I, like countless other generations of Miamians, first met Dr. Shriver in our freshman residence hall when he presented his talk on “Miami Mysteries.” The man for whom our student center was named was very down to earth, incredibly knowledgeable about our Miami history, and truly deserving of the sobriquet “Uncle Phil.”
I shared with Dr. Shiver brotherhood in the Delta Upsilon social fraternity, and recall fondly how he frequently talked of his ties to DU that began long ago when he was a young professor of history at Kent State University.
As an undergraduate history major, I saw Dr. Shriver often; then as a graduate student in the department, I was fortunate to be his graduate assistant. I can still see myself copying his copious notes for his Ohio and Miami history classes on the big chalkboard of Kreger Hall and how he taught these heavily attended classes without the use of any notes.
On the night of his passing, I pulled from the shelf a copy of one of the many books that he had edited — “A Tour of New Connecticut in 1811, The Narrative of Henry Levitt Ellsworth.” He had given it to me and wrote the following words: “With appreciation for his helping throughout the fall semester 1988.”
Years later, when Miami Hamilton campus founder Dr. Bernie Phelps and I were working on the sesquicentennial history of Oxford’s St. Mary Catholic Church, he sent me a copy of another one of his books — “A History of Presbyterianism in Oxford, Ohio” — and again he personalized it by writing, “With friendship and fraternal brotherhood, and best wishes for a great history of Oxford’s St. Mary’s Church.” Dr. Shriver never ceased to give his former students and colleagues encouragement in our study of history.
I had the good fortune to be one of the last master’s students for whom Dr. Shriver was the adviser, and the even greater fortune of having him lead me through my master’s thesis on Wallace P. Roudebush (Miami 1911) and its subsequent publication as a book, “Spirit of the Institution — The Career and Legacy of Wallace P. Roudebush,” by the Miami University Alumni Association in 1993. Telling people I wrote a book edited by Dr. Shriver still makes me feel special.
When I was completing a teaching degree at Miami in 1994, Dr. Shriver recommended that I do my student teaching in Hamilton under former Hamilton JournalNews editor Jim Blount. That has led to a long teaching career in the Hamilton City School District.
In 2010, when I was honored as Ohio Middle School Social Studies Teacher of the Year, it was these two men to whom I owed the largest debt. Its repayment can only come in continuing to teach and write history, as I learned it from them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that “an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.” For the second half of the 20th century at Miami University, that was Dr. Shriver.
It was fitting that, in his retirement, Dr. Shriver occupied the spacious, wood-paneled Alfred H. Upham Memorial Room, located just above the equally famous Upham Arch in the historic heart of our campus. Like Shriver, Upham was a Buckeye native who, as Miami’s longest-serving president (1928-1945), led our university during a period of tremendous changes and challenges, but never forgot that he was a teacher and not a bureaucrat.
Another link to the past of the university that he so loved was the fact that Shriver could look east out his windows of Upham Hall and see Bishop Woods, named after Miami’s first president (1824-1841), the Rev. Dr. Robert Hamilton Bishop, like Shriver, a Scotsman.
Much will be written and said about the life and legacy of Philip R. Shriver but, for those of us who worked with him, studied under him, or just had the good fortune to know him, know who he really was: A husband, a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather, a great friend, and a teacher and lover of history and of the university that he led so long.
Christopher A. Maraschiello of Hamilton is chairman of the history department at Garfield Middle School in Hamilton.