“He was an extremely joyful person, which must have been so difficult with what he was dealing with,” she said.

Klimko said that Stuntz never showed his pain while he was teaching, instead making students laugh and occasionally rewarding a good point with what his students knew was his highest compliment—a pause, and then a slow, “Yeah. That’s nice.”

Klimko said Stuntz made himself available to his students even through his treatment—welcoming them into his office, where he worked with the lights out and amidst stacks of papers.

J. Mark Ramseyer, a Law School professor who started at HLS roughly the same time as Stuntz, said that teaching and helping students was Stuntz’s own kind of medicine.

“Having to prepare for class and having the opportunity to work with students helped him deal with the pain,” Ramseyer said. “He responded by focusing on other people.”

Klimko said the cultural diversity at Stuntz’s religious funeral was indicative of his accepting and tolerant understanding of Christianity.

“My dad went out of his way to build relationships with other world views and listen to them with an open mind,” said Stuntz’s son Samuel D. Stuntz ’10.

“He was a combination of being wonderfully helpful—selflessly helpful—and always being modest about it,” Ramseyer said.

—Staff writer Caroline M. McKay can be reached at carolinemckay@college.harvard.edu.