 |
Roger C. Lewis |
A gift of nearly $150,000 from the estate of retired U.S. Air Force Col. Roger C. Lewis is helping to provide scholarships for physics students. Lewis’ estate was willed to the university and designated for a scholarship endowment created by his parents, the late Arthur B. Lewis, former dean of the College of Liberal Arts, and Alma G. Lewis.
Established in 1999, the Arthur B. Lewis and Alma G. Lewis Scholarship is given to physics scholars who have shown evidence of academic excellence, leadership ability and service.
After graduating from UM in 1957 and receiving a master’s in space physics from the Air Force Institute of Technology, Roger Lewis dedicated 30 years
of service to the Air Force, serving on assignments in the Propulsion Laboratory at Wright Patterson AFB, Weapons Laboratory at Kirkland AFB, Air Force Systems Command Headquarters at Andrews AFB, Defense Nuclear Agency and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in Washington, D.C. After retiring from the Air Force, he worked at Logicon RDA for 10 years.
Attracting excellent physics students and supporting his parents’ endowment was important to Roger Lewis, said his brother, Leighton Lewis of Hattiesburg. “Roger wanted to return a token of his appreciation for what our parents and the university meant to him.”
The College of Liberal Arts continues to benefit from the late dean’s legacy. His portrait hangs in Barnard Observatory. The oil on canvas by award-winning portrait artist and Lewis family friend Jason Bouldin of Oxford was presented to the College during a ceremony at the observatory last spring.
“My father had such an affection for the observatory,” said Lewis’ daughter, Mary Lewis Poole of Oxford. “It was the heart and soul of his life at the university.”
 |
This oil-on-canvas image of the late Arthur B. Lewis, UM alumnus and longtime professor and administrator, painted by Jason Bouldin, hangs in Lewis’ most beloved building on the Oxford campus. |
The observatory once housed the physics and astronomy program. Lewis, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the university, spent many hours in the building as a student in the 1920s and the first years of his 35-year career at UM, which included stints as a mathematics and physics professor, and professor and chair of physics and astronomy. He retired in 1971.
Lewis Hall, home to the physics and astronomy department, is named in his honor.