The DeGolyer Library lost a shining light and mentor on March 18. Gerry York, 87, class of 58, Southern Methodist University sports historian, fan, volunteer, and loving husband, father, and grandfather, died of complications from a stroke.

Almost 25 years ago, Gerry and Ed Wisneski created Heritage Hall, a museum documenting SMU’s athletics history and traditions. Later, Gerry served as its curator and continued to update exhibits. Starting in 2007, he began working in the SMU Archives organizing historic sports records.

Gerry was the chief photographs wrangler for Darwin Payne’s sports history, In Honor of the Mustangs. The photos in the book illustrate and match the text to tell the story. Gerry was part of the committee who worked on the book, and he was regarded as a content expert.

For more than 10 years, Gerry worked with Owen Benatar to put together the interviews and videos for the SMU Hall of Fame induction. In his spare time, he wrote a history of Corsicana Country Club after doing extensive research at the Corsicana library.

All of this was after a career of 50 years in insurance. While he was a student at SMU, he was a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He never lost his enthusiasm for golf, for shooting hoops, for updating us on the news from his grandchildren, or for sharing SMU sports discoveries. We will miss this valuable team player.

Joan Gosnell

University Archivist

Pictured above: Gerry York, left, at a book signing for In Honor of the Mustangs.

Also pictured: Gerry with his wife, Polly, and his granddaughter Molly, at her SMU graduation.

The DeGolyer Library’s current exhibit covers several centuries of English and American poetry, with an emphasis on literary biography based upon the poets. Over 200 volumes are on display, featuring both the well-known (Shakespeare, Wordsworth) and the more obscure (Janet Little, Ann Yearsley). DeGolyer Library has a wide-ranging literary collection and we hope the current exhibit will encourage English majors and graduate students to pursue research projects with our materials. We also designed the exhibit to coincide with the release of Willard Spiegelman’s new book, Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt.

Spiegelman, Professor of English emeritus at SMU, returned to Dallas and the Library on March 23 to give a talk on his subject. Clampitt herself is well represented in the show, and much of her work embodies the retrospective approach we’ve followed. For example, her Predecessors, Et cetera: Essays (1991) is paired with Thomas Fuller’s History of the Worthies of England (1662), the first book to include a biographical notice of Shakespeare. For lovers of poetry, and lovers of biography, “Lives of the Poets” offers many worthy examples.