Kent Vickery, 1942-2011
From Cowan’s Auctions.com
“Dr. Kent Vickery (1942 – 2011) grew up with parents who were avid collectors of Native American Southwest arts and crafts. Kent started developing his own collection in the 1950’s while on family vacations. Summer excursions to various Pueblos and to the Gallup Ceremonials sparked a true love in Kent and spurred him to earn his PhD from Indiana University in Anthropology/Archaeology where he specialized in Ohio Valley archaeology. He taught at the University of Cincinnati in the Anthropology Department for almost 34 years and on retirement, he and his wife, Karen, moved to Woodland Park, CO.
“Kent had a wide range of interests and collections including Native American art, both contemporary and ethnographic, Tribal art, and American antiques. He and Karen continued to collect until his death in 2011.”
At East High, Kent drove a classic T-bird. As as symbol used by Southwest Native Americans, the Thunderbird was the appropriate car for Kent to drive.
Obituary
Kent David Vickery, of Woodland Park, Colorado, passed away suddenly on June 1, 
2011. He was born in Wichita, Kansas on February 28, 1942, son of Ward and Veda Vickery (deceased). He graduated from East High School in Wichita and Wichita University. He served in the military and earned his doctorate in Anthropology at Indiana University.
He served as a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cincinnati for 34 years. He is survived by his wife of 47 years, Karen Davies Vickery of Kingman, Kansas; his son, Jason Vickery (Denver, Colorado); son, Chad Vickery and daughter-in-law, Beth Vickery (Columbus, Ohio); and two grandchildren, Mac and Shane (also of Columbus, Ohio). He is also survived by two brothers, Rollin (Braman, Oklahoma) and Dean (Wichita, Kansas), as well as many nieces and nephews. Graveside service will be held at Walnut Hills Cemetery in Kingman, Kansas. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the Community Cupboard, 111 N. Park St., Woodland Park, CO 80863 in memory of Kent Vickery.
Tributes to Kent Vickery
https://rcnnolly.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/thanksgiving-for-kent-vickery-public-archaeologist/
This Thursday is the Thanksgiving Holiday in the United States. Appropriately, I was thinking about a thanksgiving to an individual who influenced my approach to public archaeology – Dr. Kent Vickery, my M.A. program advisor at the University of Cincinnati. He passed away this June, just a few years into his Colorado retirement.
Dr. Vickery and I were not always on the best of terms. He was a serious taskmaster where no research project ever seemed completed. In his classes, he started to lecture when he walked in the door and did not stop until the bell rang. No pictures, all words. One year, running behind in his lectures, he passed out 25 pages of typed notes the last day of class that would be on the final exam. Our classroom styles are quite different.
But when it came to applying archaeology outside the lecture hall, he proved a key mentor for the practices I try to use today.
- His door was always open to students. There are many archaeologists who published more than Kent, and many a good bit less, but Dr. Vickery clearly ranked in the upper 5% of professors committed to their students. He always had time for a discussion or to offer advice. He was a walking bibliographic reference on all things related to his fields of research.
- Outside of the classroom, Kent believed in hands-on learning. He provided students the materials to take on a range of laboratory analysis projects. Of importance, he also encouraged his students to present their findings at professional meetings and to publish their results. He worked hard up until his retirement to organize and publish the field work he had done over the years.
- Kent promoted his students in the profession. In conversation, he was more likely to talk about the important work of his students than of his own. He could spill a tremendous amount of red ink over any paper, forcing the students to defend their assertions. We butted heads quite a bit over my M.A. Thesis. I was shocked to find that he had written a lengthy proposal and successfully had my M.A. Thesis nominated as one of only two from the University of Cincinnati for the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools Distinguished Thesis Award. He didn’t ask me if I wanted my thesis nominated, he just did it.
- Whether through work with Boy Scouts or avocational archaeologists, Kent expended an incredible amount of his time taking archaeology from the academic to the public. He was a standard fixture at the avocational organization Central Ohio Valley Archaeological Society meetings. Every Tuesday night in his lab, an assemblage of students, professionals, and avocationals worked late into the evening on a diverse set of projects.
Kent and I kept up over the years. The last time he “put the bite on me” was to create a composite map for the hundreds of features recorded from excavations at the State Line site. I regularly got Christmas cards from him and Karen, including last year.
I don’t know that Kent would have considered himself a Public or Applied Archaeologist. I have to believe that if he were starting out in the business today, he would fall right in with the best of community outreach. Immediately after his death, there was a flurry of emails among his former students and friends. The common thread in those comments was that Kent’s fingerprints were all over the archaeology of the Greater Cincinnati area and that he had trained most of the archaeologists working in the region today. These practitioners include museum professionals, leaders in the field of cultural resource management, and more than a few professorial types. His former students that shared their thoughts of Kent at his passing are people today committed to public outreach in both museums and archaeology, demonstrating that the apple does not fall too far from the tree.
Thanks, Kent.
Robert Connolly
2011
