Dr. Ellis Sandoz Jr.

Decorated scholar Dr. Ellis Sandoz 92, died peacefully Tuesday evening (9/19) following a slow decline in health. The New Orleans native was a husband of over a half a century, father of four, with 10 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren. Meanwhile, he taught thousands of students at three universities over 50 years, while writing 10 scholarly books and editing many more. His teaching career began at Louisiana Tech, then he moved to the former East Texas State University (now Texas A&M – Commerce), and settled at Louisiana State University. At LSU, he taught for 35 years and was named the Hermann Moyse Distinguished Professor of Political Science – retiring at 83.

Sandoz was born in New Orleans Feb. 10, 1931 to Dr. George Ellis Sandoz, a dentist, originally from Opelousas, La. and Ruby Odom Sandoz, from Batesville, Ms., who assisted in the dental practice and later became a real estate agent. His mother started college in approximately 1964 and graduated from LSU-Shreveport at 77 in 1976 as the oldest graduate in the school’s history. The family moved from New Orleans to Norris, Tn, then on to Shreveport, where Sandoz attended Byrd High School. He showed his writing talent in winning the Robert Ewing Essay contest, sponsored by the Shreveport Times. That came with a scholarship to LSU.

Sandoz has been honored for his scholarly writings and thought in America, Canada, Norway, Italy, Guatemala, and he even helped the governments of the Czech Republic and Slovakia get established. Here’s a comment from a reviewer of his book of essays, “Give Me Liberty”: “Ellis Sandoz (is) a metaphysician of the soul, mystic of the Christian faith, and a scientist of politics.” (Rouven J. Steeves, professor of philosophy at the Air Force Academy.)

“As a careful student of the history of order and disorder, (Sandoz has written) “with a particular eye to the American republic and its constitutional tradition.”

In “Give Me Liberty,” Sandoz wrote: “The Liberty (Patrick Henry) proclaimed he and his contemporaries understood to be a gift of the Almighty in their individual existences as unique personalities, each one created in the image and likeness of God.”

Sandoz came to LSU’s Baton Rouge campus as a professor in 1978 and accepted the chairmanship of the political science department the next year, serving until the department’s doctoral program was reinstated a few years later. Prior to his arrival the PhD program had been decertified, with calls for bolstering its academic standing nationally with an added focus on publishing and scholarship among its faculty. Once the doctoral program was restored, he stepped aside from the chairmanship to research, write and lecture.

But Sandoz was always finding new projects and challenges to tackle, including founding the Eric Voegelin Institute for American Renaissance Studies – separate from but allied with the political science department. Voegelin was a former LSU professor who had barely evaded capture by the Gestapo in Nazi Germany before coming to teach in Louisiana. Sandoz studied with Voegelin as an undergraduate at LSU and was immediately impressed with the German philosopher.

As an undergrad, Sandoz also found time to play trumpet in the LSU marching band – the Golden Band from Tigerland – as well as leading his fraternity as commander (Sigma Nu – Phi Chapter).

After graduation and a master’s at LSU, Sandoz joined the Marines in 1953, serving stateside at Camp Pendleton in California, where he attained the rank of First Lieutenant before his honorable discharge in 1956.

Post graduate stops included studies at Georgetown University and the University of North Carolina. He took a teaching post in 1959 at Louisiana Tech in Ruston – where he also started a chapter of Sigma Nu Fraternity. While there, he met a man who would become a lifelong friend -- W. A. “Dub” Jones, the former Cleveland Brown football great who essentially invented the modern flanker position. Sandoz and Jones first encountered each other while hunting quail in north Louisiana and immediately became friends. The families of each have remained close over the years. Former NFL MVP quarterback Bert Jones is known to be an avid outdoorsman – Sandoz took the young man on his first duck hunt, on Corney Lake.

Taking a hiatus from Tech in 1964 and ‘65, Sandoz went to the University of Munich to complete his doctorate with Voegelin – he is the only American to do so. Voegelin’s work the “New Science of Politics” was named Time Magazine’s Book of the Year in 1951. To make his point on Voegelin’s revolutionary ideas, Sandoz often said: “Voegelin was to political philosophy what Einstein was to physics.”

Meanwhile, Sandoz had met and married a fellow Shreveporter, the former Alverne Hubley in 1957. She was a Centenary College grad intent on pursuing a career singing opera, having pulled off leading roles in “Susannah” and “Madame Butterfly.” Fate had sent the two grad students to Heidelburg, Germany at that time – she at the Heidelburg Conservatory as a lyric soprano and he, having earned a Fulbright Fellowship for his work at the University of Heidelburg. After marrying in 1957 and the birth of their first child Ellis III in 1958, Alverne switched career goals to focus on raising the family. By 1967, the couple had four children – Ellis III, Lisa, Erica and Jonathan. They celebrated 50 years together in a large family gathering at Mike Anderson’s Restaurant in Baton Rouge.

In 1968, Sandoz headed to ETSU, accepting the chairmanship of the newly created political science department, transforming it from the former government department. He added a knowledge of philosophy that went beyond the previous emphasis. At ET, he worked to create strong graduate level students and to encourage promising minds to aim high.

One of those students was a Mesquite policeman commuting between classes and his law enforcement job. His name was Ted Lyon, and he credits Sandoz with inspiring him to pursue law school, then politics. He went on to win election to the Texas House and later the Senate. Sandoz was proud of Lyon, who would chair the Senate criminal justice committee and pass landmark legislation to expand prison capacity to hold violent criminals longer as well as to provide treatment to non-violent offenders. He would also join Sandoz in conferences to help establish east European governments.

It so happened that Lyon and Sandoz also shared a love of the outdoors and hunting and fishing. They often hunted together over several decades -- mostly for quail in the Texas Panhandle, and sometimes they would join the Joneses – Dub, Bert and Ben -- for a hunt on horseback.

Sandoz was well-rounded – as comfortable in a duck blind as he was helping a new government establish its foundations. Sandoz cited Aristotle’s advice in urging students to weigh ideas against their own experience and use common sense to sort things out. Voegelin had also urged this approach.

After the 1989 Velvet Revolution which split Czechoslovakia into two countries, Sandoz addressed the Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia on The Federalist Papers. He also organized a series of conferences over a couple of years in the Czech Republic. He was working with President Vaclav Havel, Sen. Lyon, and other leaders regarding constitutionalism and western philosophy and a variety of topics helpful in establishing governments for the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland.

He was awarded the University Medal and Rector’s Certificate by Palacky University of Olomouc, Czech Republic. He also was presented with an honorary doctor of philosophy by Palacky University of Olomouc, in 1995.

Traveling to Norway, also in 1995, Sandoz presented a series of lectures on Voegelin in Trondheim, sponsored by the University of Oslo and the Research Council of Norway. He lectured often throughout the U.S. and Canada. He founded the Eric Voegelin Society; he was elected president of the Philadelphia Society. In 2004, he gave the John Witherspoon Lecture, titled “Republicanism and Religion: A Conspiracy of Faith and Religion.” Also in 2004, he addressed an EU conference on constitution and formation at the University of Genoa. He also gave the commencement address and received an honorary doctorate in 2002 at the University Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala

At LSU, Sandoz was awarded the university’s Gold Medal as Distinguished Research Master. He was also inducted to Phi Beta Kappa as the chapter’s first alumnus member.

He was appointed by Pres. Ronald Reagan in 1982 to a six-year term on the National Council for the Humanities, which funds the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2014, the Library of Congress called on Sandoz to consult with them on setting up a major exhibit about the Magna Carta on the 800th anniversary of the document’s 1215 signing, by King John, at sword point at Runnymede.

Sandoz wrote A Political Apocalypse: A Study of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, which one critic termed the best analysis ever done of the best novel (The Brothers Karamazov) in literary history. For this work a Nobel board member shared privately with Sandoz that he nominated Sandoz for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He didn’t ultimately win, and because nominees are not made public, this was not publicly known.

Much of Sandoz’s literary focus centered on examining the phenomenal amount of literature and thought of Voegelin – in fact, Sandoz was the general editor of the 34 volume Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. He also authored and edited several books and projects regarding Voegelin’s thought. Sandoz strove to help students and readers understand Voegelin’s emphasis on the spiritual dimension of man in private and public life. He also researched the religious roots of the American Founding and the heritage of religion in the development of the nation. Sandoz viewed his life’s work as a calling, he said.

His areas of academic concentration included: classical philosophy – from Plato and Aristotle through Aquinas, Locke and Rousseau; as well as American constitutionalism, including the pre-Founding period. He noted that settlers were in America for virtually as long before the Revolution as since. He also saw and understood the dangers of totalitarianism – designing a course around George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Sandoz was preceded in death by his devoted wife Alverne on June 25, 2011. Survivors include: son George Ellis Sandoz III, Austin, Tx.; grandson Eric Michael Sandoz (and wife Sierra Moore Sandoz), of Corpus Christi, Tx.; step-grandson Brian White (and wife Casey Johnston White), of Austin, Tx.; step-great-granddaughter Kaiya Crawley, of Austin, Tx.; daughter Lisa Sandoz Robinson (and husband Michael Robinson) of Houston, Tx.; granddaughter Claire Robinson (and husband David Hayes), of Houston, great-grandson Charles “Charlie” Hayes-Robinson, of Houston, Tx.; granddaughter Rachel Robinson, of Houston, Tx.; granddaughter Genevieve Robinson, of Houston, Tx.; daughter Erica Sandoz Cooper (and husband John Cooper, USMC, ret.), of Pensacola, Fl.; grandson Benjamin Cooper, (and fiancee Eden Rucker) of Irving, Tx.; grandson Stephen Cooper (and wife Iyanah Cooper), of Auburn, Ala.; son Jonathan David Sandoz (and wife Elizabeth Sandoz), of Roanoke, Va.; granddaughter Elizabeth Sandoz, of Roanoke, Va.; grandson Duncan Sandoz (and wife Leah Sandoz) of Roanoke, Va.; grandson Zachary Sandoz, of Roanoke, Va.

Funeral services will be held on Friday, Sept. 29 at the University Baptist Church (5775 Highland Rd) in Baton Rouge, La. Visitation will start at 9:30 am, with Service at 11 a.m. Burial will follow at Port Hudson National Cemetery in Zachary, La. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be made in support of the ongoing work of the Eric Voegelin Society. You may contact the treasurer, David Whitney, [email protected].