Wolfson College Record 2021

Bryan’s kindness and sense of humour, his competitive approach to all games and
his enviably high scores in general knowledge, lasted throughout and brought
much laughter and pleasure to those close to him.
Sue Foden
John Troyer
Personal News
(1943–2020)
Visiting Fellow 1969, Member of Common Room 1970–2020. He wrote his own
obituary, which his daughter Jennifer sent to the Record after he died of heart failure on
11 August 2020.
John Troyer was born on 12 February 1943, the only child of Dorothy (Dew) Troyer
and Gordon Troyer. He spent his childhood in Aruba, and much of his youth in New
Mexico. He attended Swarthmore College (1961–65) and Harvard University, where
he earned his PhD in philosophy in 1970. In 1969 he was a Knox Fellow at Wolfson
College, Oxford, where he remained a Member of Common Room until his death.
In the Fall of 1969 he became a member of the Department of Philosophy at the
University of Connecticut. He remained teaching in that department for 41 years,
serving twice as acting Department Head and filling many university administrative
posts. For more than thirty years he served as the advisor for all Philosophy
majors, and was on the graduate committees of tens of graduate students. He
edited three books and published more than twenty articles.
In 1965 he married Stephanie Fantl, who became a Professor of Mathematics
at the University of Hartford, and who predeceased him in 1989. John and
Stephanie had two daughters, Jennifer and Gwyneth, who survive him, as do three
grandchildren. He is also survived by his wife Barbara, an emerita Professor of
Psychology at the University of Connecticut, whom he married in 1992.
John kept bees for forty years and had a number of other quirks, all of them
harmless.
Christopher Henry Walton
(1930–2021)
Bursar and Governing Body Fellow 1987–95, Emeritus Fellow 1995–2021
When my husband was appointed Bursar to Wolfson College in 1987, he felt
extremely fortunate as it was the ideal re-introduction to life in Britain after a career
spent in overseas development, and he immediately got on extremely well with the
President, Sir Raymond Hoffenberg. He much enjoyed his years at the College until
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college record 2021