Albert C. Horton

Best history professor ever. RIP

He was a great professor and I was ever so grateful of his teachings at SUNY Oneonta. He was loved by his students.

This letter was found in a box of old correspondence in Bert's residence:
May 20, 1969. Dr. Horton, I attended your Western Civilization today and I felt that I had to write this note. It was one of the most enjoyable classes that I have ever attended. I don't mean to belittle either Dr. M..... or Mrs. L....., since they clearly know so much more than I do. However, it was such a relief to finally get a teacher who knows what he is teaching and to be able to put it across...

bert was a very exceptional man.i met him about 10 years ago.in 1997 i fractured my neck and my hole world changed.i didn't think there was anything left for me to go on in life.bert changed that he gave me the courage to go on.he was my rock and my friend he will be missed very much. it was a privilege to have known him.he will always be in my heart.

February 15, 2006
I just heard the sad news of Bert Horton's death. Bert was a dear friend and prfoundly admired colleague. We arrived in Oneonta the same day, in time for the 1063 Fall Semeester at the State University College. We soon discovered that we had similar interests, mainly having to do with Germany yesterday and today as well as the war in which both of us participated as combat soldiers. Widely read, not only about the Thrd Reich abvout which he knew everything there is...

We became acquainted with Bert through my mother Helen, a long-time resident of the Coronado Villa as Bert was,and treasure the occasional visits and good conversations with him. Much of that related to our mutual interest in Germany, and our exchanges of New Yorker and "Der Spiegel" magazines, and sometimes philately. The Villa will not be the same to us and so many others without Bert Horton.

As a student, I spent many hours chatting and exchanging stories with Dr. Horton - stories of his experiences during WW II and how he came to be a professor of history. I will always remember the excitement on his face when I told him that I had spent 5 years in the PR of China - at the height of the Cultural Revolution. It was an intellectual curiosity that drove his questions about the patterns of life in Mao's China. Dr. Horton was not a superficially serious academic - being well read...

Bert is described as leaving no survivors but he has left behind his “children,” the countless students who passed through his classroom in his 25 years of teaching, his dear friends and the children (of which I am one) and friends of those friends, and one might imagine too, his forlorn intimates and acquaintances. His life, knowledge, and humor touched many lives. His mind alone without corporeal friend (as Emily Dickinson would have put it) lives on through his saved letters, his...

Some qualities and characteristics of Bert : an extraordinary memory, insatiable curiosity, gentleness, eccentricity of manner, wry humor, keen intelligence, uncommon modesty, integrity, and pith. I never saw him try to upstage anybody, put anybody down, be the center of attention.

We met in about l959 on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, while I was having a cup of coffee and getting the hang of poetry, and he was finishing up his doctorate at Columbia. It turned out to be a long...