LSA 55th
Verlon Lloyd Stone
March 18, 1944 - May 30, 2023
Verlon Lloyd Stone was born in Viola Township in Audubon, Iowa, on March 18, 1944, to Melva and Sievert Stone. He was the oldest of five boys. On August 22, 1965, he married his high school sweetheart, Ruth Marie (Spehr) Stone, while they were both pursuing bachelor’s degrees in education at State College of Iowa (now University of Northern Iowa).
In 1968, they moved to New York City, where he taught 4th and 5th grade in Harlem and, on the weekends, took the students on field trips to offer experiences outside the neighborhood. Verlon got on the plane “kicking and screaming” in 1970 to go to Liberia for the first time, because Ruth was doing fieldwork for her master’s degree, a trip that would transform the trajectory of his life and begin a love for international travel. In 1972, they moved to Bloomington, Indiana, where Ruth began her doctoral work at Indiana University. After a year, Verlon began Ph.D. in Instruction Systems Technology at IU. Verlon and Ruth conducted their dissertation research in Liberia in 1975-1976. On December 22, 1976, their daughter Angela was born, but not without many health challenges in the first few years, including a lot of time spent at Riley Hospital in Indianapolis.
He graduated in December 1979 with his Ph.D. and started his first job in IST for a map-making company in Chicago. He worked in Saudi Arabia from 1982-1986 on health education materials for Saudi Aramco, and the family moved there, while Ruth continued to share time in Bloomington where she was a professor at Indiana University in the Folklore and Ethnomusicology department. In 1986, Verlon started a religious publishing business, Meyer Stone Publishing, with two friends from college. Verlon was able to return to Saudi Arabia from 1990-2001 to work on executive presentations. In 1989, Verlon was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but after chemotherapy, he remained in remission for the rest of his life.
Verlon retired in December 2001 and came back to Indiana to pursue his passion, starting the Liberian Collections Project, an archive to preserve the history of Liberia through historical documents, the writings, and recordings of former government officials, cultural leaders, and many other Liberian people. He worked with LCP until the end of his life, transitioning it to be an archive within the IU libraries where he hoped it would continue beyond his life.
Verlon loved talking to people, learning their stories and sharing his own life story, which included everything from growing up on a farm to parasailing and scuba diving in his 70s. He worked until the day he died ensuring that the passion he had developed for Liberia and its people lived on.
He passed away at home in Bloomington, Indiana, unexpectedly on May 30, 2023. Verlon is survived by: his wife, Ruth, IU Professor Emerita, daughter Angela Stone-MacDonald, and her husband Keith MacDonald; his brothers Lyle Stone, Gary Stone, Dale Stone, and Roger Stone and their families, as well as in-laws Paul Spehr and Jeanette Childress and their families.
A funeral service will be held at Trinity Episcopal Church in Bloomington, Indiana on July 1 at 11:00 am. The service will also be streamed at https://youtube.com/live/ox37Fo_1F9E?feature=share
Dr. Yekutiel Gershoni
The Liberian Studies Association announces with deep sadness the passing of Yekutiel Gershoni, Professor Emeritus, Department of Middle Eastern and African History, Tel Aviv University and former President of the Liberian Studies Association (2001-02), reviewer on the editorial advisory board of the Liberian Studies Journal and the LSA conference proposal committee and was until his death a member of the LSA Board of Elders, and an active attendee and presenter at LSA conferences, including the 2021 LSA Conference.
Dr. Gershoni served as head of the department for Middle Eastern and African studies at Tel Aviv University, 2000 – 2004 and as assistant researcher and lecturer at Stanford University, Boston University and Indiana University. An Israeli historian and a former paralympic champion, Professor Gershoni earned two degrees with honor and completed his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Professor Gershoni authored and co-authored numerous works on Liberia and the African continent including Black Colonialism: The Americo-Liberian Scramble for the Hinterland, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado; and the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, Hebrew University, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, 1985; Africans on African-Americans: The Creation and Uses of an African-American Myth, New York and London: New York University Press and Macmillan, 1997; and, The Emergence of the New African States, Unit 1: Introduction to the History of Africa, Tel Aviv: The Open University of Israel, 2003 (in Hebrew), co-authored with Nehemia Levtzion. He was the author of many articles published in the Liberian Studies Journal.
Transitions
At LSA 49th conference
Dr. Amos Claudius Sawyer
The Liberian Studies Association announces with deep regret the passing of Dr. Amos Claudius Sawyer. (15 June 1945 – 16 February 2022), Liberian politician and academic who served as president of Liberia from 22 November 1990 to 7 March 1994. Dr. Sawyer worked as an academic an activist and politician. After the 1980 coup d'état, Sawyer returned to academia for a time, taking a position as a professor of political science at the University of Liberia. In December 1980, he was appointed Dean of the College of Social Sciences and acting director of the University.
He was a founding member of the Movement for Justice in Africa (MOJA) and in 1983 founded the Liberian People's Party. In the period after the abduction (and eventual murder) of president Samuel Doe, from 9 September 1990 until 22 November 1990, principal mutineer Prince Johnson and co-conspirator Charles Taylor both made claims on the presidency. In late August an emergency conference was held in The Gambia by a delegation of 35 Liberians representing seven political parties and eleven interest groups. They voted Sawyer as interim president and Bishop Roland Diggs as vice-president, to establish a government.[6]
In 1992, Sawyer wrote The Emergence of Autocracy in Liberia: Tragedy and Challenge, in this book, he depicts how dictatorial control rose up out of a custom of patrimonial power, with the privileges of administration tirelessly brought together and amassed in the possession of progressive presidents. This example of absolutism, which was not in itself oppressive, finished in the military tyranny.[7][8]
In 1994, Sawyer was forced to step down as a part of the peace process, and subsequently the role of official leader of Liberia was held not by the president, but by the Chairmen of the Council of State. Fighting sparked again in 1996, and continued during Charles Taylor's presidency from 1997 to 2003. Dr. Sawyer returned to the US for a period, invited to serve as Associate Director and Research Scholar, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. He was Chairman of the Governance Reform Commission in Liberia, which has recently become the Governance Commission. His book, Beyond Plunder: Toward Democratic Governance in Liberia (2005), explored the development of multi-party democracy in the country. (Wiki)
Dr. Sawyer was a member and a strong supporter of the Liberian Studies Association and served as its keynote speaker at its 49th conference in 2017. https://frontpageafricaonline.com/diaspora/dr-sawyer-ponders-policy-questions-at-liberian-studies-association-conference/
Dr. Sawyer died at the John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, on 16 February 2022, at the age of 76.
Dr. Emmet A. Dennis
Professor Dr. Emmet A. Dennis passed away on the afternoon of Sunday, March 6, 2022 at Englewood Hospital, New Jersey, USA at 2:44pm.
A distinguished scientist and academic, Dr. Dennis served as President of the University of Liberia, Vice President of Rutgers University (the State University of New Jersey), Dean of Rutgers College, Chair of the Board of Trustees of Tubman University among other professional assignments. He was also a member of the inaugural Board of Directors of the National Public Health Institute of Liberia.
Dr. Dennis was the Liberian who led the establishment of the Liberia Biomedical Research Institute in Charlesville, Margibi County
News
The Coming Election and the Political State of Fugue
Dr. Danielle Taana Smith is Director of the Renée Crown University Honors Program and Professor of African American Studies at Syracuse University.
Friends of Liberia
Our vision is that Friends of Liberia be an effective organization for helping Liberia in its quest to be a peaceful and just country in which every Liberian has opportunities for quality education and employment, and access to adequate health care.
The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir
In capturing both the hazy magic and the stark realities of what is becoming an increasingly pervasive experience, Moore shines a light on the great political and personal forces that continue to affect many migrants around the world, and calls us all to acknowledge the tenacious power of love and family.
LSA News
Dr. D. Elwood Dunn
Interview
The prominent Liberian scholar, D. Elwood Dunn, has a new book out this month. Dr. Dunn’s new History of the Episcopal Church of Liberia Since 1980: A Sequel comes nearly two decades after the release of his first history of the church, covering 1821-1980. It is also his second book since his retirement in 2012 from Sewanee: The University of the South, where he had taught since 1981. The first post-retirement publication was an African Homestead Legacy Publishers Occasional Paper, Liberia and Independent Africa, 1940s to 2012, A Brief Political Profile
https://bushchicken.com/episcopal-layman-academic-doyen-a-conversation-with-dr-d-elwood-dunn-on-his-latest-work/
Dr. Jane Martin
In memoriam
Dr. Jane J. Martin of Clark’s Summit, Pa., died peacefully April 14 at the Jewish Home of Eastern Pennsylvania in Scranton, Pa., after a long illness.
Dr. Martin spent much of her life working in various capacities with Africans and Americans for the advancement of Africans. Her first African experience was in Liberia in 1961, when she worked with Liberian teachers and the Ministry of Education as a member of Operation Crossroads Africa.
https://www.liberianobserver.com/news/dr-jane-martin-a-friend-of-liberia-dies/
Publication
Liberty Brought Us Here: The True Story of American Slaves Who Migrated to Liberia
Liberty Brought Us Here” is the incredible true story of Tolbert Major, a Kentucky slave and single father, who was offered a chance for freedom and a new life in Liberia, Africa.