The Napora Fund for Biological Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO) has been established with a $255,000 bequest from the late Theodore A. “Ted” Napora, professor emeritus. A South Kingstown resident, Napora died on Feb. 9, 2014 at age 86. The University recently received his bequest.

His gift will support research and educational activities of graduate students pursuing biological oceanography, according to GSO Dean Bruce Corliss.

Corliss earned his Ph.D. from GSO in the 1970s when Napora was assistant dean for students. He recalled the closeness Napora enjoyed with his students and the significant impact he made on their personal and professional lives and on GSO.

“He was instrumental in laying the foundation for a program that has existed the last 50 years,” he said. “The graduate program has been one of the most prolific in the country and he played a significant role in developing it. His gift will serve as a tribute to his life’s work.”

Arthur Gaines, of Falmouth, Massachusetts, who did GSO course work with Napora in the late 1960s and early 1970s, remembered that Napora would host a daily meeting for students, where conversation, along with tea and coffee, flowed, and collegiality was built.

“When you are an undergraduate, your job is to go to class and take notes,” Gaines said. “As a graduate student, you’re part of the team, learning and discovering new things no one knew before. You are a producer of knowledge, not just a consumer . . .  Ted was very comfortable with that transition in people’s lives. With his personality he made it seem all very natural.”

In 1967, Henry Donaldson came to GSO to earn his Ph.D., Napora was the major professor for his thesis and he remembered those daily meetings as a half hour taken from a busy day to unwind. No science was discussed and the atmosphere was social. During that time they became close friends.

“I had moved from Oregon to Rhode Island and I had no family here and there were other students in the same situation,” he said. “Ted was a bachelor and he didn’t have a lot of family either so around the holidays, groups of students would get together, as we couldn’t go home, and because of that a kind of social relationship was built as well as an academic one.”

After earning his Ph.D. in 1974, Donaldson and his wife moved to Pittsburgh but they remained very close with Napora. From 1978 until his death, Napora spent Easters and Christmases with them. Napora named Donaldson, who now lives in Jamestown, as executor of his will.

Donaldson and Gaines gathered in Newport last year, along with many former GSO students, to commit Napora’s ashes to the waters off Castle Hill. This is what Napora, who had organized student cruises and enjoyed being on the open ocean, had wanted. Napora worked at GSO from 1959 to 1991, and was known for being generous with his students, treating them to nice dinners several times a year, often at the Inn at Castle Hill, one of his favorite places. Students came from as far as the Midwest, Florida, New Jersey, and Washington D.C. to say goodbye and pay tribute to their beloved professor and commit him to the waters he loved.

“This is 35 years after he had left GSO and it was a very emotional event for a lot of strong men who were really shaken at the loss of him,” said Gaines, a fellow oceanographer who’s worked at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute for more than 30 years.

In addition to Donaldson and Gaines, Napora maintained lifelong relationships with former GSO students Chris Brown, Barclay Collins, John Kosmark, and Peter deMenocal, Corliss said.

Remembered as an intellectual and a scholar who took science seriously, Napora loved to socialize and was an avid reader and book collector. He also enjoyed music and was a talented artist who could paint and sketch brilliantly – something that often awed his students.

“His favorite saying was, ‘work diligently for your salvation,’” Donaldson remembered. “It was important to not just be a scientist but to have other interests.”

Napora came to URI as a research associate in 1959 and was named an instructor the same year. He became an assistant professor in 1964,  was promoted to associate professor in 1972, and retired in 1991. He was named GSO’s first assistant dean for students in 1968, a post he held until 1987.

Napora served in the Army in the U.S. Forces in Austria during the closing years of WWII. He was graduated from Columbia University with a B.S. in biology, followed by an M.S. in oceanography at URI, and a Ph.D. in zoology at Yale University. At Yale, he studied under Gordon Riley and was part of the lineage of biologist and legendary scientist and author G. Evelyn Hutchinson. In 1956, he served as assistant to the director of the Bermuda Biological Station.

According to Rita A. Versepy, director of gift planning for the University of Rhode Island Foundation, charitable bequests are a popular planned gift vehicle, often used to facilitate an individual’s capstone gift to URI.  “Mr. Napora’s generous bequest will fund a new, permanent endowment which will be invested in perpetuity, providing support, in his name, for generations.”