Patricia Stallings Kruppa Savage, longtime faculty member of the history department at the University of Texas at Austin, died on February 5, 2024, in Austin, Texas, after a brief illness.

Photo courtesy Stallings family
A lifelong Texan rooted in a seemingly lost Texas liberal tradition, Patricia Stallings was born in Corpus Christi and grew up in Victoria and then Houston. She attended Lamar High School, where she developed a talent for public speaking, and went on to participate in the prizewinning debate team at the University of Houston. In 1957, she was the first woman to win the prize for best individual speaker at the National Debate Tournament. When presented with the award, a man’s watch, she demanded that it be replaced with a woman’s watch, a harbinger of her future interest in women’s issues. Interviewed by the Houston Cougar about her postgraduate plans, Pat said she would go to graduate school to earn an MA and a PhD, and then teach. And she proceeded to do just that.
Awarded a Woodrow Wilson scholarship, she attended graduate school at Columbia University, where she completed her dissertation under the direction of R. K. Webb in 1968. The resulting monograph, Charles Haddon Spurgeon: A Preacher’s Progress (Garland, 1982), remains the definitive biography. Over the course of her career, Pat’s publications expressed her continuing interests in Victorian culture, material culture, the history of childhood, religious history, and women’s history. She contributed “‘More Sweet and Liquid Than Any Other’: Victorian Images of Mary Magdalene” to Religion and Irreligion in Victorian Society (1992), a collection published in Webb’s honor. Her “The American Woman and the Male Historian” (Social Science Quarterly, 1974) was an early call for the historical discipline to open its ranks to women. She also published a wide range of book reviews in Catholic Historical Review, Albion, and the American Historical Review, among other journals. Taken together, her publications embodied her meticulous approach to research and an incisive writing style. In retirement, she was working on a biography of Texas feminist and suffragist Anna Pennybacker.
Pat came to the UT Austin history department in 1965, when her first husband, Joseph Kruppa, joined the English department. Pat quickly made her mark as a skilled and dynamic teacher, offering a wide range of courses in British history and cultural and intellectual history. Later, she pioneered courses in the history of women and the history of childhood. Her 40-year teaching career was primarily focused on undergraduates, particularly those in the Plan II honors program. Innumerable students flourished in her classrooms and under her mentorship, as reflected in her numerous teaching awards. She received the Jean Holloway Award in 1982, the President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award in 1992, and the Chad Oliver Plan II Teaching Award in 1993; became a Phelan Fellow, a recognition of faculty who have taught in the honors Plan II program for 20 or more years; and joined the Academy of Distinguished Teachers in 2000. She was particularly proud of the Holloway Award, as it is the only teaching award at UT Austin chosen exclusively by students.
In the forefront of teaching the history of women, Pat taught UT Austin’s first courses on women’s history in 1972. She participated in the campaign to establish a women’s studies program, and from 1980 to 1982, she served as the second director of the campus’s Center for Women’s and Gender Studies (founded in 1978). Pat also assumed other leadership roles on campus, serving as AAUP chair during the controversial removal of President Stephen Spurr and his replacement by Lorene Lane Rogers in 1974 and 1975.
Outside of her academic pursuits, Pat enjoyed gardening; collecting art, antiques, and collectibles; cooking; and preparing elaborate holiday feasts with her longtime friend and debate partner, Charles Ledbetter. She also enjoyed travel—as an avid Anglophile to England and later road trips to the national parks.
Pat co-parented her son, Christopher, with former husband Jimmie Savage. Together, they dedicated their joint estate to establishing the Christopher Eden Savage Memorial Endowment for Autism and Related Developmental Disabilities, which supports research at the University of Texas Dell Medical School, the Steve Hicks School of Social Work, and the College of Education.
Gail Savage
St. Mary’s College of Maryland (emerita)
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