Dr. James B Gutsell

James (Jim) Burnell Gutsell, Ph.D., 88, died peacefully on Friday, July 26, after a long illness, with his wife, Jane, family, and friends by his side. The son of Dr. Robert S. Gutsell of Ithaca, New York, and Grace L. Lawrence, of Woodruff, Kansas, Jim was born in Ithaca on October 23, 1935. As a young boy his family moved to Copenhagen, New York, where his sister, Susan, was born, and later to Chattahoochee, Florida, where he graduated high school, played varsity football, and was voted “Most Likely to Succeed.”

Jim earned his B.A. in English from the University of the South (Sewanee), and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Connecticut. In 1960 he married Marnie S. Miller of Ashland, Virginia, with whom he had two daughters, Anneke-Reeve and Sabina. In 1963 he joined the English department at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC, where he taught for 36 years. He chaired the English Department several times, helped launch the Study Abroad Program, and was active in developing the Honor Code and Writing Across the Curriculum initiative, among his many contributions to campus life.

After Jim and Marnie divorced in 1985, he and Agnes Jane Walters, of Greensboro, married and he became “Jim-Dad” to her daughter, Anna. Upon retiring from Guilford, he was an active member of the downtown Greensboro art scene, taught pottery classes at the Greensboro Cultural Arts Center, and owned and operated South Elm Pottery and Gallery for 16 years.

Jim regularly held joint exhibits with many local artists and was often featured in local news for his collaboration with the Yanceyville Street Farmers Market to found the Fall and Spring Piedmont Pottery Festival, which lasted many years. Jim and Jane also participated in Old Greensborough First Fridays, when he would invite children to throw little bowls on the pottery wheel with his help. The kids would choose a glaze color and pick up their own finished pots at no charge. Jim enjoyed teaching in many different contexts his whole life.

Jim’s pottery was purposeful, lovely, and designed to be used, which he encouraged. Today many people still eat ice cream, drink tea, and bake their suppers in his beautiful work. His primary inspirations were Japanese, Chinese, and Korean pottery. He loved the simplicity and functionality of those forms and never stopped experimenting with glazes. Accomplished in all three types of firing (electric, gas, and wood), Jim built his own wood-firing kiln on a tree-laden piece of land with a creek and a cabin outside Madison, NC, where teams of potter friends would gather to help with all-night firings. The Madison pots represented his favorite work, and his cabin saw both quiet days and roaring parties, including one illustrious horn-blowing New Year’s Eve.

Jim was an excellent cook, spending many happy hours experimenting in the kitchen and perfecting such dishes as London broil, bouillabaisse, homemade pasta, potato latkes, beignets, kedgeree, and creamed kidneys on toast. He served his famous fluffy omelet, with mushroom cream sauce, and bear claws every Christmas morning: consumed always between the stockings and the presents, with the Clancy brothers and Muppets with John Denver albums playing cheerfully in the background.

Bonding with cats Penland, Mitchen, and Max transformed Jim into an awakened cat dad. Also a devoted dog parent, he once estimated he took more than 10,000 walks with the family’s Border Collie, Charlie. Jim’s ability to throw the perfect arching, long-sailing Frisbee, along with Charlie’s ability to catch it, is family legend. As is his mischief: Jim once staged an epic water fight at the family’s beach house on Oak Island…which ended abruptly when he turned the hose on his unsuspecting wife in the kitchen peacefully making sandwiches when the deluge came through the window screen.

Jim loved the beach: body-surfing, sailing, shrimping, fishing, clamming, crabbing. He also enjoyed golf, tennis, camping, Thanksgivings with his extended Patella family, watercolors, art, music, writing, teaching, photography, Shakespeare, Louis L'Amour novels, arrowheads, masks, quirky sculptures and whistles, wind-up toys, ancient Greek, Roman, and Norse history, Magnolia, The Princess Bride, Northern Exposure, cribbage, chess, poker, and traveling.

He made many fine memories in Iceland, India, Great Britain, Denmark, Greece, Crete, and the Galapagos. He was proud to be considered an honorary Dane after the family hosted exchange student Mette Godsk in 1987, and eventually grew quite close to her family. He proudly served as president of the Friendly Park Pool Board for years, spearheading improvements and additions that still stand today. He especially enjoyed sitting on the lifeguard stand calling home swim meets. Jim considered presiding over the Board that hired the pool’s long-term manager to be his crowning achievement at Friendly.

Knowing and loving–and being loved by–Jim was a special, unique experience. He had a sharp mind, strong heart, and especially the gift of gab. He may be most infamous for being a raconteur of his own epic tales, including a “Garden of Eden” story that involved being swarmed by a herd of wild pigs while camping along the Apalachicola River and stories of the Sewanee fraternity party that ended with him asleep on the fireplace mantle, initiating campus-wide water fights as a dorm father at Guilford, and in Iceland unknowingly ordering both an appetizer and then an enormous entree of pickled herring, which his pride required him to finish, to name just a few.

Jim was a life-long learner with an endlessly engaged, questing, reflective mind and a deeply Jungian and mythic understanding of the mysteries and complexities of life. He was a gifted writer who won many accolades for his poetry, short stories, and memoirs from the Burlington Writers Club. One year he won first place in all three categories.

One rainy day as he was rushing across Guildford’s campus, carrying his briefcase and an open umbrella, Jim tried to cross a ditch upon a precariously placed wooden plank, which broke underneath him, and he dropped straight down. By chance passing by, the college’s star basketball player reached down and effortlessly lifted Jim and all his accessories up and out, onto firm ground, whereupon off to class he went. Jim’s account of this experience appeared in O.Henry Magazine as the “O.Henry Ending.”

A classic absent-minded professor, Jim once put a lit pipe into the pocket of his tweed jacket and continued to carry on a conversation seamlessly as little puffs of smoke wafted up.

For the whole of a rich, vast, full, impressive, and expressive lifetime, he will always be loved and will be making us laugh for a long time to come. Jim was truly a Renaissance man.

Jim is predeceased by his parents, sister, and three half-siblings by his father’s first marriage. He is survived by Agnes Jane Walters Gutsell, Marnie Miller Gutsell, daughters Anneke-Reeve B. Gutsell (Josiah Erikson) and Sabina B. Gutsell (Eric Beall), stepdaughter Anna Abigail Walters Bengel (Joshua Green), granddaughter Agnes Katharine Bengel Green, brother-in-law Warren W. Walters III, sister-in-law Gail Patella (Vince), and many beloved nieces, nephews, extended family members, and friends.

A celebration of Jim’s remarkable life will be held Sunday, September 29, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Carnegie Room of the Guilford College library. The family would like to thank the staff and his many caregivers at Abbotswood at Irving Park for their devotion to Jim’s physical and mental wellbeing and quality of life these past seven years. They are also deeply grateful to his healthcare providers at the Cone Advanced Heart Failure Clinic for many years of caring attention. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Art Alliance of Greensboro or the Guilford College Annual (Loyalty) Fund.