Clarence Blair

Nashville - Clarence "Clancy" Bissell Blair, Jr., groundbreaking professor of child development at New York University, died December 19, 2024 in Nashville, TN. He was 63. The author of over 200 scientific articles, Blair was one of the most influential developmental psychologists of his generation. His research fundamentally changed how scientists understand the ways that children are shaped by family, neighborhood, and schools; Professor Blair has had a lasting effect on both scientific research and public policy.

Clancy was born December 27, 1960, in Birmingham, Alabama. He earned a BA from McGill University in 1983, and returned home to Birmingham to earn MA, MPH, and PhD degrees from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

From 1998 to 2022, Clancy was a professor of developmental psychology, first at Penn State University, and then at New York University. He was known as a brilliant, generous scholar and loving husband and father. With friends, colleagues and family, Blair shared his brilliant wit, his seemingly limitless embrace of life and his confidence in the world's goodness. He wore Converse high-tops and an irrepressible smile. His students remember him as kind and supportive, a mentor as excited by their ideas as his own.

Shortly after moving to Nashville in 2021 with his wife, Cybele, Clancy was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and primary progressive aphasia. He retired from NYU in 2022. Clancy continued to give back to his community in vibrant, creative ways including through advocacy for people living with dementia, songwriting, ceramics, and volunteering at Nashville's Room in the Inn until a few weeks before he died.

Clancy is survived by his wife C. Cybele Raver and stepdaughter Natalie Raver-Goldsby; his children Dr. Zelda Blair, Sheila Ann Blair and Evan Blair, and their mother Colleen Pike Blair; his parents Clarence and Sheila Blair; his siblings Duncan (Marie) Blair, Betsy (Steve) McGuire, and Tim (Barbara) Blair, as well as four cousins and thirteen nieces, nephews and grand-nephews. Thank you to Valene Reese, Abe's Garden staff and Alive Hospice staff for the compassionate care and support that they provided to Clancy, Cybele and their family in the last months of his life.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorial gifts be made to the Clancy Blair, Ph.D. Endowed Scholarship in Developmental Psychology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Gifts can be mailed to UAB Gift Records, AB 1230, 1720 2nd Avenue South Birmingham, AL 35294-0112 or online at go.uab.edu/clancyblair.