There was music and prayer at the hour-long event and opening remarks from the school’s current president, Jim Ryan, who said he had consulted Casteen before taking the job.
“I confessed to him that I was worried that I was not suited to be president of UVA and I also worried that I would not enjoy the job. In retrospect," he joked, "I realize there was little cause to worry about the latter. I mean what’s not to love about being a college president today?”
Ryan said Casteen had loved the job but also faced challenges. At the start of his tenure, the state had cut funding to six percent, but Casteen rose to the occasion.
“John’s fundraising prowess was unmatched," Ryan recalled. "In 1990 the market value of the endowment was just shy of $500 million. By 2007 it was over $5 billion.”
Strong finances enabled the university to renovate, build or buy more than 130 buildings and to offer need-based financial aid to any student who was admitted.
There were also personal notes from his son, John Casteen the fourth, who teaches English at UVA.
“He taught me how to change the oil in a car. He also taught me how to drift the car at very high speed through a corner. He had a sense of mischief. He taught me how to sneak out the front door of a movie theater and then sneak back in for the next show. (He taught me that on the day Star Wars come out -- three times!) He taught me how to get out of a jam, how to hitchhike, how to avoid any fight that wasn’t necessary and to win any fight that was.”
The younger Casteen said his father introduced him to a number of exotic foods – from blintzes and bagels to sushi, but he was no food snob.
“He taught all of us to love bar snacks," he chuckled. "This man never met a gherkin he didn’t like. He loved kippered herring, sardines, canned smoked oysters, Underwood deviled ham, Penrose sausages, pickled okra, pimento cheese spread, Mrs. Fannings bread and butter pickles and strong, very strange candy – these things called wine gums and this Icelandic licorice that sort of snaps your head back.”
Casteen was, after all, a scholar of old Icelandic literature and continued to teach for a decade after retiring from the presidency.
At the end, his son recalled, John Casteen III retained his sense of humor.
“He was a master of the wry smile – the mordant joke. Last month when he was in the hospital, his nurses needed to run a series of cognitive checks to make sure he was still oriented to his surroundings. One of them asked, ‘What brought you to the hospital?’ and he said, ‘an ambulance.’ Another one asked, ‘Mr. Casteen, do you know why you’re here?’' And he said, ‘I guess my good luck ran out.’"
But his love of the university remained, so his family asked that in lieu of flowers people make contributions to a scholarship fund known as Access UVA.
