UpDate - Vol. 14, No. 6, Page 13
October 6, 1994
Memorial tributes given for seven members of faculty

     Memorial tributes to seven deceased faculty members were read by
their colleagues Monday at the semiannual General Faculty Meeting.
     Eulogized were Hans-Peter Breuer, professor of English; Thomas O.
Calhoun, professor of English; J. Robert King, professor emeritus of
music; Max S. Kirch, professor emeritus of foreign languages and
literatures; Franklin Baldwin Newman, professor emeritus of English;
Harry W. Rawstrom, associate professor emeritus of physical education;
and Russell Stauffer, H. Rodney Sharp Professor Emeritus of
Educational Development.

     Barbara Gates recalled her colleague Hans-Peter Breuer as "a man
of great compassion and self-discipline," one who received his first
degree in mathematics and then went on to specialize in Victorian
literature. Prof. Breuer, who was editing the notebooks of Samuel
Butler at the time of his death Aug. 7, also taught courses in German
and coordinated the comparative literature program for the University.
In 1991, he organized an international symposium on the work of
Bertolt Brecht at the University, and "a true comparatist, he was
fascinated, too, by contemporary Japanese literature and film," she
said.
     An accomplished violinist who served as a member of the Delaware
Symphony and Delaware Chamber Orchestra, Prof. Breuer often "wedded
his two loves, music and literature" by teaching courses in music and
poetry or the musician in German literature. With his entire life,
Gates said, Prof. Breuer demonstrated how humanistic learning "cuts
across disciplinary borders and awakens the senses and heart along
with the mind."

     Poetry and music were "the greatest passions" of Thomas O.
Calhoun, who died of a heart attack on June 13. Prof. Calhoun, who
came to the University in 1967, wrote scholarly articles on English
metaphysical poets, and his work on the religious poet and doctor
Henry Vaughan led him to develop courses in mystical literature,
biomedical literature and an interdepartmental course in medical
ethics.
     Himself a poet, Prof. Calhoun had become well known in recent
years for his "singing, guitar-playing rock duo" with colleague Jerry
Beasley, the Elderly Brothers. Lois Potter recalled that her colleague
played a variety of instruments and "liked to combine the teaching of
English lyrics with study and performance of their musical setting."
     Potter noted that Prof. Calhoun's collaboration with J. Robert
King, professor emeritus of music who died shortly before Prof.
Calhoun, resulted in two books and a compact disc featuring the work
of 17th-century English poet Abraham Cowley set to music. "Like
Cowley, Tom valued privacy, reflected in his very 17th-century love of
gardening," Potter said, "but his passionate desire for justice and
his almost instinctive charity" made him an active member of the
community who counseled the elderly, gave charity concerts and visited
Alzheimer patients."

     David Herman provided remembrances of J. Robert King, who died
June 12 at the age of 74. After joining the Delaware faculty in 1946,
Prof. King founded and directed many of the instrumental ensembles and
chorales, served twice as chairperson of the Department of Music and
supervised the final plans for the Amy E. du Pont Music Building. A
recipient of the University's excellence-in-teaching award, he also
organized the annual alumni band reunion.
     Although he retired in 1985, Prof. King continued to teach part-
time, offering a course in American music for the Honors Program the
year before his death. A conductor for such organizations as the
Brandywiners, the Delaware Chamber Symphony and the Academy of the
Dance orchestra, Prof. King also was a productive scholar, editing
music for the Moravian Foundation and, most recently, the musical
settings for the poems of Abraham Cowley.
     "Bob King was one of the keystones on which this department was
built," Herman said. "He designed and implemented much of the
curricula; he taught most of the courses; he led the department from
being a small, service-oriented unit into one which supports curricula
leading to a variety of undergraduate and graduate majors while
maintaining its commitment to the general University student."

     Max Kirch, chairperson of the Department of Foreign Languages and
Literatures from 1963 to 1971, was a "tireless champion of the idea
that the study of a foreign language is the key to real understanding
of another culture." Prof. Kirch received a bachelor's degree in
ancient Greek at the age of 19 from the University of Pennsylvania,
before going on to complete a doctorate in Germanic languages there in
1951.
     His colleague David Strixrude recalled that Prof. Kirch's
extraordinary linguistic proficiency allowed him to teach courses in
French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swahili, and he received several
federal grants to train and retrain elementary and secondary school
teachers in foreign languages. His college-level textbook, Functional
German, remained on the market for more than 10 years, and he later
produced a book on non-verbal communication across cultures.
     Before his retirement in 1984, Prof. Kirch served as president of
the National Federation of Modern Language Teacher Associations, as
associate editor of a journal devoted to teaching of German and as a
member of the German Achievement Test Committee for the College
Entrance Examination Board. In 1970, the French government honored him
for his contribution to French culture.
     Students and colleagues will recall Prof. Kirch's high standard
of personal integrity and social comportment, Strixrude said, "for he
was, unfailingly, an honorable and gracious gentleman, a model of the
generous spirit that we all hope love of learning will foster."

     Educated at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard
University, Franklin Baldwin Newman taught at Amherst College and the
University of Michigan before returning in 1957 to West Chester, Pa.,
to take care of an invalid mother and teach part-time at Delaware. In
1988, he retired as an associate professor with emeritus standing,
after serving as a faculty member at Delaware for some 30 years.
     At the time of his promotion, Edward Rosenberry, then chairperson
of the department, wrote: "There is no better or more widely informed
member of the English Department, no one who could at this moment be
assigned so wide a range of courses to teach...and he has...vertical
as well as horizontal flexibility; that is, I could shift him from a
graduate seminar to a section of freshman composition without causing
him to flutter an eyelash."
     Jay Halio recalled that Prof. Newman was energetically involved
in the Modern Language Association, Phi Beta Kappa, the Renaissance
Society of America and the National Council of Teachers of English,
while especially active in teacher education at the University of
Delaware and the College English Association. "One of the projects he
most delighted in was taking groups of students and faculty to New
York City on theatre trips as part of the Winterim and Winter Session
courses that became popular under his direction," Halio said.

     Jack O'Neill presented the memorial tribute to Harry W. Rawstrom,
former head swimming/diving coach and founder of the men's lacrosse
program, who died April 26 at the age of 77.
     An outstanding collegiate swimmer of his time, Coach Rawstrom was
head coach of swimming for 35 years, the longest continuous tenure for
a head coach in Delaware athletic history. "Harry remains the
winningest swimming coach as well," O'Neill said, with a record of 211-
153-4 compiled from 1946 to 1981. In the spring of 1991, the
University's Board of Trustees named the Carpenter Sports Building
swimming pool in his honor, a pool Coach Rawstrom had helped design.
     Coach Rawstrom retired from coaching in 1981, but he remained
active in promoting the health benefits of swimming exercise. "There
are many stories of his helping post-cardiac patients or overstressed
faculty to learn and experience the joys of fitness through swimming,"
O'Neill said.

     Through the efforts of Russell Stauffer, the University of
Delaware became a premier institution in reading education, Jack
Pikulski told the assembled faculty. Prof. Stauffer, who died May 16
at the age of 83, had retired in 1976 as H. Rodney Sharp Professor of
Educational Development.
     Prof. Stauffer convinced the founders of the International
Reading Association (IRA), a professional organization of almost
100,000 members in more than 60 nations, to establish international
headquarters in Newark, Del., because "proximity to the University, a
growing force in reading research and education," would be
advantageous, Pikulski said. In 1967, the IRA recognized Prof.
Stauffer's service as author, editor and teacher.
     A designer of innovative methods of teaching reading, Prof.
Stauffer wrote five popular college textbooks and more than 150
articles. He also was editor of the well-known and widely circulated
journal, The Reading Teacher, from 1958-1967, the longest tenure of
any editor for that publication.
     Pikulski said Prof. Stauffer was an "incessant punster" and "ever
the student and expert user of language...a man who loved and savored
words, the way some people love and savor chocolate."
                                                        -Cornelia Weil