Berlin, VT Gene Sessions Ph.D., author and Professor Emeritus of American History, died on April 25, 2017 in Burlington from complications resulting from Lewy Body dementia and Parkinson's disease. He was 79 years old. Sessions had a long career teaching History at Norwich University, in Northfield, Vermont, spanning 1974 to his retirement in 1998. Throughout his career, Sessions had a deep passion for telling the story of his adopted state and was active with the Vermont Historical Society. He was editor of Vermont History, the journal of the Vermont Historical Society, from 1988 to 1992 and contributed four articles and several book reviews to the journal. His monographs, "'Years of struggle': The Irish in the Village of Northfield, 1845-1900" (1987), and "Espionage in Windsor: Clarence H. Waldron and Patriotism in World War I" (1993) received the Ben Lane Award for the best article appearing in those years' issues of the journal. Working with Samuel B. Hand and J. Kevin Graffagnino in 1999, Sessions compiled a volume of primary source materials entitled, Vermont Voices, 1609 through the 1990s. In 2004, he co-authored with Michael Sherman and P. Jeffrey Potash the definitive history of the State of Vermont, Freedom and Unity: A History of Vermont. Sessions also wrote on Vermont's nineteenth-century railroad workers, edited a collection of essays on the art and history of the Barre granite industry, contributed background essays for The Green Mountain Chronicles, a radio series produced for the Vermont Historical Society in 1989, and articles for The Vermont Encyclopedia (2003). In 2014, he received the President's Award of the Vermont Historical Society, recognizing "his valuable and lasting contribution to the study of Vermont history." Sessions was also an Associate Fellow of the Center for Research on Vermont at the University of Vermont and a member of the Vermont Historical Records Advisory Board. Professor Sessions was born on September 16, 1937 in Cleburne, TX, the second son of C. C. Sessions, a United Methodist minister, and Rene Doughty Sessions, a teacher. He received a B.A. and M.A. in 1959 and 1963, respectively, from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. Following his degrees from SMU, Sessions briefly served in the US Army. Then, in 1971-72, he was a reporter for the Del Rio News-Herald and Waco News Tribune and Times Herald in Texas. While completing a Ph.D. in History at American University in Washington, D.C., where he wrote his dissertation on "American Reformers and the Mexican Revolution: Progressives and Woodrow Wilson's Policy in Mexico, 1913-1917," Sessions taught history at the University of Maryland, Moravian College (Bethlehem, PA), and Grambling State University (Grambling, LA). Upon receiving his doctorate in 1974, Sessions accepted a position at Norwich University in Northfield, where he taught history and served as Academic Dean of Vermont College of Norwich, 1979-1980. He and his family lived in several places in central Vermont, including Northfield, Calais, Montpelier, Plainfield, and most recently Berlin. Sessions had a great love for Vermont and spent many hours, hiking, kayaking, canoeing, and cycling around the state. He raised his beloved sons in Vermont and took great pride in each of them. He spent his final years enjoying the beauty of Berlin Pond out the front windows of the home that he shared with his partner of many years, Carole Bandy. Gene Sessions was preceded in death by his wife, Debbye Sessions, in 1993. He is survived by his partner, Carole Bandy; his three sons, Benjamin with wife Ellen Moy, Peter with wife Stacey Turner, and Nathaniel with wife Tyler Sessions; six grandsons; and his brother, Jim and family. Donations in lieu of flowers may be sent in memory of Gene Sessions to the Robert W. Hamill Respite Care Program operated by the UVM Department of Neurology, Vermont Historical Society, and the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at St. Augustine Church in Montpelier at noon on May 2 followed by interment in Green Mount Cemetery and a reception at T.W. Wood Art Gallery. Arrangements are in the care of Guare & Sons Funeral Home.