James Zachary Rabun

James Zachary (Jack) Rabun, age 98, died Friday, June 20, 2008.  He was born in Albany, Georgia August 10, 1909.  He was the third of five sons of Zachary Taylor Rabun and Cora Bell Rabun, and was a member of a family that has lived in Georgia since 1785. He grew up in Albany and Morgan.  He earned degrees from Mercer University (A.B., summa cum laude, 1936), from the University of North Carolina (M.A., 1937), and from the University of Chicago (Ph.D., 1947). At Mercer he was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.  Between 1927 and 1938 he taught in the public schools of Georgia and North Carolina, including five years as principal of the high school at Conyers, GA.  In the Second World War he served four years in the U. S. Navy; commanded subchasers and patrol craft in the Atlantic and Pacific; and eventually retired from the Naval Reserve with the rank of commander.  In 1946 he held a Rosenwald Fellowship and in 1951 a Guggenheim Fellowship.  From 1947 to 1987 he taught history at Emory University and served as chairman of the history department there in the 1970's.  He was a member of numerous professional and honor societies, and was known as an authority on the history of the American South and on American constitutional history.  He wrote an unpublished comprehensive biography and lectured on the life of Alexander Stevens and Robert Toombs, two antebellum politicians from Wilkes County Georgia.  He was the author of articles in historical journals; and he won awards for distinguished teaching at Emory, including the Emory Williams Award in 1973.  He taught also as a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin (Madison), at New York University, and in West Germany.  He did his last teaching in 2002 and 2003 when he taught courses in Emory's Senior University on the American Revolution and on the Making of the United States Constitution.  Over a period of nearly 40 years he enjoyed the restoring and improving of a 1848 mountain farmhouse in Rabun County, Georgia, which he bought in 1965.  For many years he walked one to four miles each day, and he made long hikes on every continent except Antarctica.  When he was past eighty, he made two treks in Nepal - one in 1989, a fourteen day trek to the base of Annapurna, the other in 1992 a 23 day trek to the base of Mt. Everest.  From 1983 he was a member of Peachtree Corners (formerly Doraville) Presbyterian Church.  Before 1983 he served as deacon and as an elder at the Emory Presbyterian Church.  In body he was tall and slender; in mind, inquisitive and introspective; in heart, charitable and generous.  His survivors include a sister, Mrs. G. Benjamin (Lenoir) Milstead of Winchester, VA; and a brother, Plowden Rabun of Tucson, Arizona; and numerous nieces and nephews.  Funeral services will be held at 1:00 P.M. Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at Morgan Baptist Church. Interment will be at Morgan United Methodist Church.  The family suggests that memorial contributions may be made to the Cora Bell Rabun Library Fund, at the Office of Development, Erskine College, Due West, SC 29639; or the Bruce Bell Rabun Library Fund, University Advancement Office, Mercer University, Macon, GA  31207.  A memorial service will be held in the near future at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church. A. S. Turner & Sons.