“There wasn’t any form of music he didn’t like,” Valerie Epps recalled of her husband, who was also a trustee of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Epps was raised in Louisiana and graduated from Talladega College in Alabama before matriculating at the Divinity School. He became a teaching fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies in 1961 and was appointed assistant dean of the College in 1964.

Epps met his wife when he was assistant dean and she was working in Harvard’s registrar’s office as editor of the course catalogue.

During a 1967 Faculty meeting in Sanders Theatre, Epps saw his future wife—who was charged with ensuring that only people with identification entered—disallowing entry to well-known poet Robert Lowell, who was at Harvard at the time. Lowell had forgotten his identification, and Epps eventually told the employee from the registrar’s office that she should allow Lowell to attend the meeting.

Epps asked the woman out to lunch the next day. The day after that, he proposed.

Valerie Epps said that she didn't take the proposal seriously.

“I was sufficiently interested to hope it wasn’t a joke, though,” she added.

Epps, who suffered from diabetes, had previously experienced health troubles while dean. He underwent double-bypass heart surgery in August 1995, and he received a kidney transplant four months later from his wife.

“It’s important that I protect her investment,” Epps told The Crimson at the time.

Epps’ wife said her husband went into Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston the Monday before his death to undergo surgery for an aneurysm that was discovered in his aorta.

Valerie Epps said that she and her husband were told that the odds of surviving the operation for a completely healthy person were 50 percent, but that without the procedure, death would be imminent.

Epps “made it through the surgery fine,” his wife said.

Two days later, though, his liver failed, eventually leading to his death.

“The way he died was unexpected,” Valerie Epps said. “The fact that he died was not unexpected.”

“During the fall, he really wasn’t well at all. He was in the hospital three times,” she said.

Epps is survived by his wife; by two sons, Josiah T. Epps ’98 and Caleb S. Epps ’03; and by his brothers, Martin L. Epps, of Jackson, Miss., and Heibert G. Epps, of Houston, Texas.

A memorial service will be held in Memorial Church on Thursday Sept. 4, at 11 a.m. He will be buried in Cambridge’s Mt. Auburn Cemetery.

—Staff writer Alexander J. Blenkinsopp can be reached at blenkins@fas.harvard.edu.