Stephen Richards

I first met Toni in 2006 at Aviano Air Base. More precisely, I met Toni and Craig then, among their many roles an artistic pair who mutually inspired each other: Toni was the literary artist and Craig the visual artist. I have not corresponded with Craig since Toni’s death in 2020, so I hope he’s doing well. One of his many works was a brilliant parody of a Byzantine mosaic (made of real mosaic stones). If you looked carefully at the inscriptions beneath the two haloed “saints” in the centre, you could make out that the “Greek” lettering read “TONI” and “CRAIG”.

One of Toni’s most successful literary works was her “Brunetti’s Venice”, describing visits to the scenes of crimes solved by the Inspector Brunetti of Donna Leone’s novels. The book actually sold best in the German translation, since Brunetti has by far the biggest following in Germany. Toni and Donna got to know each other while working for UMUC, I believe in Spangdahlem, though I’d have to check that when I can get to my files.

Toni began teaching for UMUC in 1974 and moved to northern Italy in the early 1980s. She and Craig ran a thriving English program in Aviano and Vicenza, producing English majors on a scale rarely seen elsewhere in the division. In addition, Toni was the joint creator of UMUC’s Field Study program, together with Pauline Fry. They taught the first FS course in Paris in 1982, on expatriate American writers living in the Paris of the 1920s. After that the program thrived with courses on a range of historical, literary and cultural topics all over the continent.

One of the most pleasurable memories I have of my visits to Toni and Craig in Venice is sitting out on the bank of the canal by the Tre Archi bridge, just round the corner from their house, and dining on the good food and wine of that city on a mild October evening in 2008. We simply carried furniture out of the house and loaded the table up with all kinds of provisions, being joined later by other UMUC colleagues and enjoying the kind of good company that you realise only later will never come together in quite the same way again.

Toni was a woman of many talents, both intellectual and social, someone who enriched the lives of all—students and friends—who were touched by her spirit.

Pauline Fry

I met Toni Sepeda in January 1975. It was my second Maryland assignment; from Hoensbruck, Holland I was moving to Karamursel, Turkey, quite a cultural shift. We arrived in the late in evening, billeted in officers' housing. I couldn't see anything outside. It was pitch dark. Was given a key, walked down a nondescript corridor to the assigned door where to my surprise a woman was sitting on the floor, leaning against the door. Checked my key number. "Excuse me, but  this is my room." She jumped up. "Pauline Fry? I've been waiting for hours and I need to go!" An urgent voice,   a very determined voice. "Look," she added. "I've been waiting to meet you. You're teaching English. I just got my M.A. in English. We are going to be friends." Then she pulled out a wad of Turkish lira from her purse, and a list! " A few suggestions if you go into Istanbul. The ferry leaves from Yalova in the morning."  I just stared as she walked away, flabbergasted. That was Toni! We did become friends. I received many more lists. The following year she started teaching for Maryland. I had just developed a field study course with another friend and teacher, Sebia Hawkins. She decided to go back to the states, so I asked Toni if she'd team teach "Expatriate Writers in Paris: the 1920's." That class was the first of a joint venture , team teaching in Rome where I lived and in Venice where she and her partner Craig Manley had bought a small lovely house on the Canareggio canal. In the classroom she was brilliant, funny, and inspiring. 

It's hard to imagine she's not here anymore. And to add to Stephen's lovely memory, Craig divides his time between Turkey on  the Black Sea (where he and Toni built a house) and Aviano where they both had taught for Maryland. 

Richard Schumaker

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

Stephen Richards

Toni with friends on the canalside by Tre Archi, Venice, 2008. Taken by Craig