Birth date: Jan 19, 1943 Death date: Aug 8, 2022
Dr. Jerry Reeves Sparger, age 79, of Germantown, Tennessee, passed away August 8, 2022, in Memphis, Tennessee. He died at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis of renal failure caused by Multiple Myeloma which he bravely battled fo Read Obituary
Dr. Sparger was a beloved instructor of mine back when University of Memphis was Memphis State - and I was getting a degree in criminal justice. I loved his vocabulary, the way he made us think and back up our supposition, how he afforded us first hand experience with the MPD and the prisons. I respected him. Rest in peace, Doc. You were one of the good ones.
I was thinking of Dr. Sparger this afternoon, did an online search, and only just learned that he passed away in 2022. I am a 1988 graduate of Memphis State University. I was a journalism major, but took several electives in the Criminal Justice Department, including a couple of Dr. Sparger's classes. Of all my professors and classes, Dr. Sparger and his courses were among my favorites and most memorable. As others have written here, Dr. Sparger was tough but fair. And one of the first things I look back on his classes was his pipe -- suit and tie, eyeglasses, pipe, and of course well-prepared course material. I feel blessed to have met him and to have been in his classes.
Jerry loved to reminisce about growing up in the hills of North Carolina. He once told me about his first day of school and being turned away and told to come back in one year. Instead, Jerry returned the next day and the next until the school finally relented and enrolled him in the first grade. This reveals not only young Jerry's stubbornness but also his lifelong love of learning.
