Monday, January 22, 2024
News of Rev. Dr. Paul Shore's passing has just reached me. I was his colleague at Saint Louis University for five years in the early 00s. As an art historian of Central Europe, I had a great deal of scholarly overlap with him and I recall many long lunches in St Louis in which we bantied about plans and ideas of all kinds. We kept in touch after I left to join another institution, and we were able to see each other in Vienna several times in the following years. We lost touch once he moved to Canada, but I still followed him from afar, checking out his academic webpages and trying to keep up with his lengthy publication output.
Paul was a very, very rare human being. At once frightfully intelligent, indeed utterly devoted in every way to the life of the mind, but somehow at the same time also the fun guy next door whom you'd love shoot the breeze with over sandwiches. His sense of humor was wonderful and I smile even now thinking about how funny he could be. His reach among Central European scholars was incredible, respected seemingly everywhere and constantly giving lectures at one educational institution after another in multiple lands. I saw that an issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies will be dedicated to him, which is as fitting an honor as I can imagine for such a learned, likeable, and wonderful human being.
~ Michael Yonan, Professor of Art History, UC Davis
