Richard Schumaker

 I was very saddened to learn the news about Rosemary Hoffmann’s passing.  By some quirk of fate, I read the email from the Maryland Portal as I was engaged in a Zoom meeting for a class, Philosophy 100, I originally taught for her and Wally Knoche many years ago. 

I met Rosemary for the first time in late August of 1977.  I was working on one of my Sorbonne theses, living in the Kleine Mantelgasse in Heidelberg and living a quiet life with little to worry about beyond whether to go the General Library of the University of Heidelberg or the Philosophisches Seminar.  Someone had suggested that I apply for a teaching position with the University of Maryland on the other side of Heidelberg. Without giving it much thought, I did so and a week later got a call from Bob Speckhard, the English Coordinator.  He interviewed me and said, “I want you to meet Rosemary and Wally,” I have a feeling that you have a lot in common with them.

This was the understatement of the century.

If I remember correctly, this interviewed occurred on a Thursday and early the following week I was on a Medevac plane to Zaragoza, Spain.  This plane stopped first in Nice and then went to Rota before taking me to Zaragoza, which is in the middle of the Aragon Desert (I think).

I worked directly for Rosemary and Wally for four years, getting to know both very well as they guided me through the ropes of becoming a Maryland-in-Europe prof.  Rosemary had so many different personal and professional virtues.  When I started in the Med Dept at Maryland, I had never taught, had not really lived in an English-language environment for almost a decade.  She was so careful and understanding she had a much better knowledge of my needs than I did.  Over the first six months, she taught me how to heed and follow the departmental processes, how to be patient and think through how to work with the adult working students and how handle the various challenges of working on a rather isolated, often politically charged USAFE base.  These might seem like simple and obvious skills but for me they were challenging-- I had been outside of the US and focused on France and philosophy for so long that I needed a mentor.

As I began to understand the world of adult education in a military environment, I easily figured out how to adapt my own continental philosophical interests to the US adult ed program. Here again, Rosemary was incredibly helpful.  As a pedagogue she had unique skills—stimulating and imaginative but extremely disciplined. As someone had no discipline outside my academic interests, these weren’t easy lessons for me.   This was a long time ago now and the cultural differences between the US and Europe were wider then than they are now.  Rosemary was a gifted academic with a PhD in German; she had a very good sense of who I was and how to help me bridge this gap cultural.  After about a year of teaching basic lower and upper-level courses, she began to work with me on the creation of new seminars and 3sh courses. By the time this process started, I had moved from Zaragoza to Naples and then on to San Vito Air Station near Brindisi.  The mission there was a cutting-edge USAFE intel project. My students there were mostly Air Force and Navy intelligence analysists and linguists; they were part of the global US intel community and had served at NSA in Maryland, Misawa, Japan and several places in the UK and Germany.  These were exceptional students who were yearning for challenging courses which would help them develop as students and humans.  Rosemary understood this situation well and encouraged me to develop new courses and teach ones in Shakespeare, American Lit, French and other similar ones.  She often flew down to either Naples or Brindisi and we not only worked on our Maryland projects but had really interesting trips in the Italian country side.  She was incredibly curious and open; she loved meeting the Italian agricultural workers in these areas.  We would get ourselves invited into their unique Trulli homes and be offered meals.  Experiences of a lifetime!!

Rosemary and I met up again professionally when I transferred from La Maddalena in Sardinia to Hahn, AB in the Hünsruck region of Germany.  The world was changing and this decision for me was very significant.  Rosemary had moved from Wally’s assistant in the Mediterranean area to the directorship of part of part of Germany—I forget the exact title. 

Hahn AB was a crucial part of the Reagan military build-up in the early 1980s.  It was the first base in Europe to use the new multi-role fighter, the F-16, and had a nuclear storage area as well as one of the important AF intel units.  This meant working with multiple services, a very complex student body, and an expanding student body.  Because of its geopolitical importance, it also became a site of political protests and terrorist attacks.

For Rosemary, this meant that she was responsible for one of the most important university programs in Europe—or anywhere really.  Our professional relationship changed during this time.  Another administrator probably would not have grasped the complexity of her new assignment or grasped the importance of finding the right personnel to teach and manage the program.   As my professional relationship with Rosemary deepened, so did my understanding of teaching in general and my own professional responsibilities in particular.  I still taught experimental classes over several academic areas but the need in the Hahn world was for something else—someone who could handle the high volume of students and also figure out practices that would help this student population.  In conjunction with the field reps, Patrick Pryor and Bill Badger, and the ESO, Mike Koster, we devised ingenious approaches to teaching classes that suited these students with very odd schedules and incredibly demanding military exercises that closed the bases down for days and weeks—thus cutting the students off from their classes.  I was often the lead prof to teach these “trick” sessions, to trouble shoot them and prepare them for general use. Rosemary was so emphatic, intelligent, and demanding in these discussions and meeting.  These traits were all but absent from my personality but little by little I got better; what one of the protest magazines once called “Militär-Heimat Hunsrück” despite all the stress, demonstrations, and dangers, Rosemary developed an incredible program.  To this date, I receive emails from our former students who always express appreciate for those classes.  As they tend to say, “We realized that you were there for us.”

After a while, Rosemary decided to return to the US to pursue one of her deep loves—architecture.  The changes in the US presence in Europe continued:  wars, more terrorism, many huge demonstrations, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the “drawdown” of troops.  Hahn AB closes but I moved to the nearby Bitburg AB and Spangdahlem.  Technology was changing global education and for many reasons Maryland in Europe was at the forefront of this.  This shift in teaching possibilities led me to accept a position at the home campus in Adelphi, MD.  After decades as a UMUC prof, seldom visiting the US, and always more interested in continental Europe than “elsewhere,” I found myself arriving at Maryland’s US HQ as an administrator. 

As I was being shown my office, one of the first people to greet me was my friend and former supervisor, Rosemary Hoffmann.  She was modest and kind: “Do you remember me?”  I started laughing—"Of course,” I said, “and started into “Do you remember…?”

For about a decade our offices were a few meters from each other.  Both of us liked being back in the US—we liked the DC-NYC corridor and felt that the institution needed our European expertise.  It was also interesting to have contact with “USM,” the University System of Maryland.  This gave us a good sense of how UMUC fit into the Maryland master plan.

During this time, Rosemary, in addition to working in university administration, taught German and did very important work in adapting language studies to the new online methods. 

I have been typing for about an hour from the Marriott Downtown Hotel in Philadelphia where I am attending a Northeast Modern Language convention and participating in a political demonstration at the Philadelphia City Hall.  It is time for Rosemary Memorial Service.  I was shocked and saddened to learn that she had passed; she had such a deep influence on my life, and I can’t think of anyone I admired more.  I had planned on sharing some of the kind and helpful things she did for me in my first few years back in the US, but ran out of time. 

Many of us are at once deeply saddened to think she’s no longer with us and infinitely grateful to have known such an intelligent, kind, and curious person. 

 I was very saddened to learn the news about Rosemary Hoffmann’s passing.  By some quirk of fate, I read the email from the Maryland Portal as I was engaged in a Zoom meeting for a class, Philosophy 100, I originally taught for her and Wally Knoche many years ago.  

I met Rosemary for the first time in late August of 1977.  I was working on one of my Sorbonne theses, living in the Kleine Mantelgasse in Heidelberg and enjoying a quiet life with little to worry about beyond whether to go t0 the General Library of the University of Heidelberg or the Philosophisches Seminar. 

 Someone had suggested that I apply for a teaching position with the University of Maryland on the other side of Heidelberg. Without giving it much thought, I did so and a week later got a call from Bob Speckhard, the English Coordinator.  He interviewed me and said, “I want you to meet Rosemary and Wally,” I have a feeling that you have a lot in common with them.

This was the understatement of the century.

If I remember correctly, this interviewed occurred on a Thursday and early the following week I was on a Medevac plane to Zaragoza, Spain to teach there on a trial basis.  This plane stopped first in Nice and then went to Rota before taking me to Zaragoza, which is in the middle of the Aragon Desert (I think).  Far, far from a German university town.

I worked directly for Rosemary and Wally for four years, getting to know both very well as they guided me through the ropes of becoming a Maryland-in-Europe prof.  Rosemary had so many different personal and professional virtues.  When I started in the Med Dept at Maryland, I had never taught, had not really lived in an English-language environment for almost a decade. 

 She was so careful and understanding; she had a much better knowledge of my needs than I did.  

Over the first six months, she taught me how to heed and follow the departmental processes, how to be patient and think through how to work with the adult working students, and how handle the various challenges of working on a rather isolated, often politically charged USAFE base.  These might seem like simple and obvious skills but to me they were challenging--I had been outside of the US and focused on France and philosophy for so long that I needed a mentor.

As I began to understand the world of adult education in a military environment, I easily figured out how to adapt my own continental philosophical interests to the US adult ed program. Here again, Rosemary was incredibly helpful.  As a pedagogue she had unique skills—stimulating and imaginative but extremely disciplined. As someone had no discipline outside my academic interests, these weren’t easy lessons for me.   This was a long time ago now and the cultural differences between the US and Europe were wider then than they are now.  Rosemary was a gifted academic with a PhD in German; she had a very good sense of who I was and how to help me bridge this gap cultural.  After about a year of teaching basic lower and upper-level courses, she began to work with me on the creation of new seminars and 3sh courses. By the time this process started, I had moved from Zaragoza to Naples and then on to San Vito Air Station near Brindisi.  The mission there was a cutting-edge USAFE intel project. My students there were mostly Air Force and Navy intelligence analysists and linguists; they were part of the global US intel community and had served at NSA in Maryland, Misawa, Japan and several places in the UK and Germany.  These were exceptional students who were yearning for challenging courses which would help them develop as students and humans.  

Rosemary understood this situation well and encouraged me to develop new courses and teach ones in Shakespeare, American Lit, French and other similar ones.  She often flew down to either Naples or Brindisi and we not only worked on our Maryland projects but had really interesting trips in the Italian countryside.  She was incredibly curious and open; she loved meeting the Italian agricultural workers in these areas.  We would get ourselves invited into their unique Trulli homes and be offered meals.  Experiences of a lifetime!!

Rosemary and I met up again professionally when I transferred from La Maddalena in Sardinia to Hahn, AB in the Hünsruck region of Germany.  The world was changing and this decision for me was very significant.  Rosemary had moved from Wally’s assistant in the Mediterranean area to the directorship of part of part of Germany—I forget the exact title.  

Hahn AB was a crucial part of the Reagan military build-up in the early 1980s.  It was the first base in Europe to use the new multi-role fighter, the F-16, and had a nuclear storage area as well as one of the important AF intel units.  This meant working with multiple services, a very complex student body, and an expanding student body.  Because of its geopolitical importance, it also became a site of political protests and terrorist attacks. 

For Rosemary, this meant that she was responsible for one of the most important university programs in Europe—or anywhere really.  Our professional relationship changed during this time. 

 Another administrator probably would not have grasped the complexity of her new assignment or grasped the importance of finding the right personnel to teach and manage the program.   As my professional relationship with Rosemary deepened, so did my understanding of teaching in general and my own professional responsibilities in particular.  I still taught experimental classes over several academic areas but the need in the Hahn world was for something else—someone who could handle the high volume of students and also figure out practices that would help this student population.  In conjunction with the field reps, Patrick Pryor and Bill Badger, and the ESO, Mike Koster, we devised ingenious approaches to teaching classes that suited these students with very odd schedules and incredibly demanding military exercises that closed the bases down for days and weeks—thus cutting the students off from their classes.  I was often the lead prof to teach these “trick” sessions, to trouble shoot them and prepare them for general use. 

Rosemary was so empathetic, intelligent, and demanding in these discussions and meeting.  These traits were all but absent from my personality but little by little I got better; what one of the protest magazines once called “Militär-Heimat Hunsrück” despite all the stress, demonstrations, and dangers, Rosemary developed an incredible program.  Even now, I receive emails from our former students who always express appreciate for those classes.  As they tend to say, “We realized that you were there for us.”

After a while, Rosemary decided to return to the US to pursue one of her deep loves—architecture.  The changes in the US presence in Europe continued:  wars, more terrorism, many huge demonstrations, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the “drawdown” of troops.  Hahn AB closes but I moved to the nearby Bitburg AB and Spangdahlem.  Technology was changing global education and for many reasons Maryland in Europe was at the forefront of this.  This shift in teaching possibilities led me to accept a position at the home campus in Adelphi, MD.  After decades as a UMUC prof, seldom visiting the US, and always more interested in continental Europe than “elsewhere,” I found myself arriving at Maryland’s US HQ as an administrator.  

As I was being shown my office, one of the first people to greet me was my friend and former supervisor, Rosemary Hoffmann.  She was modest and kind: “Do you remember me?”  I started laughing—"Of course,” I said, “and started into “Do you remember…?”

For about a decade our offices were a few meters from each other.  Both of us liked being back in the US—we liked the DC-NYC corridor and felt that the institution needed our European expertise.  It was also interesting to have contact with “USM,” the University System of Maryland.  This gave us a good sense of how UMUC fit into the Maryland master plan.

During this time, Rosemary, in addition to working in university administration, taught German and did very important work in adapting language studies to the new online methods.  

I have been typing for about an hour from the Marriott Downtown Hotel in Philadelphia where I am attending a Northeast Modern Language convention and participating in a political demonstration at the Philadelphia City Hall.  It is time for Rosemary’s Memorial Service.  I was shocked and saddened to learn that she had passed; she had such a deep influence on my life, and I can’t think of anyone I admired more.  I had planned on sharing some of the kind and helpful things she did for me in my first few years back in the US but ran out of time.  

Many of us are at once deeply saddened to think she’s no longer with us and infinitely grateful to have known such an intelligent, kind, and curious person.  

Few people have influenced me as strongly as Toni Sepeda, so I am very pleased to be able to share a few quick memories of her on this Maryland forum.  Interestingly, as I type this, I am in the middle of teaching a UMGC Zoom philosophy class about Descartes and radical doubt.  My philosophy students are in breakout rooms with a collaborative assignment, so I have about fifteen or twenty minutes to write this.  

It has always struck me as mysterious how back in the pre-internet and pre- Nick Allen/Gerry Heeger “One Maryland,” epoque, the Maryland colleagues heard about each over time and distance.  I taught my first class for Maryland (sic…I know that this is not the formal name) in the summer of 1977.  Although still enrolled at Paris IV, I was living in Heidelberg because of thePhilosophisches Seminar and got hired to teach a single Maryland freshman English class and then started a six-year barnstorming teaching tour of the Mediterranean: Zaragoza, La Maddalena, San Vito Air Station, Naples a few times, and Vicenza.  

Thanks to the administrative creativity of Rosemary Hoffmann and Wally Knoche, I was soon teaching normal classes and seminars in several different academic areas.   Almost immediately, certain names became familiar to me because they were Maryland legends:  their students described the personalities and teaching prowess of Phil Churchill and Pauline Fry; a little later, I heard about Toni, Patrick and Catherine Quinn, Robert-Louis Abrahamson, and the Bardis, John and Abby, in the UK.  Although hearing these Maryland Teaching Tales happened over forty-years ago, I remember the names of the students who described these professors to me and recall my admiration about the connection between those professors and their students.  Both then and now, I admired that connection and knew that it had importance. 

In the early 1980s, during the Reagan military build-up of NATO, I moved from La Maddalena to Hahn AB in the Hunsrück-Mosel area of Germany about eighty miles (I think) from Heidelberg and close to Trier and the French and Luxemburg borders.  Hahn AB was the first F-16 base in Europe and about a thirty-minute drive from two key USAFE installations, Spangdahlem AB and Bitburg AB.  All three were very active military installations and had burgeoning university programs, both graduate and undergraduate. 

Very quickly, I met Toni and Craig, who were living at the time in a very scenic villa right on the banks of the Mosel River.  I remember the first time I met them in person.

Craig was outside his villa focused on a painting he was doing of the river.  At this moment, we hadn’t met each other, and he probably didn’t realize who I was.   I hesitated to bother him but within seconds I realized who it was and said, “Craig…?”  Of course, I couldn’t resist blurting out that I knew all about Tony’s interest in Henry James and Virginia Woolf and the courses she was teaching.  He accepted my blundering and lack of discretion with courtesy and grace.  I remember our discussion about all the classes I had taught in Italy—the Freud, Nietzsche, Twenties, and Thirties classes I had taught with Sebia Hawkins.  It was clear that he was fast-forwarding to how he and Toni would thrive in that open, sunny, and academically interesting area.  He had many questions about Venice, where I had lived off and on for years because of my aunt who lived in S. Elena-Venezia.  It was clear to me that he and Toni were working on a move to a climate and artistic environment that suited them. 

A few weeks later, I met Toni in person.  This was at the Hahn High School: I was teaching a tea-time English 291 course, outlining the structure of a university research paper on the board.  Students had questions and as I was trying to navigate out the door to make room for the 6:30 class, in walked Toni with a slide projector, a beach bag full of teaching paraphernalia, and two or three students carrying large art history books.  Of course, I knew exactly who it was.  More focused on her students than her rude colleague, Toni still managed to smile, “Richard?”

Toni, Craig, and I always planned to have meals and discuss academic and cultural interests, but we were simply too busy. The military education programs were expanding very quickly then; the Air Force had finally instituted a tuition-assistance program for family members, which meant that women had easy access to university courses.  This greatly improved the UM classes; the bright women often with partial degrees from excellent US universities (Rutgers, St. Johns, Stoney Brook come to mind, but there were more) flooded into our courses.  Not only could Maryland offer upper-level art history, English, and philosophy classes, but seminars, field study, and Open University courses became naturals in this environment.   Despite spending little time together, the three of us had an easy understanding of each other.  We shared a strong sense of the value and interest of teaching humanities courses to adults; we realized that because our students were older than typical US undergraduate students and because they had been all over the world doing interesting and often dangerous jobs that we had pedagogical and human opportunities that standard profs don’t have the chance to explore.  We also grasped that many of our students could easily transition to graduate programs in the humanities.  Toni was tireless and tenacious with her gifted students—helping them bridge the distance between a tense NATO during the height of the Cold War and a graduate program in either Europe or the US.

My philosophy students have finished their break-out room assignment and need my attention, so I will stop for now.  In another note, I will share how my frustration with always seeing Toni and Craig driving by me in their white BMW led me to sign up for one of their UM Field Study courses in Rome.  I want to share with the Gypsy Scholar community how much I learned and how memorable that trip was—where I finally got to see Toni and her full team in action.  The lessons I took away form that week with them in Rome changed the way I taught and had long-term influences on my whole professional outlook.  I also want to mention our Donna Leon connection and admiration for her “Brunetti’s Venice.”

Let me share a hint now, though:

Richard Schumaker

1 Westway 

Greenbelt, MD 20770

rschumaker3@gmail.com

301.728.5175

It a mild and sunny day in College Park, MD where I am in the McKelden Library researching a paper on "Trump and Literature" for an upcoming conference.  I was surprised and saddened to learn of Maryan's passing:  our paths crossed at one of the fields sites in Germany, but I remember her well and very fondly. 

She was an excpetionally curious,committed, and cordial educator.   At those far-flung field sites, even the larger ones, the rapport between colleagues was not always the best;  between the responsibilites of teaching, pressures of working on a military base or post, and switching assignments often, it wasn't so easy to get to know one's colleagues.  Maryan was a refreshing presence amidst all this.  She was extrmely interested in the students at many levels--pedogogically, psychologically, and simply in general.  She was very perceptive about the demographics of the various MD sites.  She and I had many really interesting conversations about this.  Second,  she was an incredibly committed teacher.  I used to run into her in the library while she reviewed her notes and worked with students.  Third,  I remember the way she graciously reached out to everyone--MD faculty, CCC faculty, military staff, MD staff.  Her presence made an incredible difference to the teaching and learning atmosphere in a very short time.

I appreciate the long piece on Maryan posted on "Overseas Marylanders."  I had a basic idea of her background but the additional detail adds to my understanding of this unique and warmly remembered professor.

I was saddened this morning when I saw the "In Memory" notice about my friend Herbert Smith.  I had lost track of him some time ago but thought of him often, easily remembering with great fondness our shared experiences at Hahn AB (BRD), Kröv/Mosel, Bremerhaven, and various other European cities.

As though it were yesterday, I remember meeting Bart Smith. 

It was a rainy, depressing Monday morning at "Hahn on the Hill" and the ESO, Mike Koester, approached me in the Hahn Ed Center.  "Your new wingman is here and says he knows you.  Bart...Bart Smith..."  Dr. Speckhard, the UMUC English coordinator had phoned me a few days earlier--it must have been term II--and asked me to give Herbert Smith a hand as he arrived to teach English.  I was teaching a "trick" English 291 course that semester---a good deal for the students, for they could either attend the 8am or 6pm session--and was relaxing after the early class.

Courtesy of Mike, we had a comfortable "Maryland" office at Hahn with coffee maker, fridge, academic journals, typewriters, and used paperbacks.   A little sleepy from the early class, I was dozing when Bart Smith walked in.  "You're Richard, from Paris?"

In that small room littered with PMLAs and beat-up Faulkner novels, Bart and I settled in for a two-hour conversation.  He had lived in Paris with his family during the heady NATO days of US bases in Paris.  In our first conversation, he shared his immense personal culture.  He knew the entire existentialist tradition and had visited many of the places described in the Sartrean novels. He saw himself as a sort of Mathieu character.   In those days, I carried the first volume of the Roads to Freedom trilogy everywhere, so Bart and I must have discussed the characters in "L'Age de raison" for an hour.  He knew Kafka well and had just read Max Brod's biography.  Bart was generous and sensitive and made sure to bring a gift for me with him, the Norton edition of "The Heart of Darkness," which was a nice gift.

In those days, Hahn was in the midst of the Reagan Cold War frenzy:  it was the first European base to get the new F-16s; a massive building and renewal effort was seen everywhere; many satellite bases were sprouting up:  an AF intelligence station was growing; Ford Airspace was coming in with a one-of-a kind project; down the road from Hahn a huge NATO weapons storage facility was growing.  The officers club had just suffered a terrorist attack and the base was beginning to be surrounded by German peace movement demonstrations.  It was noisy and demonic.  From the Hahn ed-center one could see the German peace demonstrators and hear a little of their chants sometimes.

For Maryland English instructors, the military build-up and political controversy was a dream come true.  The newly arrived military members, especially the 6911th intel students, desperately needed classes and our classes were full and often split. One of the new Heidelberg administrators, John Floyd, was driving his car around base with a large peace symbol on it.   Bart had worried about getting sufficient classes; suddenly, he would regularly be teaching three at a time.  On that first morning, I took him to a few landlords and hotel owners that I knew hoping to find a place for him to live.

We found a small, garret room across from the main base that Bart, who didn't drive, adored the moment he saw it.  "Kafka would love a room like this," was his comment as he signed the contract.  The landlord, a well-known German man in the Hahn community, smiled, seeing that he would have a new Maryland prof to talk to.

I saw Bart almost every day for that whole academic year.  My students quoted him and read his favorite books.  I always smiled when I walked into a class and saw students reading "The Castle" or "The Trial."  I knew who their English prof had been. 

Bart moved from Hahn after a while to be with his new German girlfriend in Bremerhaven.  I visited them many times and enjoyed meals at their hotel, around Bremerhaven, and going to the Bremerhaven opera with him and his family.  I met his sister, an opera singer and teacher of great charm and beauty, and one point and went to see "Otello" with them.

Bart was a great friend and made the trip to rural Hahn as often as he could to see me.  He seemed very happy with his girlfriend and kids in Bremerhaven.

Later in the Reagan administration, it became harder for me to see Bart Smith:  I was teaching so many classes at Hahn, Bitburg, and Spangdahlem, as well as traveling all over Europe to teach Monika Zwink's  6sh open university classes, so I had little time for any social life.  The Cold War was rapidly moving towards real war; the building frenzy continued until the closing of Hahn.  During this time, as my two sons were born, I heard of Bart mostly through our mutual friend, John Nolan.  Memory and care are strong, however, and all my shared experience with the intelligent, knowledgeable, and very kind Herbert Smith remain as vibrant as though they occurred yesterday, not over thirty years ago.

I would like to extend my sympathies to Dr Ernest Hankamer's family.  Ernie contributed enormously to the faculty, staff, and students of the University of Maryland University College.  He brought deep humanity and exemplary knowledge of philosophy to teaching and learning at UMUC.  I first met Ernie in 1980 when I was teaching in the Italian Mezzogiorno (San Vito dei Normanni):  throughout many years he mentored me in a sensitive and rigorous way.  I remember perfectly the last time Ernie and I shared a "Maryland" dinner in Heidelberg.  It was around the turn of the century, and the university was transitioning to an online mode of instruction.  Not only did he have provocative insights into teaching philosophy online but also very clearly grasped that this new mode of discourse was itself a philosophical question with its roots in the Sophists and Aristotle.  After all, "Being is said in different ways."   I never forgot that conversation and certainly won't forget the intelligence, courtesy, and commitment to education of Dr. Ernest Hankamer.

Perhaps we need a "History" area of some kind?  I do find the historical information interesting. For example, one of us should relate the early days of distance learning in Europe, focusing on the pioneering work of John Floyd.  It's a shame that that is being lost in the sands of time.

I am shocked and saddened to learn of Dr Riggs' passing.  He and I worked closely at the Eifel sites for years. Very few days passed when we didn't discuss teaching, politics, or reading.  He was a brilliant and well-informed professor completely dedicatd to his students and classes.  I remember his generosity and warmth when my kids were born: he took an active interest in my evolution as a dad and in the well-being of my young sons.  I admired his seriousness in keeping up with this field and his understadning of geopolitical matters in Europe in the final years of the Cold War and during the Wende.  

It is with sadness that I learn of Carl's passing.  He was an especially fine scholar and wonderful colleague.  He had a deep knowledge of German literature and culture and was extremely open to discussing them with his colleagues, who often did not have his same deep background.  I looked forward to seeing him at all the English meetings and learning from him and sharing notes on the state of the ever-changing English Department. 

I worked along side Horst from 1992 when I moved to the Eifel after the birth of my first son.  Horst Trost was an exceptional UMUC German teacher: he was beloved by his students, deeply respected by the field reps, and admired by the other professors.  Countless times, I would walk the halls of the Spandghahlem or Bitburg teaching facilities during my breaks and hear Horst working through German grammar with his classes, which were invariably full.  He was a wonderful colleague--always good natured and open to discuss German, Germany, or life in general.  Thousands of US students have a better understanding of German culture becuase of him.

Posted on: Feb 19, 2015 at 2:04 PM

I begin as the director of comparative literature for the Northeast Modern Language Association in about a month. Two of my primary goals are raising awareness of the online teaching of literature and teaching to diverse populations, one of which is military communities. I would always be pleased to hear from Marylanders in Europe about these topics.

Posted on: Jan 06, 2014 at 10:00 AM

Thanks Bill. You should add somewhere on your profile that you were a FAC member and FAC chair, Those are considerable accomplishments that should be shared.