Kenneth M. Cameron passed away in New Bern, NC, at the age of 89 years. He is survived by his life partner of more than forty years, Patti P. Gillespie; son Christian G. Cameron, daughter-in-law Sarah J. Watt, and granddaughter Beatrice Elizabeth Cameron. His wife, Marilyn Hurley Cameron predeceased him.
Kenneth was raised in Rochester NY by his parents, Gordon K. Cameron and Hazel Horton Cameron. He attended West High School, the University of Rochester (graduating with honors), and Carnegie Melon University (Master of Fine Arts degree). He was an intelligence officer in the United States Navy, serving with distinction overseas, including two years in Naples, Italy. He worked briefly for Standard Oil in Pittsburgh, PA, before returning to university, where he soon won a prestigious prize for poetry. His plays were produced off-Broadway and in various regional theatres, and he directed plays both on and off campus. He wrote more than forty books, including scholarly books (notably Africa on Film, which in 1994 was awarded the MLA prize for independent scholars ); historical novels (Our Jo); mystery novels, most recently the Denton series (The Oxord Fellow, Hachette, 2013), eight spy novels with his son, and several textbooks on theatre. He taught English and theatre at the University of Rochester, the University of Iowa, Dartmouth College and elsewhere throughout the sixties and seventies, but left academia to write full time in the 1980s.
Kenneth enjoyed fly-fishing and camping and was passionate about writing and photographing the wilderness and the world of fishing, especially antique rods and early tackle. On these subjects he published articles in most major sporting magazines and in Antiques Magazine. He helped create the collections of displays at both the American Museum of Fly Fishing in Manchester, VT, and the Adirondack Museum (now known as the Museum on Blue Mountain Lake). He enjoyed the Adirondack mountains of upstate NY and lived there three seasons a year since 1989 in an off-grid cabin with his life partner. From there he roamed the whole of the park from Saranac to Speculator, fishing forgotten streams and ponds and camping in remote wilderness, before returning to the cabin to the peace and isolation deep in the woods that he loved.
I have read a great many of your books. In your comments at the end, which I always read, you always take time to mention the influence of your father on your writing and your life.
I am glad that you had such a father in your life. I still miss mine a great deal.
You and your family are in my thoughts and prayers.
Saddened to hear this news. A great story teller. RIP.
I was saddened to learn of the passing of Ken and my condolences go out to Patti and Ken’s family. In reflection, i realized that I first met Ken in Iowa City and was reacquainted with him in Columbia, SC. Since that time I had the privilege of visiting Ken and Patti at both their NYcabin and New Bern home. What a full, interesting life he led. It deserves celebration.
Respects to your father, and to you. His influence must have been profound. Your works have a deep human (and humane) touch and one senses such an important presence in your life. I think he would be justifiably proud of you and everything you have achieved.
My condolences. I must try to read some of you father’s books.
I am saddened to hear of your father’s passing. It sounds like he was an incredible man. I actually have the series you and your father cowrote together, but I haven’t started them yet. I think now I will. Whenever an author or an artist passes, I’m always comforted by Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” I won’t get to meet your father this side of the veil, but I hope to get a glimpse of the wonderful bond you shared in the story you created together.
I will keep you and your family in my prayers.
Christian, I have only just discovered you father passed recently. My thoughts are very much with you and your family,
I was a classmate of Ken at the University of Rochester and just read of his passing in the current issue of the alumni magazine. We met during orientation week on the very first day and remained friends for all of his life. After college we stayed in touch by letter and visits in Cambridge while I was in graduate school and a wonderful reunion when he was in Botswana in 1992 when I was there as a volunteer with an NGO.
Despite my lower level of education (WVA public schools), intelligence and sophistication, we hit it off with mutual interests, including Stagers, the university drama group. I was not a long-distance runner, however. as he was.
I will cherish his memory and consider him a major influence in my life. My best wishes to all his remaining family.
My wife, a class behind us at Rochester, says in a poetry class with Ken, only he and the teacher understood what it was all about, Everyone else simply observed.
I just learned about your dad’s passing. While the apple never falls far from the tree, Ken was the best writer, period, I ever had the pleasure to work with – although he would no doubt disapprove of the grammar of that last sentence. I am proud to have had something to do with publishing the extraordinary Denton novels and still trust that one day they will be recognized as one of the best crime series ever written, the work of a true master of his craft. It is my greatest regret as a publisher that I never made that happen during his lifetime. Across the gulf of space and time, I will always see London, my city, through his eyes.
I was a cast member in a production of
“Death of a Salesman” directed by your father, Ken Cameron, at the University of Rochester, in the fall of 1964. Although I was a freshman and there was an unwritten rule that freshman were not supposed to be cast in plays because of potential distraction from the initial academic adjustment to college life, your father made an exception in my case and casted me in the role of Howard, Willy Loman’s boss. The performance was outstanding, close to professional, due in no small measure to Ken’s directorial skills. I am only sorry that we did not have videography to record the performance. Ken was also my professor in a Shakespeare course, which I took later on during my college years. He will always be remembered by me as an articulate and inspirational Director and professor, whose memory still inspires me to participate in community theater at this stage of my life.