Kenneth Abbott was born in Nebraska, a son of Raymond Jay Abbott 1877–1931 and Mary "Mollie" Adele Hunt 1879–1951. He had a brother Douglas Hunt 1911–1978.
Kenneth attended Harvard University 1924-28 and received a Bachelor's degree. After working for Union Pacific for a few years, he decided to return of college and in 1934 received a Ph.D from the University of Illinois.
Kenneth married Helen Oldfather 1906-1992 in 1934 in Urbana, Illinois. She was born in Germany, a daughter of William Abbott Oldfather 1880–1945 and Margaret Agnes Giboney 1877–1955. They had children William R. ?-?, Ann Margaret 1938–2022 and Douglas Oldfather 1941–2021.
The family lived in Columbus, Ohio where Kenneth was a professor of classical languages at Ohio State University for many years.
He was the President, Ohio State University Chapter, Phi Beta Kappa; president, Columbus Latin Club; vice-president, council member, Ohio Classical Association and a member of Phi Beta Kappa; Columbus Latin Club; Eta Sigma Phi; Ohio Classical Association; Classical Association of Mid-West and South, Classical League; American Philological Association; and the Faculty Club, Ohio State University.
obituary
ABBOTT— Kenneth Morgan age 82 yrs Born May 3 1906 Lincoln NE son of Raymond M Abbott and Mary-Adele Hunt Died July 21 1988 Columbus OH Received BA Degree from Harvard College 1928 Did graduate work at the University of Nebraska received PHD In 1934 from University of Illinois In 1934 he joined the Dept of Classics Ohio State University and served until his retirement in 1976 He held visiting professorships at the University of lllinios State University of Iowa and University of Waterloo Canada He held memberships in several learned societies in the fields of linguistics and classical philology and contributed in scholary pursuits He was a Howald Fellow and spent the year 1959-1960 in Rome on a Fullbright Fellowship Longtime member of First Congregational Church Columbus OH Member of Phi Beta Kappa Survived by wife Helen Abbott (Oldfather) sons and daughters-in-law William Raymond and Carmeta Clark Abbott Waterloo Ontario Douglas Oldfather and Mary Lou Dennis Abbott Helena MT daughter Ann Margaret Abbott Columbus OH 5 grandchildren Preceded in death by brother Douglas Hunt Abbott
***The Harvard Class of 1928 celebrated their 25th Anniversary in 1953 with a 1,000+ page book. Here is the life-since-graduation perspective he provided for the book:
"ALTHOUGH the subject of my autobiography is one which I approach with distaste, being accustomed to rather more rewarding subjects, and with almost no data at hand which I can recall, the more solidly established facts in the case would be somewhat as follows: I left college, somewhat battered from the masses of examinations set in the way of graduation in those days, and convinced that a career of college teaching, on which I had in my early days set my heart, would be insufferable. Called home by family difficulties, I experimented with various occupations and businesses to find one which provided some satisfaction. Newspaper reporting, contrary to the advertising, seemed, the more I tried it, to involve accumulating facts not worth knowing to be treated in such a way as to trick the subscriber into cluttering his mind with things not worth reading. Eventually I found a place in the General Freight Office of the Union Pacific Railroad. Railroad freight rates, their construction, division, and economic consequences, again contrary to the advertising, I found interesting; and I shall always retain a warm feeling for the Union Pacific, which treated me very well, and which was run at that time by men with a deep devotion to running a good railroad, and not by salesmen.
Yet, interested though I was in this particular job, it was borne on me more and more that my real interest was in the intellectual history of western man, particularly in the critical stretches of Greek and Latin cultures and more recently in the French tradition. After 1929, for reasons which some members of the Class will remember, was a poor time to come to this realization, but I got a scholarship to the University of Nebraska first of all, and then, as the most brilliant of my teachers there was leaving, I moved on to the University of Illinois to study under Professor W. A. Oldfather, one of the most distinguished of American classicists (Harvard '01). There I finished my work for the doctorate, and in 1934 .married and came to Ohio State University. With time out for travel on research projects, visiting positions and a research professorship elsewhere, I have been at Ohio State ever since, climbing the academic Mountain of Purgatory from instructorship to professorship, which is to say to obvious freedom from sin and superior wisdom. As I look back, hastily and of course tardily, on the joys and sorrows of a university life, it still seems to me to have a strong balance on the satisfactory side.
There are disadvantages, to be sure. It does not pay particularly well, a fact which is a little distressing when children get ready to go to college, and there are the students on the one hand and the administration on the other. But students can respond to treatment, and the care and cure of students, although perhaps not accomplishing any permanent effect, is an engrossing job. Students are interesting, they are all different, and the hope of making them better than their elders is so low an ambition that the hope of achieving it is by no means faint. As to administrations, they are, of course, an unsolved problem in all universities, and the solutions generally proposed are strictly forbidden by law.
Yet beyond these disadvantages a university life is stimulating, and (excluding the gobbledygook area given over to the tribal cult of defining democracy and educating for life) one spent among men with honest intellectual interests and honest intellectual problems. Fields and attitudes are in a constant state of flow, and there is not in any genuine field of knowledge (not all those practiced are in fact genuine) an achieved body of conclusion to persuade to stagnation.
As to religious, political, and social convictions, about which the questionnaire inquires, space and the occasion scarcely permit an adequate answer. I suppose I might say that, coming from a long line of atheists, I have come to believe that Christianity" is a natural development of the Greek view of the principle of reason and at present the major hope of man. So I have joined the Congregational Church and am active in its affairs. And that, coming from an even longer line of Democrats, I have become convinced that the party has taken as its prophets the kind of university liberal whom many of us regard as Grade C minus on his home grounds. The reason, I think, is the dismal state of the nation's culture, which seems especially designed to demonstrate Stevenson's maxim "Man does not live by bread alone, but mostly by catchwords." The history of recent man, which might well bear the title, From Man to Monkey, springs from the situation in the schools, which the universities labor hard, but not adequately, to remedy. There is a remedy, but it is heroic. Take control of the nation's schools out of the hands of the experts who have taken courses in how to become experts but have not come up from the ranks, and put the schools back in the hands of the teachers."
Kenneth attended Harvard University 1924-28 and received a Bachelor's degree. After working for Union Pacific for a few years, he decided to return of college and in 1934 received a Ph.D from the University of Illinois.
Kenneth married Helen Oldfather 1906-1992 in 1934 in Urbana, Illinois. She was born in Germany, a daughter of William Abbott Oldfather 1880–1945 and Margaret Agnes Giboney 1877–1955. They had children William R. ?-?, Ann Margaret 1938–2022 and Douglas Oldfather 1941–2021.
The family lived in Columbus, Ohio where Kenneth was a professor of classical languages at Ohio State University for many years.
He was the President, Ohio State University Chapter, Phi Beta Kappa; president, Columbus Latin Club; vice-president, council member, Ohio Classical Association and a member of Phi Beta Kappa; Columbus Latin Club; Eta Sigma Phi; Ohio Classical Association; Classical Association of Mid-West and South, Classical League; American Philological Association; and the Faculty Club, Ohio State University.
obituary
ABBOTT— Kenneth Morgan age 82 yrs Born May 3 1906 Lincoln NE son of Raymond M Abbott and Mary-Adele Hunt Died July 21 1988 Columbus OH Received BA Degree from Harvard College 1928 Did graduate work at the University of Nebraska received PHD In 1934 from University of Illinois In 1934 he joined the Dept of Classics Ohio State University and served until his retirement in 1976 He held visiting professorships at the University of lllinios State University of Iowa and University of Waterloo Canada He held memberships in several learned societies in the fields of linguistics and classical philology and contributed in scholary pursuits He was a Howald Fellow and spent the year 1959-1960 in Rome on a Fullbright Fellowship Longtime member of First Congregational Church Columbus OH Member of Phi Beta Kappa Survived by wife Helen Abbott (Oldfather) sons and daughters-in-law William Raymond and Carmeta Clark Abbott Waterloo Ontario Douglas Oldfather and Mary Lou Dennis Abbott Helena MT daughter Ann Margaret Abbott Columbus OH 5 grandchildren Preceded in death by brother Douglas Hunt Abbott
***The Harvard Class of 1928 celebrated their 25th Anniversary in 1953 with a 1,000+ page book. Here is the life-since-graduation perspective he provided for the book:
"ALTHOUGH the subject of my autobiography is one which I approach with distaste, being accustomed to rather more rewarding subjects, and with almost no data at hand which I can recall, the more solidly established facts in the case would be somewhat as follows: I left college, somewhat battered from the masses of examinations set in the way of graduation in those days, and convinced that a career of college teaching, on which I had in my early days set my heart, would be insufferable. Called home by family difficulties, I experimented with various occupations and businesses to find one which provided some satisfaction. Newspaper reporting, contrary to the advertising, seemed, the more I tried it, to involve accumulating facts not worth knowing to be treated in such a way as to trick the subscriber into cluttering his mind with things not worth reading. Eventually I found a place in the General Freight Office of the Union Pacific Railroad. Railroad freight rates, their construction, division, and economic consequences, again contrary to the advertising, I found interesting; and I shall always retain a warm feeling for the Union Pacific, which treated me very well, and which was run at that time by men with a deep devotion to running a good railroad, and not by salesmen.
Yet, interested though I was in this particular job, it was borne on me more and more that my real interest was in the intellectual history of western man, particularly in the critical stretches of Greek and Latin cultures and more recently in the French tradition. After 1929, for reasons which some members of the Class will remember, was a poor time to come to this realization, but I got a scholarship to the University of Nebraska first of all, and then, as the most brilliant of my teachers there was leaving, I moved on to the University of Illinois to study under Professor W. A. Oldfather, one of the most distinguished of American classicists (Harvard '01). There I finished my work for the doctorate, and in 1934 .married and came to Ohio State University. With time out for travel on research projects, visiting positions and a research professorship elsewhere, I have been at Ohio State ever since, climbing the academic Mountain of Purgatory from instructorship to professorship, which is to say to obvious freedom from sin and superior wisdom. As I look back, hastily and of course tardily, on the joys and sorrows of a university life, it still seems to me to have a strong balance on the satisfactory side.
There are disadvantages, to be sure. It does not pay particularly well, a fact which is a little distressing when children get ready to go to college, and there are the students on the one hand and the administration on the other. But students can respond to treatment, and the care and cure of students, although perhaps not accomplishing any permanent effect, is an engrossing job. Students are interesting, they are all different, and the hope of making them better than their elders is so low an ambition that the hope of achieving it is by no means faint. As to administrations, they are, of course, an unsolved problem in all universities, and the solutions generally proposed are strictly forbidden by law.
Yet beyond these disadvantages a university life is stimulating, and (excluding the gobbledygook area given over to the tribal cult of defining democracy and educating for life) one spent among men with honest intellectual interests and honest intellectual problems. Fields and attitudes are in a constant state of flow, and there is not in any genuine field of knowledge (not all those practiced are in fact genuine) an achieved body of conclusion to persuade to stagnation.
As to religious, political, and social convictions, about which the questionnaire inquires, space and the occasion scarcely permit an adequate answer. I suppose I might say that, coming from a long line of atheists, I have come to believe that Christianity" is a natural development of the Greek view of the principle of reason and at present the major hope of man. So I have joined the Congregational Church and am active in its affairs. And that, coming from an even longer line of Democrats, I have become convinced that the party has taken as its prophets the kind of university liberal whom many of us regard as Grade C minus on his home grounds. The reason, I think, is the dismal state of the nation's culture, which seems especially designed to demonstrate Stevenson's maxim "Man does not live by bread alone, but mostly by catchwords." The history of recent man, which might well bear the title, From Man to Monkey, springs from the situation in the schools, which the universities labor hard, but not adequately, to remedy. There is a remedy, but it is heroic. Take control of the nation's schools out of the hands of the experts who have taken courses in how to become experts but have not come up from the ranks, and put the schools back in the hands of the teachers."
Kenneth Abbott was born in Nebraska, a son of Raymond Jay Abbott 1877–1931 and Mary "Mollie" Adele Hunt 1879–1951. He had a brother Douglas Hunt 1911–1978.
Kenneth attended Harvard University 1924-28 and received a Bachelor's degree. After working for Union Pacific for a few years, he decided to return of college and in 1934 received a Ph.D from the University of Illinois.
Kenneth married Helen Oldfather 1906-1992 in 1934 in Urbana, Illinois. She was born in Germany, a daughter of William Abbott Oldfather 1880–1945 and Margaret Agnes Giboney 1877–1955. They had children William R. ?-?, Ann Margaret 1938–2022 and Douglas Oldfather 1941–2021.
The family lived in Columbus, Ohio where Kenneth was a professor of classical languages at Ohio State University for many years.
He was the President, Ohio State University Chapter, Phi Beta Kappa; president, Columbus Latin Club; vice-president, council member, Ohio Classical Association and a member of Phi Beta Kappa; Columbus Latin Club; Eta Sigma Phi; Ohio Classical Association; Classical Association of Mid-West and South, Classical League; American Philological Association; and the Faculty Club, Ohio State University.
obituary
ABBOTT— Kenneth Morgan age 82 yrs Born May 3 1906 Lincoln NE son of Raymond M Abbott and Mary-Adele Hunt Died July 21 1988 Columbus OH Received BA Degree from Harvard College 1928 Did graduate work at the University of Nebraska received PHD In 1934 from University of Illinois In 1934 he joined the Dept of Classics Ohio State University and served until his retirement in 1976 He held visiting professorships at the University of lllinios State University of Iowa and University of Waterloo Canada He held memberships in several learned societies in the fields of linguistics and classical philology and contributed in scholary pursuits He was a Howald Fellow and spent the year 1959-1960 in Rome on a Fullbright Fellowship Longtime member of First Congregational Church Columbus OH Member of Phi Beta Kappa Survived by wife Helen Abbott (Oldfather) sons and daughters-in-law William Raymond and Carmeta Clark Abbott Waterloo Ontario Douglas Oldfather and Mary Lou Dennis Abbott Helena MT daughter Ann Margaret Abbott Columbus OH 5 grandchildren Preceded in death by brother Douglas Hunt Abbott
***The Harvard Class of 1928 celebrated their 25th Anniversary in 1953 with a 1,000+ page book. Here is the life-since-graduation perspective he provided for the book:
"ALTHOUGH the subject of my autobiography is one which I approach with distaste, being accustomed to rather more rewarding subjects, and with almost no data at hand which I can recall, the more solidly established facts in the case would be somewhat as follows: I left college, somewhat battered from the masses of examinations set in the way of graduation in those days, and convinced that a career of college teaching, on which I had in my early days set my heart, would be insufferable. Called home by family difficulties, I experimented with various occupations and businesses to find one which provided some satisfaction. Newspaper reporting, contrary to the advertising, seemed, the more I tried it, to involve accumulating facts not worth knowing to be treated in such a way as to trick the subscriber into cluttering his mind with things not worth reading. Eventually I found a place in the General Freight Office of the Union Pacific Railroad. Railroad freight rates, their construction, division, and economic consequences, again contrary to the advertising, I found interesting; and I shall always retain a warm feeling for the Union Pacific, which treated me very well, and which was run at that time by men with a deep devotion to running a good railroad, and not by salesmen.
Yet, interested though I was in this particular job, it was borne on me more and more that my real interest was in the intellectual history of western man, particularly in the critical stretches of Greek and Latin cultures and more recently in the French tradition. After 1929, for reasons which some members of the Class will remember, was a poor time to come to this realization, but I got a scholarship to the University of Nebraska first of all, and then, as the most brilliant of my teachers there was leaving, I moved on to the University of Illinois to study under Professor W. A. Oldfather, one of the most distinguished of American classicists (Harvard '01). There I finished my work for the doctorate, and in 1934 .married and came to Ohio State University. With time out for travel on research projects, visiting positions and a research professorship elsewhere, I have been at Ohio State ever since, climbing the academic Mountain of Purgatory from instructorship to professorship, which is to say to obvious freedom from sin and superior wisdom. As I look back, hastily and of course tardily, on the joys and sorrows of a university life, it still seems to me to have a strong balance on the satisfactory side.
There are disadvantages, to be sure. It does not pay particularly well, a fact which is a little distressing when children get ready to go to college, and there are the students on the one hand and the administration on the other. But students can respond to treatment, and the care and cure of students, although perhaps not accomplishing any permanent effect, is an engrossing job. Students are interesting, they are all different, and the hope of making them better than their elders is so low an ambition that the hope of achieving it is by no means faint. As to administrations, they are, of course, an unsolved problem in all universities, and the solutions generally proposed are strictly forbidden by law.
Yet beyond these disadvantages a university life is stimulating, and (excluding the gobbledygook area given over to the tribal cult of defining democracy and educating for life) one spent among men with honest intellectual interests and honest intellectual problems. Fields and attitudes are in a constant state of flow, and there is not in any genuine field of knowledge (not all those practiced are in fact genuine) an achieved body of conclusion to persuade to stagnation.
As to religious, political, and social convictions, about which the questionnaire inquires, space and the occasion scarcely permit an adequate answer. I suppose I might say that, coming from a long line of atheists, I have come to believe that Christianity" is a natural development of the Greek view of the principle of reason and at present the major hope of man. So I have joined the Congregational Church and am active in its affairs. And that, coming from an even longer line of Democrats, I have become convinced that the party has taken as its prophets the kind of university liberal whom many of us regard as Grade C minus on his home grounds. The reason, I think, is the dismal state of the nation's culture, which seems especially designed to demonstrate Stevenson's maxim "Man does not live by bread alone, but mostly by catchwords." The history of recent man, which might well bear the title, From Man to Monkey, springs from the situation in the schools, which the universities labor hard, but not adequately, to remedy. There is a remedy, but it is heroic. Take control of the nation's schools out of the hands of the experts who have taken courses in how to become experts but have not come up from the ranks, and put the schools back in the hands of the teachers."
Kenneth attended Harvard University 1924-28 and received a Bachelor's degree. After working for Union Pacific for a few years, he decided to return of college and in 1934 received a Ph.D from the University of Illinois.
Kenneth married Helen Oldfather 1906-1992 in 1934 in Urbana, Illinois. She was born in Germany, a daughter of William Abbott Oldfather 1880–1945 and Margaret Agnes Giboney 1877–1955. They had children William R. ?-?, Ann Margaret 1938–2022 and Douglas Oldfather 1941–2021.
The family lived in Columbus, Ohio where Kenneth was a professor of classical languages at Ohio State University for many years.
He was the President, Ohio State University Chapter, Phi Beta Kappa; president, Columbus Latin Club; vice-president, council member, Ohio Classical Association and a member of Phi Beta Kappa; Columbus Latin Club; Eta Sigma Phi; Ohio Classical Association; Classical Association of Mid-West and South, Classical League; American Philological Association; and the Faculty Club, Ohio State University.
obituary
ABBOTT— Kenneth Morgan age 82 yrs Born May 3 1906 Lincoln NE son of Raymond M Abbott and Mary-Adele Hunt Died July 21 1988 Columbus OH Received BA Degree from Harvard College 1928 Did graduate work at the University of Nebraska received PHD In 1934 from University of Illinois In 1934 he joined the Dept of Classics Ohio State University and served until his retirement in 1976 He held visiting professorships at the University of lllinios State University of Iowa and University of Waterloo Canada He held memberships in several learned societies in the fields of linguistics and classical philology and contributed in scholary pursuits He was a Howald Fellow and spent the year 1959-1960 in Rome on a Fullbright Fellowship Longtime member of First Congregational Church Columbus OH Member of Phi Beta Kappa Survived by wife Helen Abbott (Oldfather) sons and daughters-in-law William Raymond and Carmeta Clark Abbott Waterloo Ontario Douglas Oldfather and Mary Lou Dennis Abbott Helena MT daughter Ann Margaret Abbott Columbus OH 5 grandchildren Preceded in death by brother Douglas Hunt Abbott
***The Harvard Class of 1928 celebrated their 25th Anniversary in 1953 with a 1,000+ page book. Here is the life-since-graduation perspective he provided for the book:
"ALTHOUGH the subject of my autobiography is one which I approach with distaste, being accustomed to rather more rewarding subjects, and with almost no data at hand which I can recall, the more solidly established facts in the case would be somewhat as follows: I left college, somewhat battered from the masses of examinations set in the way of graduation in those days, and convinced that a career of college teaching, on which I had in my early days set my heart, would be insufferable. Called home by family difficulties, I experimented with various occupations and businesses to find one which provided some satisfaction. Newspaper reporting, contrary to the advertising, seemed, the more I tried it, to involve accumulating facts not worth knowing to be treated in such a way as to trick the subscriber into cluttering his mind with things not worth reading. Eventually I found a place in the General Freight Office of the Union Pacific Railroad. Railroad freight rates, their construction, division, and economic consequences, again contrary to the advertising, I found interesting; and I shall always retain a warm feeling for the Union Pacific, which treated me very well, and which was run at that time by men with a deep devotion to running a good railroad, and not by salesmen.
Yet, interested though I was in this particular job, it was borne on me more and more that my real interest was in the intellectual history of western man, particularly in the critical stretches of Greek and Latin cultures and more recently in the French tradition. After 1929, for reasons which some members of the Class will remember, was a poor time to come to this realization, but I got a scholarship to the University of Nebraska first of all, and then, as the most brilliant of my teachers there was leaving, I moved on to the University of Illinois to study under Professor W. A. Oldfather, one of the most distinguished of American classicists (Harvard '01). There I finished my work for the doctorate, and in 1934 .married and came to Ohio State University. With time out for travel on research projects, visiting positions and a research professorship elsewhere, I have been at Ohio State ever since, climbing the academic Mountain of Purgatory from instructorship to professorship, which is to say to obvious freedom from sin and superior wisdom. As I look back, hastily and of course tardily, on the joys and sorrows of a university life, it still seems to me to have a strong balance on the satisfactory side.
There are disadvantages, to be sure. It does not pay particularly well, a fact which is a little distressing when children get ready to go to college, and there are the students on the one hand and the administration on the other. But students can respond to treatment, and the care and cure of students, although perhaps not accomplishing any permanent effect, is an engrossing job. Students are interesting, they are all different, and the hope of making them better than their elders is so low an ambition that the hope of achieving it is by no means faint. As to administrations, they are, of course, an unsolved problem in all universities, and the solutions generally proposed are strictly forbidden by law.
Yet beyond these disadvantages a university life is stimulating, and (excluding the gobbledygook area given over to the tribal cult of defining democracy and educating for life) one spent among men with honest intellectual interests and honest intellectual problems. Fields and attitudes are in a constant state of flow, and there is not in any genuine field of knowledge (not all those practiced are in fact genuine) an achieved body of conclusion to persuade to stagnation.
As to religious, political, and social convictions, about which the questionnaire inquires, space and the occasion scarcely permit an adequate answer. I suppose I might say that, coming from a long line of atheists, I have come to believe that Christianity" is a natural development of the Greek view of the principle of reason and at present the major hope of man. So I have joined the Congregational Church and am active in its affairs. And that, coming from an even longer line of Democrats, I have become convinced that the party has taken as its prophets the kind of university liberal whom many of us regard as Grade C minus on his home grounds. The reason, I think, is the dismal state of the nation's culture, which seems especially designed to demonstrate Stevenson's maxim "Man does not live by bread alone, but mostly by catchwords." The history of recent man, which might well bear the title, From Man to Monkey, springs from the situation in the schools, which the universities labor hard, but not adequately, to remedy. There is a remedy, but it is heroic. Take control of the nation's schools out of the hands of the experts who have taken courses in how to become experts but have not come up from the ranks, and put the schools back in the hands of the teachers."
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