James Foster Tent
James Foster Tent, historian and museum docent, died on June 25, 2018. Jim grew up in Glen Rock, New Jersey, graduated from Dartmouth College in 1966 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1973.
Education was Jim's passion and profession. After teaching for one year at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, Jim became a professor of history at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1974 and a University Scholar in 1990. He served as the chair of the UAB History Department from 2002 to 2009 and was appointed a University Scholar Emeritus by the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees in 2010.
Jim was an expert in modern German history, military history, and the Cold War. His published numerous books in English and in German over the course of his academic career: Mission on the Rhine: Reeducation and Denazification in American-Occupied Germany (1982); The Free University of Berlin: A Political History (1988); E-Boat Alert: Defending the Normandy Invasion Fleet (1996); Den Deutschen Freund Sein: Das American Friends Service Committee
Jim also had long and productive relationships with several museums, including the Southern Museum of Flight in Birmingham, the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, and the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, Maryland.
Not only did he frequently wear attention-getting hats, Jim happily donned full Highlands regalia —; including a 10-pound woolen kilt, even in the heat of an Alabama summer — to march and perform with the Alabama Pipes and Drums, for which he served as drummer, bass drummer and ultimately drum major.
In 2009, Jim moved with his wife Bunnie Wyman Tent to Frederick Maryland, where he immersed himself in Civil War history and served as a docent at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. Capitalizing on Jim's uncanny resemblance to Santa Claus after his beard went fully white, Bunnie sewed Jim a "Civil War Santa" suit, based on Thomas Nast's drawings of Santa Claus visiting Union soldiers published in Harper's Weekly in 1862-1863. Jim continued to serve as Civil War Santa after he moved to Collington in Mitchellville, Maryland following Bunnie's death in 2014.
Jim is survived by his son John of Washington, DC, his daughter Virginia of Brooklyn, New York, his three grandchildren Joanna Cragin Tent, Helena Lucia Herrera, and Hugo Nevison Tent, and his sister Penelope Tent Galpin of Lilburn, Georgia.
A memorial for Jim was held on Sunday, July 15, 2018 at 3:30pm at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, 48 E Patrick St, Frederick, Maryland 21705, with a reception that followed. Jim will be buried with his wife Bunnie in the Wyman family plot in Blandford, Massachusetts at a later date. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that contributions be made to the American Friends Service Committee (www.afsc.org) or the National Museum of Civil War Medicine (http://www.civilwarmed.org).
— Published by J. B. Jenkins Funeral Home, Inc..