Necrology

Crossan Hays Curry '50

Sep. 16, 1924-Jun. 26, 2019

Crossan Hays Curry ’50, an artist and art professor of Oxford, Ohio, was born on Sept. 16, 1924, in Pittsburgh, one of eight children of the former Carolyn Hays and Grant Curry, an attorney. He prepared for college at Avon Old Farms School in Connecticut.

Curry served in the U.S. Army in World War II in Europe from 1943 to 1946. After arriving on College Hill, he majored in art and anthropology and participated in the College Choir, Glee Club, and the staff of the humor magazine Royal Gaboon. A lacrosse player, he was a member of Chi Psi fraternity.

Curry, who later served Hamilton as a class agent, reflected on his College Hill years as providing a discipline for his life and career. He noted in his 40th reunion yearbook, “Oddly, I have felt well-prepared for life and creativity even though the Art Department of the ’40s must have been one of the school’s least developed programs.”

After graduation, he earned an M.F.A. at The Ohio State University in Columbus and taught art at Miami University in Oxford from 1960 until his retirement in 1995. In 1994, the university established an endowment in his name for an annual award to recognize a distinguished educator in the College of Creative Arts.

An activist, Curry was interested in historic preservation, animal rights, wildlife, and the environment. He maintained 20 acres with a menagerie of donkeys, goats, exotic fowl, and dogs.

Curry died on June 26, 2019, at the age of 94. In 1954, he married the former Lucy Sebald; he is survived by a son and a daughter, five grandchildren, and 12 great-grandchildren. Two cousins, Charles Estabrook, Jr. and Henry Estabrook, were members of the Class of ’33 and ’37, respectively.

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