Obituary, Peter Biden Way

 

 

Peter Biden Way, age 75, died peacefully after a long struggle with Parkinson’s Disease on February 22nd, 2017. Peter was born on May 8th, 1941 in New York City and was the son of Milton T. Way and Rhoda Biden Way. He was an independent scholar and held a Bachelors of Arts from Oberlin College and a doctorate from the University of Washington in Comparative Literature. After completing his MA degree in Greek and Latin at Columbia University in 1969, he worked with the Greek and Latin department at Denison University where he started an innovative interdisciplinary program in comparative studies of Western and Eastern languages, histories, and literatures. In 1974, he co-founded, with William McNaughton, the Arts and Letters in Oberlin, Ohio that organized interdisciplinary studies in European, American, and Asian languages and literatures at Brunnenberg castle in South Tyrol, Italy (in collaboration with Mary de Rachewiltz). From 1979 to 1984, he studied Classical Chinese at the University of Washington and from 1984 to 1988 he taught Greek and Latin along with European and American literature at the University of Nanjing and the University of Suzhou in China. He then moved to Paris, France where he taught English literature and language at the American School and co-directed a NEH funded film entitled This Culture of Ours: The Rise and Fall of the Free Thinker in China, which explores the role of the thinker and the artist from the time of Confucius through the Song Revolution in the 11th century. Over the past decade, he also worked with the Greek and Latin Lexica Project that seeks to transcribe, process and publish open-source digital editions of the primary lexical sources for the Greek and Latin languages. Peter was an old-fashioned renaissance man whose love for the world was expressed through his boundless curiosity. He loved deeply and inspired those around him to do so as well. He is survived by his children Thaisa, Niobe, and Lucan Way; his six grandchildren, Adrian, Natasha, Raphael, Chiara, Kamran, and Idris; his ex-wife and mother of his children, Brenda Way, and his brothers Tony and John Way. During his last few years of life, he was carefully looked after by an extraordinary group of caretakers, including Imen Hamouda, and friends in Paris. There will be a memorial service on May 20th in Paris, France and another one in Dover Plains, New York in July.

Author: Harlem Valley News