By JESSE DUNSMORE & AMANDA SAOUD

Senior Reporter & Staff Intern

Art history professor John Cameron, 76, died Friday of complications from a heart attack.

Cameron taught for 43 years in the Department of Art and Art History and is called “the patriarch of the department” by colleagues who claim Cameron was sometimes even willing to make significant personal sacrifice for the betterment of the program.

Early in his career Cameron gave up a semester’s salary so the department could purchase photographic equipment.  Curator of Visual Resources Luisa Ngote said that the equipment has produced over 300 thousand photographic slides to date.

“He was the kindest of souls, always looked after each member of the department,” said Claude Baillargeon, assistant professor of Art and Art History.

“John was instrumental in guiding me; he was really a personal mentor. He took me under his wing when I came here, and has always been an inspiration,” Baillargeon said.

“He was always able to hold the department together, he helped us all to keep focused and keep on track. That is going to be the hardest to replace — aside from his humor.”

Cameron was known in the department for his sense of humor and jovial demeanor.  

“He’s the guy who helped us laugh,” said Ngote.

He didn’t fit the stereotype of the Ivy-league-educated professor he was, with multiple degrees from Princeton, the University of Paris, and Yale.

Susan Wood, professor of art history at OU, described him as “totally not pompous, which is a rarity [in the field of art].”

She recalled that as a bachelor, he dressed in wrinkled shirts, wore shoes held together with duct tape, and drove jalopies she described as “Cameronmobiles.”

“It may not look like much,” he told her, describing his car, “but I figure it won’t get stolen.”

Wood said that at one faculty party, Cameron announced, “I want you all to notice I’m wearing a shirt that’s been ironed.” It had actually just come out of a package.

Baillargeon described Cameron’s office as “organized in its own chaotic way.”

His lighthearted mannerisms seemed to make him popular with students as well—he scored 4.7 out of 5 on RateMyProfessors.com.

Wood said that Cameron had once noticed a student glancing at another student’s test on more than one occasion. Cameron sat on the cheating student’s other side, and said, “If you want to copy, don’t copy off that guy; he only got a D on the last test. Copy off her.” He directed the student to another classmate. Wood said the cheater never tried it again.

Junior Natalie Mandziuk, an art

history major and former student of Cameron, said Cameron was famous for “going off on tangents.”

“Once, while discussing with him the possibility of me going to grad school in France, he told me how he went there back in his youth and got his Master’s for a total of 25 cents. French education is government subsidized, and back in the 1950’s the only thing he had to pay for was a nickel each time he had to take an exam.”

“He was much more than a professor to his students,” Mandziuk said, “and one of the kindest and most caring people I have ever met.”

Baillargeon said that Cameron and  Schimmelman had a “model relationship.” Cameron would drop his wife off at the door to Wilson Hall each morning and pick her up each evening so she wouldn’t have to walk through the parking lot.  

To hear his co-workers tell it, the only thing he wasn’t nice to was his PC. “You could hear him north of Flint hollering obscenities at that computer,” Wood said. “It would frighten students, because they wouldn’t know he was only mean to inanimate objects.”

What people seem to remember most about Cameron is his genuinely unique attitudes, whether he was being sweet, funny, or obscene.

“We say that everyone is irreplaceable,” said Baillargeon “but it’s really true with John.”

Cameron is survived by his wife, Janice Schimmelman, also an Oakland University professor.

No public services will be held. Memorials can be made to Oakland University, Department of Art and Art History.