Dr. James Thomas Laney

Dr. James Thomas Laney

December 24, 1927-August 13, 2026

Dr. James Thomas Laney (Jim) died at home early Thursday morning, August 13th, 2026, beside his beloved wife, Berta Radford. He was 98.

Jim was born in the small town of Wilson, in Northeast Arkansas, on Christmas Eve 1927. His mother was an elementary school teacher, his grandfather a Methodist minister, and his grandmother a fierce advocate of education. As a teenager he worked odd jobs in the Mississippi Delta, which he credited as an important part of his learning. He moved to Memphis, Tennessee his junior year of high school. There he attended Central High School, where he met Berta, the love of his life. He excelled at both academics and football, earning a full scholarship to Yale College in 1946.

At the end of his sophomore year of college, at 19 years old, Jim enlisted in the U.S. Army to serve in the Counter Intelligence Corps in South Korea. After returning to Yale, he married Berta in December 1949, and graduated from Yale College in 1950 with a degree in Economics. His experience in Korea, however, had a lasting impact that inspired him to leave a career in business to pursue the ministry.

He enrolled in Yale Divinity School and was chaplain at the Choate School while in seminary. He and Berta began their family during these years. After his ordination in the Methodist Church, he served as a pastor at two churches. He returned to South Korea in 1959 as a missionary educator at Yonsei University, this time with Berta and their three children. Their two youngest children were born in Seoul over their five-year term. In 1964 the whole family returned to Yale where Jim completed a doctorate in Christian Ethics in 1966, in only two years. He then taught at Vanderbilt Divinity School before becoming Dean of Emory University's Candler School of Theology in 1969.

In 1977, after eight years as Candler's Dean, he was appointed President of Emory, where he went on to lead the university for sixteen years. This may have seemed an unlikely path for a pastor and theologian, but his moral vision and intellectual rigor were precisely what made him such an earnest and effective executive. In 1979, he secured a gift of $105 million from Robert W. Woodruff and his brother, George, the largest gift ever made to an American educational institution at the time. Under his leadership, Emory's endowment doubled, a school of public health was founded, and the graduate school was transformed.

This success was driven by Jim's lifelong conviction that education was fundamentally a moral endeavor, what he called "the education of the heart." He envisioned a university's deepest purpose as handing down not just knowledge but wisdom, virtue, and a sense of moral community that inspired service to something greater than the self. His leadership drew many prominent faculty to Emory, including President Carter. By the end of his tenure, Jim had cemented Emory's place among the nation's leading universities.

In 1993 he was appointed Ambassador to South Korea by President Clinton. He arrived to a peninsula in crisis and was instrumental in establishing the 1994 Agreed Framework, halting North Korea's nuclear weapons program. His decades-long friendship with the Korean people, and his deep appreciation for their culture, defined his ambassadorship. Jim was fluent in Korean and known for delivering diplomatic speeches entirely in Korean. He and Berta returned to Atlanta in 1997.

He continued his lifetime of service well into retirement. He was a Trustee of the Carter Center, on the Board of the Luce Foundation, Chairman of the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, and a co-chair of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Korea. He was on the Board of Directors of The Coca-Cola Company and SunTrust Bank. He received more than twenty honorary degrees and decorations from the United States, Scotland and Korea. Emory renamed its graduate school the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies in 2009, and in 2014 Candler established the James T. and Berta R. Laney Chair in Moral Leadership, honoring the two of them together.

Above all his professional accomplishments, Jim's greatest pride and deepest joy rested within his faith and family. Jim and Berta raised five children, welcomed sixteen grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren. He had a beautiful, curious mind that never failed. In his 76 years of marriage, Jim and Berta started each morning with devotions and ended every evening holding hands while they recited the Lord's Prayer.

Jim is survived by his wife, Berta Radford Laney; their five children and their spouses: Joni Laney and Billy Vaughan, Tom and Drew Laney, Radford and Lisa Laney, Mary and Wendell Reilly, and Susan and Bill Castle; sixteen grandchildren (Ruth, Gray, Hudson, Tessa, David, Jamie, Rachel, Wesley, Sarah, Johnson, Will, Paige, Molly, Micah, Emaline, and Laney); and twelve great-grandchildren. The family is deeply grateful for the care and attention provided by their caregivers: Celeste Lamkin, Magda Yanez, and Enid Stewart.

A memorial service will be held on Friday, August 21 at 2 PM in Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church on the Emory campus, followed by a reception. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that gifts be made to the Ruth W. Hughey scholarship fund at Candler School of Theology (https://www.givecampus.com/campaigns/84557/donations/new) or the Wesley Campus ministry at Glenn Memorial UMC (https://www.glennumc.org/give). The memorial service will be viewable by this link: https://www.youtube.com/live/n3YfOtrbLng