NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 26 number 3 - Spring 2006

Friends of the Library--In Memoriam, Hubert Vern Park

By Anne Schnatter, Friends of the Library

Hubert Vern Park of Raleigh died on December 28, 2005, at the age of ninety-four. He was born on December 29, 1911, in Rowan County, south of Salisbury, North Carolina, the eldest child of the late John and Pearl Park.

Park was preceded in death by his wife of more than sixty-three years, Mary Alice Herman Park. He is survived by his sons, Richard B. Park and wife Jane of Lynchburg, Virginia, and Robert V. Park and wife Sheryl of Raleigh, North Carolina; by his daughters, Elizabeth Park Whitaker and her husband James of Lutz, Florida, and Alice Park Fairbrother and husband Elwood of Raleigh; and eleven grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.

Park graduated from Lenoir-Rhyne College in 1931 with a degree in mathematics. He earned a master's degree and doctorate from UNC-Chapel Hill by 1939. He joined the North Carolina State University mathematics faculty in 1934 and retired to emeritus and part-time status in 1978. He continued to teach until 1991, devoting a total of fifty-seven years to teaching and counseling thousands of NC State students. Hubert Park also became a life member of the Friends of the Library.

In 1982 he received the Award of Merit from the NCSU Alumni Association, and in 1986 he received the Watauga Medal, NC State's highest nonacademic honor given for distinguished service to the university. The citation recognized him as a professor extraordinaire, a teacher whose dedication to students, mathematics education, and the university for more than fifty years gave new meaning to the definition of outstanding teacher.

For information on memorial contributions, please call Jim Mulvey at (919) 515-3339 or send an electronic-mail message to jim_mulvey@ncsu.edu.