While his scholarship—on the nature of evil, on Kierkegaard or on the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church?was top-notch, Frederick Sontag will be remembered most for his enduring influence on Pomona College students. The longtime philosophy professor served as an adviser for a fraternity and several sports teams. He ate lunch with students, relaxed with them in the evenings and helped them when they got in trouble.
He was performing such a mission on October 30, 2000, when a mentally ill student he had just bailed out of jail stabbed him twice in the neck. (Sontag drove himself to the hospital, but first stopped to telephone a warning that his attacker needed to be found before the delusional man hurt anyone else.) "It's a wonder that he lived," his wife, Carol Sontag, says. "Every single inch of his clothing was soaked in blood from his tie to his shoes." But Sontag's concern for the student did not wane. He helped hire the youth's defense attorney and testified on the young man's behalf so that an attempted-murder trial ended in a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.
A Pomona professor for 57 years, Sontag died June 14 in Claremont, Calif. He was 84.
Sontag, '49, was born in Long Beach, Calif. His parents died when he was young. He put himself through Stanford working as a hasher. He went on to get a master's and PhD at Yale and to become an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.
He was the author of 28 books, including Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church, an examination of the controversial Korean religious movement. The book was informed by a rare, nine-hour interview with the movement's founder.
When he was honored in May with the Pomona trustees' medal of honor, Stewart Smith, chair of the board, said: "For Fred, every student, however mischievous, is (as he would say) 'really a good kid,' deserving of his generous support and guidance." One young alum summed it up: "Fred made us believe in ourselves, thereby giving us the greatest gift we could have ever hoped for."
Sontag is survived by his wife; a son, Grant, '77, MA '78; a daughter, Anne Karch; and three grandchildren.
