Memorial service for UF historian Sam Proctor Oct. 16

October 11, 2005

WHAT: A memorial service for Samuel Proctor, University of Florida historian and professor emeritus of history, will be held this weekend. It is open to the public.

WHEN: 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 16

WHERE: Congregation B’nai Israel, 3830 NW 16th Blvd. in Gainesville

BACKGROUND: Proctor died at his Gainesville home after a long illness on July 10, 2005. He was 86.

Born and raised in Jacksonville, Proctor came to UF as a freshman in 1937. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in history in 1941, he earned a master’s degree in history in 1942 in just two semesters by writing a 560-page thesis on Florida Gov. Napoleon Bonaparte Broward. Proctor then was drafted into the Army during World War II and served at Camp Blanding, near Starke, giving illiterate recruits a basic education in reading and arithmetic.

When he was discharged from the service in 1946, he was offered scholarships to pursue an international law degree at Yale University and The Ohio State University. But Proctor was persuaded to come back and teach at UF by the chairman of the freshman social sciences program, William Carleton. Then-UF President J. Hillis Miller named Proctor the university’s first historian and archivist and commissioned him to write a book on the history of UF in honor of the university’s 100th anniversary in 1953. Proctor submitted the book as a dissertation and received a doctorate from UF in 1958.

In 1967, Proctor established the Oral History Program in UF’s department of history, with the purpose of preserving eyewitness accounts of the economic, social, political, religious and intellectual life of Florida and the South. The collection, to date, holds nearly 4,000 interviews and 350,000 pages of transcribed material, making it the largest oral history archive in the South and one of the major collections nationwide. Proctor retired in June 1996 but continued to serve as the official UF historian and as director emeritus of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, which was renamed in his honor. He regularly conducted oral history interviews for the program. In July 2004, the university presented him with an honorary doctorate of public service degree in recognition of his lifelong contributions to the university community.

Proctor is survived by his wife of 56 years, Bessie; two sons, Mark of Pensacola and Alan of Atlanta, both of whom are UF alumni; two daughters-in-law; two brothers, George and Sol, both of Jacksonville; two granddaughters; and numerous nieces, nephews and cousins.

CONTACT: For more information, please call Allyson Beutke or Buffy Lockette in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ News and Publications Office at (352) 846-2032 or e-mail editor@clas.ufl.edu.