Clifford Charles Ashby

Clifford Charles Ashby LUBBOCK-Dr. Clifford Charles Ashby, aged 89, died Thursday, May 28, 2015. A 52 year resident of Lubbock, he passed away with his family by his side, following a sudden illness. Cliff was born June 11, 1925, to parents Cliff Ashby and Ruth (Gravenhorst) Ashby in Effingham, IL. As a child of the Depression, he swept the shop floors of John Boos & Co, the butcher block manufacturer co-founded by his great-grandfather in 1892. As a teenager he became a proficient ham radio enthusiast. This hobby proved useful during WWII, when he served two years in the South Pacific sailing aboard Liberty ships as a radio officer in the Merchant Marines. After the war, he studied at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. There he became interested in theatre, where his experience with electricity and building skills were highly valued. To earn a theatre degree, Cliff transferred to the University of Iowa. Here he met his future wife, Sylvia Girsh, also a theatre student. They were married in Los Angeles in 1950. In 1953 he earned a Masters of Arts in Theatre, while working as the Technical Director at the University of Hawaii. After receiving his PhD. in Theatre History from Stanford University in 1963, he moved his family to Lubbock and began a teaching career at Texas Tech. He made his directorial debut at the old Cracker Box theatre that fall with Firebugs; Texas Tech's first racially integrated production. The following spring he designed the set and lighting for Romeo and Juliet, the premiere performance in Tech's new theatre building. Over the years, Cliff directed numerous outstanding productions including Tartuffe, The Haunted House, Country Wife, The Private Life of the Master Race, Quilters, Oklahoma!, and Buried Child. He also designed sets and lighting for multiple productions, among them The Lower Depths, Tobacco Road, The Tempest, and Mister Roberts. In 1976 he revived the famous Harley Sadler Tent Show as a Bicentennial event, with many former tent show professionals participating in the project. His book, Trouping Through Texas: Harley Sadler and his Tent Show (1982) grew out of this research. A later book, Classical Greek Theatre: New Views of an Old Subject (1999) emerged from his extensive travels throughout the Mediterranean studying ancient Greek theatre structures. After retiring in 2001, he was awarded Texas Tech's highest faculty honor: the Chancellor's Award of Excellence. As Professor Emeritus, he continued his research and writing, submitting his last article for scholarly publication this spring. Cliff enjoyed the outdoors and traveling. After stumbling upon Alcova Lake in Wyoming during the move from California, he spent the next few summers building a log cabin there with his young son. This cabin would later become one of the loves of his life, which he enjoyed sharing with friends and family. He also enjoyed river canoeing and made numerous white-water runs of the Rio Grande in Big Bend. In 1989 he completed a 1,100 mile, single-canoe run of the Yukon River, from Canada through Alaska, to the Arctic Circle with his longtime friend Marvin McLarty. He and his wife continued to travel around the world; most recently spending a week in San Francisco. Despite being legally blind for the past decade, he was a familiar figure in the Tech Terrace neighborhood, making the daily rounds walking his dogs. He also kept his seat in The Chaucer Society, one of the oldest poker games in West Texas. Survivors include his wife, Sylvia; son, Jonathan; daughter, Alison Woodson; granddaughter, Kate Woodson; and sister, Tamara Carter. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be sent to the Clifford Ashby Scholarship Fund at Texas Tech or the Texas South Plains Honor Flight. Cliff was a proud member of the Honor Flight's trip to Washington, D.C. in October 2014. A memorial service is planned for a later date at the Unitarian Universalist Church where he was a long time member.