Rev. Theodore J. Rynes, S.J. died May 29, 2015, at Santa Clara University. He was 83 years old. Ted was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Theodore Rynes and Ruth Kleffner Rynes. He attended Creighton Prep School and entered the Jesuit novitiate at Florissant, Missouri on August 8, 1949. He received his AB and MA in English from St. Louis University and taught English at Campion Prep, Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, before beginning theology studies at St. Mary’s College, St. Mary’s, Kansas. He was ordained a priest in the Jesuit Church of the Gesu in Milwaukee on June 12, 1962 and pronounced his final vows as a Jesuit on August 15, 1965.

Ted came to California in 1964 for graduate studies in English at the University of California, Berkeley. He completed a dissertation on mutual influences on the satiric method of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, and received his Ph.D. in 1973. In 1970 he began a long association as a professor of English at Santa Clara University, teaching a variety of classes in addition to his specialty of Eighteenth Century British literature. An extraordinarily generous teacher, Father Rynes became a significant mentor and a loyal friend to his many students, appreciating them as God’s great gifts to him. He is survived by his sister, Marilyn Giannattasio (Wauwatosa, WI), his brother, Donald Rynes and his wife, Jean (Dover, DE), nieces and nephews.