Obituaries

Marie Underhill Noll, recognized as one of the Foremost Benefactors of Cornell, died June 24 at her home in Ithaca after a long illness. She was 93.

Noll, whose husband, A. Robert Noll, was head of the patent department at IBM for many years, gave generously to education. In keeping with her lifelong work as a teacher, she supported excellence in teaching. Her gifts included the endowment of a scholarship fund and three professorships at Cornell: the Marie Underhill Noll Professorship in the College of Arts and Sciences, the A. Robert Noll Professorship of Law and the Marie Underhill Noll Professorship of American History, which has been held for many years by Walter LaFeber. She was appointed Presidential Councillor in 1978 and was vice-chair of the Cornell University Council from 1968 through 1970.

Her dedication to education extended beyond philanthropy. She had a long and distinguished career as a teacher and history department chair at the Hewlett-Woodmere school district on Long Island, from 1928 until her retirement in 1963. She also served on a New York State Board of Regents committee that wrote the examination in American history.

Born in Watertown, N.Y., and raised in Fort Ann, she was one of the first women from that area to attend Cornell. She graduated from Cornell with a B.A. in history in 1926 and went on to earn an MBA from Columbia University Teachers' College in 1931.

Noll lived for more than 35 years in Manhasset, N.Y., where she was active in the Cornell Club of Long Island and the American Association of University Women. After retirement, she spent winters in Boca Raton, Fla.

Funeral services were held in Manhasset, followed by burial in Port Washington, N.Y. There also will be a memorial service in Ithaca in early September.

William Rea Keast, former administrator and professor of English literature, died June 27 at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. He was 83.

Keast received his B.A. in English literature from the University of Chicago in 1936. From 1941 to 1946 he served in the U.S. Army, achieving the rank of major. After World War II, he returned to the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. in English literature in 1947. From 1951 to 1965 he taught at Cornell, where he served as professor and chair of the Department of English, dean of the college of Arts and Sciences and vice president for academic affairs. From 1965 to 1971, he was president of Wayne State University in Detroit, and from 1971 to 1972, he chaired the Commission on Academic Tenure in Higher Education in Washington, D.C. From 1972 until his retirement in 1980, he taught English literature at the University of Texas at Austin.

Keast's principal scholarly interests were 17th and 18th century English literature and literary criticism, and especially the writings of William Shakespeare and Samuel Johnson. While at the University of Chicago, he was a member of the group of literary theorists and critics, headed by Richard McKeon and Ronald S. Crane, known as "the Chicago School."

He was predeceased by his wife, Mary Hart Keast, in 1990, and he is survived by three children, Sara Hart Fisher, Stephen Calhoon Keast and Emily Wrightsman Donahue, and four grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Visiting Nurse Alliance of New Hampshire and Vermont, Mt. Support Road, Lebanon, NH 03766. A memorial service will be held at a later date.