Born: March 12, 1940
Died: July 1, 2019

Andrew Naylor passed away on July 1, 2019, in Nashville, Tennessee. He was born in Des Moines, Iowa, son of Jerome Wilbur and Eve Elizabeth Lenz Naylor. He prepared for Yale at Southwest High School, Kansas City, Missouri.

At Yale, Andy was a resident of Jonathan Edwards College and a History Major. He was a ranking scholar and on Dean’s List. He graduated magna cum laude and then entered the philosophy doctorate program at the University of Chicago. He completed his dissertation and received his Ph.D. in 1966 and embarked on a career in philosophy. He attributed the two-semester introductory philosophy course with Yale Professor Richard Bernstein to his choice of a career in philosophy. Philosophy became a main love in his life and, as he predicted in the Banner in 1962, he devoted his professional career to teaching it.

He first taught at San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University Northridge) until he joined the faculty at Indiana University South Bend as an untenured assistant professor in the newly organized philosophy department. Andy taught, wrote and led the department for the next 32 years, He flourished in South Bend, serving as department chair for 6 years and later for another 12 years until he retired in 2003. Under his leadership the Philosophy Department grew, added students and professorships and became a leading academic center for the study of philosophy.

From 1966 through 2016, Andy published papers on the epistemology of memory and on personal identity. He continued his well-respected writings on memory even after he had retired and relocated to Tennessee. Abstracts of 14 of his papers are available online at philpapers.org. He was a member of the American Philosophical Association and The PhilPapers Foundation.

He served as president of the Indiana Philosophical Association in 1987-88. In Tennessee he frequently presented and commented upon presentations at meetings of the Tennessee Philosophical Association. He was a member of the 1975, 1983 and 1986 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminars on the theory of knowledge.

Andy was also an avid wilderness canoe tripper taking more than a dozen trips with his family in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and in the Quetico Provincial Park in Canada. He wrote a diary of his 7-day family trip in 1989 which was published in The Boundary Waters Journal, Spring 1989 issue. His wife Marilyn and sons Jerome and Doug accompanied him as they paddled numerous lakes and made multiple portages in the Boundary Waters National Park. [Ed. Note: we have the article available for you to read here.]

Andy married Marilyn Peck in December 1964 and they celebrated more than 54 years together. Marilyn survives him as do their two sons, Jerome W. Naylor and Douglas Eugene Naylor and his daughter-in-law Eve Lenz Naylor.

Andy’s former colleagues at IUSB, including Philosophy Department Chair Matthew Shockey and 3 other professors, co-wrote a eulogy after his death which was published in the annual America Philosophical Association publication. The eulogy furnished the details of Andy’s memorable career which have been incorporated into this essay.

– R. G. Oliver