On Oct. 15, members of the VTSU-Castleton community gathered in the Jeffords Hall atrium to unveil a memorial for former Academic Dean Honoree Fleming, 77, who was fatally shot on the Rail Trail last October. 

The memorial, comprised of a resolution passed by the Vermont House of Representatives, a picture of Fleming with a verse by Y.B. Yeats chosen by husband Ron Powers and a watercolor on easel by Vanessa Hampton, serves as a reminder of Fleming’s outstanding contributions to Castleton. 

“My hope is that when people see this installation that they remember Honoree not for the way that she died, but for the way that she lived. With love and compassion, with grit and determination, with brilliance. I think that’s the legacy she would want to leave behind,” said VTSU Special Projects Coordinator Meredith Fletcher, who served as Fleming’s administrative assistant for 10 years prior to Fleming’s retirement in 2012. 

Fletcher noted her continuous advocacy for students, breakthroughs in biochemistry and love for her family. 

“Being in the presence of such greatness every day was an enormous honor,” she said. 

Joe Mark, friend and 32-year Castleton Academic Dean who also worked with Fleming, recalled fine Italian dinners shared with his wife Nancy, Fleming and Powers, which inspired the ceremony’s food service. 

“She became a fantastic Italian chef,” he said, also describing their conversations as “scintillating” and “highly opinionated.”

Mark shared that he had confidently recommended Fleming’s hiring as Associate Academic Dean following his retirement. 

“Her scholarly credentials, her publications, her teaching experience at both Trinity College and Middlebury College, just made her resume the top of the pile. And it was a very, very easy decision to recommend her hiring,” he said. 

Adding depth to her impressive career, Fleming was also a first-generation college student whose mother immigrated to America from Ireland. It was these exact roots that helped her identify with and support students. 

“She was a champion of students, especially those who were struggling to overcome the challenges they faced …You didn’t have to have rank or power or status to earn Honoree’s respect and attention. Far from it. If anything, because of her Irish Republican heritage, which she wore so proudly, she particularly valued the underdogs,” Mark said. 

Powers eloquently recounted how they met, over 40 years ago, by chance on an airplane and how their love stood the test of time.

“Honoree radiated goodness and kindness and decency and love,” he said. “She made me feel cared for and seen…She was the giving tree.”

He reiterated his son Dean’s statement at the memorial service following her death, referring to her as an “agnostic saint.” He emphasized how accurately it summed up her character.   

“I was very nervous that I might break up … but I didn’t,” he said in a follow-up interview. “Maybe the secret for me is I have a duty to this audience. They came to hear about Honoree and what we felt about Honoree. In a sense, strong emotion is self-indulgent, and I wanted the focus to be entirely on my wife.”

He shared that he has been seeing a counselor and that the “intensity of the grief has let up.” He commented on the eloquence of all the speakers and the large turnout. 

“[Castleton] has a warm center, and Honoree extracted warmth from people. I think there was a lot of genuine wish to say farewell to her. It did account for a far larger crowd that I had expected.”   

He pointed out that “You cannot summarize a human life in a few objects,” in reference to the memorial, but said it captured many of her great qualities. 

Despite the killer not being identified and no publicized developments since November of last year, Powers defends that the person who shot Fleming must have been in a psychotic, schizophrenic state, which “kept [him] from wallowing in anger.”

“In a strange sense, it wasn’t personal. It was the disease that did that,” he said. 

He then posed the important question “Now what?” and urged further research into mental illness and gun violence. 

“When combined, these two evils comprise a threat that makes it a menace to take a walk on a traditionally ‘safe’ walking trail in traditionally ‘safe’ Vermont-which is resembling the rest of tormented United States more each day,” he said.