Born: April 4, 1940
Died: April 15, 2017
Roger Terry was born in Danbury, Connecticut, son of Herbert Isaiah Terry (Yale ‘27s) and Harriet B. Lyon. His brother Herbert I. Terry, Jr., was a Yale graduate, class of 1958. Roger prepared for Yale at Danbury High School and Deerfield Academy.
At Yale Roger was a non-resident of Timothy Dwight, following his marriage in November 1960 to Janet Kay Clark. He was a member of St. Elmo and majored in psychology.
After graduation, Roger pursued an advanced degree in his chosen field of psychology. He earned his M.S. degree in psychology from Auburn University in 1964 and received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Missouri in 1968.
Roger was hired to teach psychology at Hanover College, Hanover, Indiana in 1968 and stayed at the college for his entire career, rising to become a fully tenured professor and serving as chairman of the Psychology Department. Roger was also a psychology consultant at Madison State Hospital in Indiana, and a prolific author of more than 60 articles in professional journals. He developed a specialty in forensic psychology and testified as an expert witness in 26 cases in the Indiana state courts. He also published “Eyewitness Identification: A Lawyers Resource for Expert Testimony” in 2008, an analysis of the use and abuse of eyewitness testimony and facial recognition.
In addition to his Hanover College teaching he was also an adjunct lecturer in psychology at Purdue University and Indiana University.
Roger was active with the Masons serving as Master of his lodge and authoring numerous articles for Masonic journals.
After his first marriage terminated, he married Dianna Clapham, an elementary school teacher in Madison, Indiana in 1973. They met on a blind date. Dianna survives him as does their daughter, Christine Facemire, her husband Steve, both of Madison, Indiana and 2 grandchildren, Amelia Revolt (husband Seth) of Evansville, Indiana, and Branson Facemire, a doctorate student in pharmacy at Butler University. Roger had a son, Roger, Jr., from his first marriage but lost contact with him in the 1980’s and his whereabouts is unknown.
Both Roger and Dianna retired in 1998 and began traveling the world. He reported in the Class Reunion Book in 2002 that they had visited Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, Bora Bora, China and taken photo safaris in Tanzania and Kenya. “Travel, I have learned,” he wrote, “is a valuable way to sweep out ignorant and prejudicial and stereotypical mental cobwebs.” In 2005 Roger and Dianna took an around the world cruise on the Queen Elizabeth II. He also developed a hobby collecting scrimshaw. During a visit to Australia he acquired a Didgeridoo and taught himself to play it, likely becoming the only such musician in southeastern Indiana.
Roger described his wide interests in life after retirement in his bio in 2002:
“Career is important, but not as much as I believed in 1962. An academic life has a lot of merit. It permits, if not demands, one to focus on restricted domain and to acquire at least one area of expertise. That’s fulfilling, but at the same time it is limiting, requiring considerable sacrifice. Since retiring, I have rediscovered the liberal arts – history and literature, drama and the arts, sciences.”
In addition to Dianna, their daughter and grandchildren, Roger is survived by his nephew Herbert I. Terry III, his niece Catherine Terry Taylor (Yale 1983) and her children Nathanial Taylor (Yale 2012), Harriet Taylor (Yale 2017), Asa Sullivan Taylor and Alden Taylor.
Roger had a history of heart problems and 2 coronary bypasses which he described in his Reunion postings but these did not interfere with his active professional career or his post-retirement travels.
Roger passed away on April 15, 2017, at the couple’s winter home in Ft. Meyers, Florida. “He was,” Dianna fondly recalls, “a wonderful man.”
Robert G. Oliver