John Thomas Casteen III was born December 11th, 1943, in Portsmouth, Va., to John Thomas Casteen Jr. and Naomi Irene (Anderson) Casteen. He grew up in the Cradock and Deep Creek areas of Chesapeake and Portsmouth with his brothers Tim and Dennis and close family friend Bob Linton, graduating from Cradock High School in 1961. From his mother, he inherited a profound love of the musicality of language, including and especially the texture and cadences of the King James Bible. From his father, he learned a life-long love of the water, particularly the Chesapeake Bay and the Great Dismal Swamp. From his teachers in Cradock, especially Cora Mae Fitzgerald, who urged him to attend the University, he gained a sense of the inestimable value of public education — a transformative process of individual growth and democratic progress.
He earned the Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University, where he was inducted to Phi Beta Kappa. Under the supervision of Edgar Shannon, Bob Kellogg and Arthur Kirsch, he trained as a scholar of medieval literature in the University’s English Department, focusing on Anglo-Saxon poems and Icelandic sagas. He worked as a student employee in the Special Collections Department under the supervision of Anne Freudenberg, with whom he collaborated for many years afterward on acquiring and adding to the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.
Casteen began his academic career as Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1969. His time at Berkeley was brief but formative, further shaping his lifelong dedication to public education, and particularly to public research universities. In 1975, he became Dean of Admissions at the University, where he led the group of admissions and financial aid officers who strove to implement Shannon’s vision of a fully coeducated and integrated student body. Having come of age during the Civil Rights era and attended high school during Massive Resistance, he was determined to transform the undergraduate student body in a manner consistent with the principle and practice of inclusive excellence. He foresaw the ideal that all students should be equally served by an institution devoted to the public good.
Casteen continued his scholarship in medieval literature during this period and also wrote prose and poetry, publishing “16 Stories”, a collection of short fiction, in 1981. Over the years, he authored hundreds of articles of various kinds on topics relating to education.
In 1982, Casteen became Virginia Gov. Charles S. Robb’s Secretary of Education, a position in which he worked to further efforts to desegregate Virginia’s colleges and to increase state support for research. As Secretary, and with the invaluable support of his friend and colleague Dottie Berlin, Casteen continued the larger project he had begun in the Office of Admissions — ensuring access to top-quality opportunity and instruction for all students in the Commonwealth, from all backgrounds, from all regions and at all levels of public education.
In 1985, Casteen began his presidency at the University of Connecticut, focusing on undergraduate program reform, expansion of the graduate program and support for the research of a growing faculty — all initiatives meant to strengthen the liberal arts core of a historically vibrant land-grant university. This core included a growing emphasis on international education and scholarship, including and especially programs in Poland and Turkey, and enhancements to the university’s library systems and special collections. During a period of budget cuts at the state level, Casteen oversaw a broad and far-reaching series of capital and programmatic growth initiatives intended to give a sound financial footing to a growing institution. Both knowledge production and fundraising projects flourished under his leadership as he diversified the university’s administrative body.
Casteen became President of the University of Virginia in 1990, a post he held until 2010. During the beginning of his tenure and then again after his retirement, he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in medieval English and Icelandic literature, higher education administration, the contemporary novel and a popular course on Venice — its history, architecture, culture and particular resonance in literature and art.
Casteen’s tenure as President redefined the University in a period of budget cuts, increasing emphasis on private fundraising to support ongoing and growing research, academic programs and construction. A 1999 profile in The New York Times emphasized the depth of his work in sustaining the institution, but also his reliance on partnerships with energetic colleagues, including especially Elizabeth Zintl, Gordon Burris, Bob Sweeney and Leonard Sandridge. Ten years later, on his retirement, another profile, “The Builder,” catalogued his accomplishments during a 20-year period in which state funding for the University shrank from 22.9 percent to 6.7 percent.
Casteen may be best remembered as the founder of AccessUVA, a scholarship program to support undergraduate students whose qualifications were excellent, but whose families would be hard pressed to afford college tuition. During a period of decreased federal support for the Pell Grant program, AccessUVA — funded initially by a seed grant from Casteen himself alongside matching grants from other donors — stepped into the breach. The program carries forward his personal commitment to the transformative power of public education in the lives of individual students, communities and civic and global culture.
Many long-time members of the University’s staff and faculty, and other colleagues from other areas of his professional life, emphasize Casteen’s habit of remembering people’s names and his humility. He did not divide the world into those who mattered and those who did not — instead, he valued fully the unique contributions of all persons willing to devote their energy to the shared project of public education. He proposed the Elizabeth Zintl Leadership Award, financially supported by David A. Harrison III, which annually honors a woman whose service to the University helps expand its capacity for growth and change and is the namesake of the Casteen Diversity-Equity-Inclusion Leadership Award.
John and Betsy Casteen took part in a series of Virginia Voyages trips together during and after his presidency, traveling and connecting with the global University community. After his retirement, Casteen served on a number of corporate and nonprofit boards, including the Foundation for Community College Education, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Mariners’ Museum, Semester at Sea, the Fralin Museum, the Rare Book School and, with Don and Joan Fry and other friends and colleagues, the Leifr Eiriksson Foundation. He was President of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia.
In 2010, President Barack Obama named him to the Board of Trustees of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in 2011 for his work in global education. In 2022, he was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Icelandic Order of the Falcon, Iceland’s highest award for an individual, on the basis of his contribution to cultural exchange and support for students in Iceland and the United States.
Casteen married Sue Elaine Scruggs, later Sue Selden — also a Portsmouth native — in 1966. The couple lived in Woods Mill in Nelson County, where she began a long career teaching in the public schools. They survived the flood following Hurricane Camille in 1969 and moved to California shortly afterward. They had one son, John, and divorced in 1972.
In Berkeley in 1975, Casteen married Lotta Margareta Löfgren, with whom he had two children, Elizabeth and Lars. Their growing family spent time in Denmark, Maine, at Wintergreen and on power and sailboats on the Chesapeake Bay, Block Island Sound and Long Island Sound. During this time, and while raising children, Löfgren completed her PhD in the University’s English Department and actively supported his work as President. They divorced in 1998.
He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth “Betsy” Casteen. They married at Carr’s Hill, the University President’s residence, in 2003. In collaboration with Betsy and other like-minded and generous grantors, Casteen financially supported the Betsy and John Casteen Arts Grounds at the University. The expansion reflected the Casteens’ shared commitment to art and sense of its centrality to the University’s broader mission. After his retirement, they spent happy summers in Castine, Maine, where they explored Penobscot Bay and watched the boats and tides pass beneath their bay window overlooking the Bagaduce River.
His large and blended family includes daughter Elizabeth Ingeborg Casteen (Frank Chang) of Binghamton, New York, sons John Thomas Casteen IV (Siân White) of Charlottesville and Lars Löfgren Casteen (Sonia Von Gutfeld) of Jackson Heights, Queens, and stepdaughters Alexandra Taylor Foote of Chattanooga, Tennessee and Elizabeth Laura Robinson (Elliot Robinson) of Macon, Georgia. His brothers Dennis and Tim Casteen, of Chesapeake, and their families also survive him. He loved and was adored by all of his family, especially his twelve grandchildren: — Lily Casteen, Luke Casteen, Sigrid Chang, Frida Chang, Soren Casteen, Nora Casteen, Madeleine Barker, Katherine Barker, Charlotte Robinson, Samantha Robinson, Benjamin Robinson and Summer Robinson.
Casteen succumbed to pancreatic cancer after a very brief period of diagnosis and treatment. He admired and appreciated the excellent care of Dr. Barbara Post and Dr. Tri Le, both of the University. The family wishes to thank Just a Little Help and Hospice of the Piedmont for their compassion, professionalism, and kindness during his final days. A small service for family and close friends will be held soon, with a public memorial service at the University later this spring. In lieu of flowers, please consider donating in any amount to AccessUVA.
John T. Casteen IV and Elizabeth Ingeborg Casteen are the children of John T. Casteen III
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