After a long bout with cancer and other medical ailments, former professor and medieval Europe expert Charles T. Wood died Wednesday at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center at age 70. After joining the Dartmouth faculty in 1964, Wood served as the Daniel Webster Professor of History, the chair of the history department and the comparative literature program. He was also a leading voice for institutional changes at the College.
College President James Wright, Wood's colleague for many years in the history department, remembered him fondly.
"As an exceptional teacher and an internationally recognized historian, Charlie Wood served the College in so many ways and made Dartmouth a stronger place," Wright said. "As colleague, as teacher, as mentor, as friend, as a good and generous man, he touched many of us over many years. I am in his debt, and I will miss him."
Fellow history professor Leo Spitzer agreed on the way Wood influenced his peers in the department.
"He was an incredibly generous colleague in terms of his willingness to read manuscripts and comment on them in detail. He was a very clear thinker and a beautiful writer," Spitzer said. "He helped me a great deal. I found him to be a very, very wonderful colleague in that sense."
At Dartmouth, Wood was one of the creators of the first-year humanities sequence. He also chaired numerous committees whose recommendations led to important changes at the College, including coeducation, the instatement of the D-plan, first-year seminars and the Presidential Scholars program.
Academically, Wood specialized in the Middle Ages, particularly in the histories of England, France and the Catholic Church in the 12th through 15th centuries. He authored and edited five books and many scholarly articles, reviews and translations. For many years, Wood also served as a reviewer for the History Book Club.
Wood received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986 for a study on King Arthur and the destiny of England in the 12th through 16th centuries.
"He was a very well recognized scholar in his field and a first rate teacher -- somebody we valued a tremendous amount in the department," Spitzer said.
As a fellow and former treasurer of the Medieval Academy of America, Wood was instrumental in establishing its present endowment. The academy will honor Wood's lifetime achievement as a teacher in April, when he will be posthumously awarded its Centers and Regional Associations Award for Excellence in Teaching Medieval Studies.
Wood was also active in the local community, chairing the Board of School Directors of the Dresden Independent School District in Norwich, Vt., and Hanover, N.H., and serving as vice president of the New Hampshire School Boards Association and a member of the New Hampshire Council for the Humanities. Wood was also the volunteer coach of the Hanover swim team and a timer and referee for Dartmouth swim meets. During Winter Carnival festivities, he would also serve as master of ceremonies for the Dartmouth Skating Club's shows.
Wood was born in 1933 in St. Paul, Minn., where he met his wife Susan Danielson as a student at St. Paul Academy. He graduated from Harvard University magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1955. After working briefly as an investment banker in his father's firm, Wood returned to Harvard, where he received his master's and Ph.D. degrees in history. He came to Dartmouth in 1964 after teaching at Harvard for three years.
Wood is survived by his wife Susan, four children, a sister, a brother and five grandchildren. Memorial services are scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 28 at 2 p.m. in Rollins Chapel.
