BUIES CREEK, North Carolina – Longtime Campbell math professor Jerry Duncan Taylor passed away in 2013, but his legacy at Campbell University continues through the installation of a sundial commemorating his career and influence on the community.
A ceremony was held near the sundial’s location in front of the Taylor-Bott Rogers Fine Arts Building on March 21, with faculty and students in attendance, as well as friends of the Taylor family.
Taylor taught at Campbell for over 46 years, and he is remembered fondly by other faculty in his department, former students and fellow colleagues. Professor and mathematics department chair Meredith Williams, Taylor’s colleague in the final years of his career, remembered his encouraging words to her when she was a beginning professor.
“I’m not sure I would have made it through my first semester without Dr. Taylor,” Williams said. “I had an extremely challenging group of students in a class who were determined to see how hard they could push the new professor. Dr. Taylor always had an encouraging word for me before I went to class.”
“You did it, you made it another day!” Taylor would always say to Williams after another difficult class, and she remembered his inspiration years later.
Jason Ezell, professor of physics, did what Taylor would have liked best — educated the afternoon crowd about time, space and the history of the sundial, adding a learning element to the occasion. The sundial was chosen for an educational purpose, and the location was chosen to remember Taylor and his his habit of jogging through that part of campus.
“We wanted something physical that we could see, celebrate, and reflect on him and the good man that he is and the way that he has touched many of the people here,” Provost Mark Hammond said. “And in discussing how to memorialize him, it took him time, and in doing so, a very inspired spouse, Louise Taylor, thought that perhaps we could memorialize Jerry through a sundial. It gives us the time to pause and reflect and think about Jerry.”
Louise Taylor, Taylor’s wife, expressed both her appreciation for the sundial in her late husband’s honor, as well as her opinion of how special he was.
“I said the moment I met him that I wanted him to marry me, and he said that would be a good idea,” she said. “I have not changed my mind. I was a lucky woman.”
Jerry Taylor, in a letter addressed to Campbell University before he retired, compared his life to the Biblical story of Jacob wrestling with God.
“Outside of the classroom, most students, faculty, and staff have been ready to help when I clogged up the copy machine, needed a lift, or needed them to reset one of those tiny exponents,” he wrote. “So many ways, I’ve been lucky. In the Genesis story, Jacob receives a blessing. Thank you for my blessings.”
— Story by Rachel Davis