of antiquity.

Professor Oates is survived by his wife of 49 years, Rosemary Walsh 
Oates; his daughter, Dr. Elizabeth Oates of Durham; and son-in-law, Dr 
John Shin; granddaughters, Catherine and Alexandra Shin; his daughter, 
Emily Oates Wingfield of Richmond, VA; and son-in-law, Alan Wingfield; 
grandchildren, Julia and Henry Wingfield; his son, John F. Oates, Jr. of 
Raleigh; and daughter- in-law, Mary Ruffin Hanbury; his daughter, Sarah 
Oates of Glasgow (United Kingdom); and son-in-law, David Cross; 
grandchildren, Laura and Emma Cross; two brothers also survive, William 
A. Oates of Brattleboro, VT and Daniel E. Oates of Brooklyn, MA.

A memorial service will be held 1:00 p.m. Tuesday, June 27, 2006 at St. 
Luke's Episcopal Church, 1737 Hillandale Road.

Memorials may be made to the Benevolent Fund, Forest at Duke, 2701 
Pickett Road. Durham, NC or to a recipient of choice.

Arrangements are by Cremation Society of the Carolinas.
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