Obituary for Walter King StoneThe Ithaca Journal, Jun 21 1949,P. 3, Cols.1-2, with photo 'Walter King Stone of The Byway, Forest Home, died in his sleep at 9:25 a.m. today, June 21, 1949, in Tompkins County Memorial Hospital where he had been a patient 2 weeks. He was 74.
Professor emeritus of fine arts at Cornell where he taught from 1920 to 1943, Stoney was widely known as a painter and. illustrator and was the story telling member of the Savage Club.
Two years ago his health failed, and he had undergone a series of blood transfusions since that time.
In accordance with his wishes and his wife's, there will be no funeral service. The body will be sent to Rochester for cremation.
Surviving are his wife, Mrs. Edith Adams Stone; a son, Alan Stone of the Bureau of Entomology, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.; a grandson, Peter; two brothers, James Stone and Charles Stone of California, and a sister, Mrs. Clara Burroughs of Rochester.
--Native of Monroe County-- He was born in Barnard, Monroe County, on Mar. 2, 1875, the son of William Talmage and Jenny Filer Stone. He was educated in the public schools of Rochester, at Rochester Me-chanies' Institute and at Pratt Institute. Brooklyn. He joined the Cornell staff 29 years ago as assistant professor of fine arts in the College of Architecture.
When the final history of Cornell is written, a glowing chapter will be dedicated to the Thursday nights at home of Professor Stone and Mrs. Stone. When they first came to Cornell, the Stones felt that too few students ever got a chance to know the faculty members as human beings.
So they instituted their famous Thursdays when any person, student or otherwise, was welcome at their home. When they finally dropped this particular evening at home, they merely spread the invitation across the week. In every season and every weather, school in or out of session, students new and old went to the Stones' home and were welcomed there.
--Many Frequented Home-- Some of the celebrated frequenters of the past have included Hugh Troy, Charley Stotz, Andy (E.B.) White, Joe Nobile, Fred Lape, Desmond Powell, and Margaret Bourke-White. One boy came regularly every week and never spoke a word. The Stones could never imagine why he came at all. Years later the boy came back to Ithaca and told them that their home meant more to him than anything else in college.
Townspeople as well as faculty and students claimed Stoney as uniquely their own. So brilliant was his reputation as a raconteur that he was in constant demand not only at local gatherings from the Savage Club to the Freshman Banquet, but at innumerable other gatherings throughout the state.
He liked people and he understood them—not people of a certain kind but farmers, small town merchants, French peasants, Brooklyn provincials, scholars, itinerant grocers, bricklayers, middleaged people, young people and children. Because he was an artist who understood them so well, Stoney could reproduce their speech and mannerisms in a way to keep listeners endlessly entertained. But always it was a kindly humor, calling for mutual enjoyment and bringing with it a fuller comprehension. He was able to communicate his enormous gusto for living.
--He Also Paints-- He told a story of his introduction at a farm dinner as an ex-blacksmith, farmer, fruit grower, a superb naturalist, professor at Cornell, and story teller without peer. Then, as if by afterthought the speaker added, "He also paints."
Since boyhood, Stone had been fascinated by the world of nature and the wild life that inhabits it. Being an artist, it was inevitable that he should make these the subjects of his art and that he should continue to draw and paint them with ever-growing skill and understanding all his life. Upon his retirement, he rejoiced in the free time ahead when he could paint from morning to night as he loved above all else to do.
Before he came to Cornell to teach, Stone had won recognition as one of the foremost nature illustrators. He drew for the old Scribner's, Harper's and Century magazines and collaborated with Walter Pritchard Eaton and other writers.
--Paintings on Exhibit--He painted decorations in the homes of Eaton, Clinton G. Fish, and his brother-in-law, Prof. Emeritus Bristow Adams, and in the Berkshire School. His paintings hang in the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester and in the Binghamton Art Gallery. He exhibited in many galleries, including the National Gallery in Washington.
Among the books he illustrated are "The Log of the Sun," 1906; "Barn Doors and Byways, 1913; "Green Trails and Upland Pastures," 1917, and "Berkshire Fields," 1920.
Professor Stone was a Unitarian. He was at one time president of the Savage Club, whose quarters at
113 E. Green St. he largely designed. He was a member of the Ben Welch Snowshoe Club, whose members never tired of the stories he told.'