Gresham M. "Grex" Sykes

Gresham M. Sykes

Gresham M. Sykes (Grex) was born in Plainfield, N.J. on May 26, 1922, and he died on October 29, 2010 after a long struggle with Alzheimer's disease. He prepared for college at Brooks Academy, and entered Princeton University in 1940. After Pearl Harbor he enlisted in the U.S. Army, entered Officers Training School and graduated as a second lieutenant. In 1943 his company was sent to England and then to France after D-Day. The company moved to Belgium and crossed the Rhine into Germany. During his two years in Europe, Grex rose to the rank of Captain and after V-E Day, returned to the States to prepare for war in the Pacific. When V-J Day followed the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Grex received his discharge from the Army in 1945.

After a brief holiday in Mexico, he returned to the States and in 1946 married Carla Adelt in New York. In the fall of that year he returned to college, going first to Hofstra in New York, then to the Mexico City College in Mexico, and in 1948 back to Princeton. He received his B.A. from Princeton, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1950, and entered the graduate program in sociology at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL first as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and, in his second year, as a Northwestern University fellow. He received his Ph.D. in 1952, and returned to Princeton as an instructor.

At Princeton he became a Bicentennial Preceptor and published his first two books, Crime and Society and the Society of Captives, which is still a classic in criminology and is the most cited book in the field, having gone through several editions, the most recent in 2007. In 1958-59 he took a sabbatical year in Mexico and studied art at the Instituto de Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

In 1959 he joined the sociology faculty at Northwestern University and subsequently taught at Dartmouth College, where he chaired the department. In 1963 he became the first Executive Officer of the American Sociological Association in Washington, D.C.

In 1965, Grex returned to teaching and research and became the director of the Administration of Justice Program at the University of Denver, where he remained until 1972, continuing to publish in his field and also serving on review boards for the National Institutes of Health, and editorial boards of professional journals.

Among his major publications are Social Problems, The Future of Crime, and a textbook, Criminology, as well as articles in professional and popular journals and the Encyclopedia Britannica. Grex joined the faculty of the University of Virginia in 1973 as professor of sociology, serving as chairman of the department for several years. He retired as professor emeritus in 1987.

Throughout his academic career, Grex continued to study art and to paint. In Charlottesville he was a renting member of the McGuffey Art Association until 2003, when he moved his studio to his home and became an associate member. His work has been shown locally and in galleries in New Hampshire; Denver, CO; Washington D.C. and Richmond, VA. His last one-man show, a retrospective of his paintings from the 1980s until 2009, was held in the gallery at Woodbery Forest School during September and October of 2010. His work can be found in private collections throughout the world. For several years the U.S. State Department's "Arts in Embassies" program displayed his paintings in several countries abroad.

Grex is survived by his wife, Carla Sykes, his beloved great nephew, Peter Jones of Charlottesville; his beloved niece and nephew, Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Jones of Timonium, MD; and great nieces and nephews Mr. and Mrs. Neil Williams and their children of Cockeysville, MD; and Dr. and Mrs. Michael Rozengarten and their children of Richboro, PA. It was his wish that there be no memorial service.


This obituary was originally published in the Daily Progress.