Albert I. Suskin

Albert I. Suskin (1910-1965), a native of New Bern, NC, received his AB (1931), MA (1932), and PhD degrees from UNC, the last in 1937. He taught continuously in the department (except for military service, 1942-46) from 1936 until his death, as instructor (1936-46), Assistant Professor (1946-50), Associate Professor (1950-53), Professor of Classics (1953-65) and Department Chair (1960-65). He had just been reappointed for a second five-year term as Chair at the time of his death.

Originally trained as a Roman historian, Suskin published articles on Livy and on the consular fasti of the Republic (the latter in two articles, the first with his colleague Gustavus Adolphus Harrer in 1939 and the second by himself in 1949), but he increasingly found himself drawn to Latin poetry as well, and that resulted in his publishing the Index Verborum Iuvenalis in 1951 (UNC Press).  Suskin also revised a sourcebook of Latin literature originally published in 1924 by two of his senior colleagues, George Howe and Gustavus Adolphus Harrer (Roman Literature in Translation, Harper, 1959), to which he added his own new translations of Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus and Terence’s  Adelphoe.  He similarly published a revised edition of B. L. Ullman’s Latin for Americans, Third Book (MacMillan, 1965). His undergraduate courses in Catullus and Vergil were famous and his devotion to the department unparalleled.  While in Europe during World War II, he earned many medals, including the Silver Oak Leaf Medal of the Duchy of Luxembourg. He married a former student, Lavinia Smith in 1953, by whom he had two children, Mark and Marcia.