Professor V. Ray CARDOZIER

1923 - 2014

CARDOZIER,

Professor V. Ray

Virgus Ray Cardozier, professor emeritus of higher education administration at the University of Texas at Austin died in Austin, Texas on November 2, 2014 of complications of a stroke.

Professor Cardozier was born on April 2, 1923 and reared on a farm in north central Louisiana, the son of James C. and Lelia Megison Cardozier.

He enrolled at LSU in June 1940 where his studies were interrupted in May 1943 when his entire class of advanced ROTC cadets was called to active duty in the Army. Following graduation from the Field Artillery Officer Candidate School at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, he served in the Southwest Pacific Theater.

After the war he completed college and taught adult education in Shreveport. In 1949 he returned to LSU to complete a master's degree, then to Ohio State University where he completed the Ph.D. in 1952. Later, he completed postdoctoral studies at the University of Michigan and the University of California at Los Angeles. Following graduate school, he accepted a position in private industry in Memphis, Tennessee, where he met and married Nancy Fyfe, an artist and graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 1957 he moved to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville as associate professor in its College of Education where he remained three years, except for six months when he was on leave to direct a project for the U.S. Office of Education in Washington, DC.

In 1960 he moved to the University of Maryland, in the Washington suburbs, where he served as professor and department chairman for ten years.

In 1970 he was appointed vice president for academic affairs for the newly authorized University of Texas of the Permian Basin in Odessa. Four years later he was named president, a position he held for almost eight years. He moved to the University of Texas at Austin in 1983 to become director of the fledgling doctoral program in higher education administration, where he taught "History of Higher Education" and "International and Comparative Higher Education." After retiring, he lectured and led seminars for continuing education groups in Austin, where his sessions on international affairs attracted a considerable following.

Professor Cardozier was author or co-author of ten books, most of them about higher education but also included "Mobilization of the United States for World War II".

Once described by a reporter as a renaissance man, he called himself a generalist. He was a voracious reader, a sometime fisherman, and a gardening enthusiast. Although his reading was varied, it focused on history, especially biography, and world affairs.

He was predeceased by a sister, Mrs. Arnold R. Kilpatrick of Natchitoches, LA, and a brother, Ogleton Cardozier. He is survived by his wife Nancy Fyfe Cardozier; nephews Joel Kilpatrick of Natchitoches and Jimmy Cardozier of Houma, LA and nieces Lael Kilpatrick of Naples, Fl, and Charlotte Cardozier Moore of Montgomery, LA.



There will be a Celebration of Life to be announced at a later date.



Memorial donations may be sent to The Cardozier Fund at the LSU Press, Louisiana State University, P.O. Box 25053, Baton Rouge, LA 70894-5053.



Obituary and guestbook available online at www.wcfish.com