Lionel Garrison, Jr.

Lionel Burton Garrison, Jr., passed away peacefully at the age of 82 on Wednesday, June 11, 2025, surrounded by family. He was born at a military hospital in 1942, nine months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He spent the first few years of his life living with his mother, his aunt, and his cousin in the home of his maternal grandparents in Chicago while his father served as an officer in the Navy during World War II. During his childhood, his family moved often due to his father’s work. Lionel graduated from Huntington East High School in West Virginia. He attended the University of Chicago, graduated from Alma College in Michigan in 1965 with a degree in mathematics, and attended graduate school at Duke University studying philosophy. He soon relocated to St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands, where his parents and siblings had moved in 1965 and his father had started a business. Lionel began, what would eventually become a teaching career spanning 52 years, teaching mathematics and science at St. Dunstan’s Episcopal School. Lionel returned to the States and earned a Master’s Degree in Mathematics from Syracuse University. In 1972, he was recruited by the Englewood School for Boys in Englewood, NJ, which would soon merge to become the Dwight-Englewood School, to serve as the second Mathematics Department Chair in the school’s history. He remained Department Chair until 1989, when he began teaching at the Horace Mann School in New York City. During his 30 years of teaching in the Upper Division at Horace Mann, he served as Mathematics Department Chair and was the first Director of the Tutoring Center before he retired in 2019. Over the course of his teaching career, Lionel taught a range of mathematics courses, chemistry, physics, and computer science, but his real passion was teaching Advanced Placement Calculus.

Beyond the classroom, Lionel was deeply involved in numerous professional activities. He mentored student teachers at Fairleigh Dickinson University in NJ and worked for the College Board, leading workshops for calculus teachers in the New York metro area and grading AP calculus exams. He also reviewed and edited articles for The Mathematics Teacher, the official journal for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Lionel was active in the Englewood Community, serving as a member of the Englewood School Board and a term as its president. He was an active member of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Englewood, serving as an acolyte, lector, and warden. 

Lionel loved opera, classical music, and art. Over the years, he subscribed to the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic, and was a member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He enjoyed a variety of activities, including singing, tennis, swimming, skiing, traveling, reading classical literature, playing the violin, and playing chess, even representing the US Virgin Islands at the Chess Olympiad in Lugano, Switzerland, in 1968. 

Lionel was predeceased by his parents, Lionel Burton Garrison, Sr., and Martha Janssen Garrison, and by his brothers-in-law, Rodgers Bressi, Sr., and Charles R. Keene. He is survived by his wife Susan, whom he hired to teach mathematics at the Dwight-Englewood School in 1980, and by his three children, Tamara Ruth Garrison of Albany, NY, Catherine Ruth Garrison of Yonkers, NY, and Lionel Christopher Garrison (Chris) of New York City. He is also survived by his brother Edward Garrison and his wife Martha, sister Martha Bressi, and sister Joanna Isherwood and her husband Dick. He will also be remembered by many cousins, including his closest cousin, Barbara Hughes of Madison, WI, with whom he spent his early childhood in Chicago and later shared a love of travel with his wife, Susan. He will always be known by his numerous nieces and nephews and their children as Uncle Lionel. 

Lionel maintained close friendships across New York, New Jersey, and St. Croix, including many residents of The Vista, a retirement community in Wyckoff, NJ, where he and Susan moved in 2021. He was known to family and friends as being highly intelligent and being the repository of all manner of assorted facts. He took pride in always being well dressed, and he was a kind and generous man to all with whom he came in contact. He was an inspiration to his many teaching and professional colleagues and his students throughout his career. He loved the island of St. Croix for its beauty, its friendly residents, and its history. He and his family spent many vacations and much of his retirement time at the family condominium at Carden Beach. 

Donations in memory of Lionel may be made to:

Horace Mann School at 231 West 246 St. Bronx, NY 10471 (Gifts in his memory will go to the Financial Aid Fund). 

Dwight-Englewood School Annual Fund at 315 East Palisade Avenue Englewood, NJ 07631 to support student financial aid.

A remembrance for Lionel will be announced at a later date.