Priscilla Hart Hunt

Priscilla Hart Hunt

Amherst, MA - Priscilla Hart Hunt, longtime resident of Amherst, MA, who also lived part time in Jamaica Plain, died of cancer on Monday, April 1.

Born in San Francisco on April 22, 1947, she was the second child of Samuel P. Hunt II of Ohio and Caroline Crum Hunt of South Carolina. She grew up in North Haven, CT, near where her father worked as a professor of psychiatry at the Yale Medical School. She earned a B.A. magna cum laude from Barnard College, an M.A. with distinction from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in Slavic Languages and Literatures.

Her life was defined by a passion for learning, by the drive with which she pursued what she cared about, and by her adventurous, indomitable spirit.

A love for Russian literature conceived in high school led to a fruitful academic career studying medieval Russian Orthodox culture. As a professor at the University of British Columbia, Amherst College, Brown University, UMass, and other institutions of higher learning, and then as an independent scholar, she authored numerous articles, conference papers, and book reviews, and co-edited a book on holy foolishness. She spent a year studying in the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev era, then traveled many times to Russia and the former Soviet republics, developing a network of colleagues and friends in eastern Europe. Later in her career, she taught Russian literature to priests at an Orthodox seminary in upstate New York. She studied many languages, including ancient Greek and Old Slavonic, and mastered both Russian and French. She was a voracious reader of all kinds of literature, and a founding member of long-running book clubs in Amherst and Boston. She imbued her children and grandchildren with her characteristic intellectual curiosity.

She was as devoted to music as she was to books. She studied flute from a young age and became first flute in the Boston Youth Symphony, but a practice injury kept her from playing the instrument professionally. She studied piano in middle age and sang in choirs throughout her life. In her late sixties, she avidly took up the Renaissance and Baroque recorder and joined the early music scene in New England; in a few years she was proficient enough to become a member of the elite Boston Recorder Orchestra.

Her continued commitment to self-development is also evident in her decision to undertake an intensive teacher-training course in the mind-body Alexander Technique at the age of fifty-two. Through exceptional diligence and perseverance, she not only transformed her own body and habits of use, but also became a skilled teacher and valued member of the local AT community. She notably worked with UMass music students to help them avoid the kind of injury that she herself had suffered.

She was a natural athlete, who played tennis for years and enjoyed walking, hiking, and cross-country skiing her whole life. She traveled the world with her husband, and had a great appreciation for diverse cultures and their arts and histories. She always looked good and kept a beautiful house, and her personal aesthetic was both elegant and audacious. She was a deeply spiritual person but never found a home in organized religion. She loved her family and friends above all, and was profoundly loved by them.

She is survived by her husband of forty-one years, Victor Lesser; her children Rachel Lesser and Daniel Lesser, and their spouses Elana Nashelsky and Rebecca Herst; her four grandchildren Jacob, Maya, Isaac, and Eve; her brother Samuel P. Hunt III and wife Cynthia, and brother Henry Thomas Hunt and wife Miriam; and four nieces Christine, Emily, Stephanie, and Allison. She is predeceased by her sister Jennifer Hunt, sister-in-law Janet Hunt, and niece Jennifer Hunt.

Memorial guestbook at www.douglassfuneral.com