Fraser Jefcoate Harbutt

Fraser Jefcoate Harbutt, history professor at Emory University for 35 years, has passed away at the age of 79. He leaves behind a trail of love, warmth, and old-fashioned charm that his heartbroken family and friends will remember forever, and attempt to continue in his name.

He also leaves a lifetime of achievements, many grateful students who grew to love him, three books (one nominated for a Pulitzer Prize) and multiple articles that explored U.S. political and diplomatic history and the Cold War.

He felt at home in three countries; in England where he was born, in New Zealand where he grew up, and for more than 45 years in his chosen home in the United States.
Fraser started his career as a lawyer and practiced for ten years, first as a partner in New Zealand's largest law firm, Russell McVeagh, and later in England.

However his life-long love of history and politics took over, and in the 1970s he received a Ph.D. in history from the University of California at Berkeley.

Prior to coming to Emory he taught at UCLA, Smith College and the University of Pennsylvania.

He is the author of The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America, and the Origins of the Cold War which co-won the Stuart L. Bernath Prize from the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations; The Cold War Era; and Yalta 1945: Europe and America at the Crossroads which won the Southern Historians Association's Charles White Prize in European History, received a Special Citation from the Academy of American Diplomacy, and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

He took huge pride in the many Ph.Ds he oversaw and directed. The respect and affection he earned from his students was a testimony to his impact on their lives.

He was above all a devoted husband to Marysia, his devotion, matched only by her great love for him. He wrote this a few months ago: "I loved you then, I love you even more now. I will love you as long as I have breath in my body."

He was a gentle and loving father to Josie and Chris. A safe haven and a reassuring voice. A proud grandfather to Maria and Carlo, who he looked on with quizzical wonder at everything they did. He felt himself the luckiest man to be father-in-law to Susi and John.

To his friends he was a true British gentleman, who combined an old world formality with warmth, wit and a mischievous sense of humor. He was known for his quiet dislike of vegetables and a life-long love of tea. Most of all he was loved for his intelligence, his dignity and his kindness to strangers and close friends alike.
His brother Alastair, sisters Mary, Juliet and Anne, and much-loved cousin Carol and her husband Ian, mourn him today from across the world.

Now, as the summer scatters, our hearts are breaking and we say good-bye to an honorable man.

A memorial service for Fraser will be held at the Little Chapel at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church, 1660 North Decatur Road, N.E. Atlanta, Georgia 30307 on Saturday October 22, 2016 at 2pm.


Funeral Home:
A. S. Turner & Sons
2773 North Decatur Road
Decatur, GA
30033