Lawrence Today magazine, Spring 2004
Professor Emeritus of Slavic
Languages and Literature George W. Smalley died August 6, 2003, at the Shalom
Home in
St.
Paul, Minn.
A native
of Chicago,
he spent his final years in Arden Hills, Minn.
A member of the Lawrence faculty from 1964 to 1996, he attended Northwestern
University for two years before entering the U.S. Air Force in 1951. He served
in an intelligence unit and studied Russian at the U.S. Air Force Russian
Language Institute at Syracuse University. After leaving military service,
he graduated
from the University of Chicago with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Russian
literature in 1961 and earned the Master of Arts degree from the University
of Chicago
in 1962.
He received Lawrence’s Excellence in Teaching Award in 1969, the same
year in which he and Professor Richard Yatzeck first led a study tour of Russia
and several Eastern European countries. Smalley’s “camping tours” to
Eastern Europe, known familiarly as “the Slavic Trip,” occurred
every other summer during the 1970s and 1980s. Some 40 students participated
in each trip, traveling in and between countries in mini-bus caravans with
six or seven to a Volkswagen van. In all, these tours took Smalley and his
students to several of the Russian republics and as many as 18 different countries.
Professor Smalley also co-directed Lawrence’s Kurgan exchange program,
which annually sends Lawrence students to Appleton’s sister city in Siberia
and brings an equivalent number of Kurgan State University students to Lawrence.
Since news of Professor Smalley’s death was published in the Fall 2003
issue of Lawrence Today, a number of his former students have written,
providing the remembrances that follow.
Majoring in the professor
The first group of Professor Smalley’s Slavic languages and literature
majors graduated in 1968, and I was one of those four graduates.
George Smalley arrived at Lawrence in 1964, the year I was a freshman. The
last thing on my mind was pursuing any foreign language as a major. I had
taken French and Latin in high school and decided to take only a few more
courses
to satisfy the graduation requirement and be done with it. But Dean Mary
Morris had other ideas. At that time, she sent incoming freshmen a schedule
of suggested
courses for the first term and, to my surprise, my list included beginning
Russian.
After a few courses, I was hooked. I recall realizing that I was majoring
in the professor rather than his subject. Mr. Smalley’s classes were stimulating,
provocative, and funny. Before getting down to our serious study, we would
enjoy a few moments of “chit chat” (his term) about current affairs
and life in general.
During part of Mr. Smalley’s military stint, he taught at the Monterey
Language Institute. There he created his own method of teaching the Russian
language and brought with him masses of vocabulary and conversational handouts,
some of which I still have. We students
worked hard; I remember reciting the alphabet while showering in my Ormsby
dorm. Gradually we were able to appreciate the power of reading the Russian
novels, short stories, plays, and poems as they were written in their original
language.
As I progressed into upper-level courses and tutorials, we would meet in
his fourth-floor Main Hall office. He was an addicted smoker, and I remember
his
yellow-stained fingers as he lit up the ever-present next cigarette. I recall
the glint in his eye as I translated a new passage aloud, coming upon some
hilarious incident or play on words, and our sharing a wonderful laugh together,
appreciating the wit of those great Russian writers. It was a pleasure to
gain mastery at that level and understand nuances that might have been lost
in translation.
Professor Smalley was always available to us and worked tirelessly, sharing
his love of teaching and his subject with us. In the process, as in the liberal
arts tradition, he was teaching us how to go on learning and how to live.
I am forever grateful. —
Suzanne Munro Gardner, ’68, Madison, Wis.
Hedgehog or fox?
Every student of Slavic languages and literatures at Lawrence has probably
heard of Isaiah Berlin’s essay on "The Hedgehog and the Fox" — just
one of the gifts George Smalley gave us to help us keep our mental furniture
in order.
George — solid, grey (in dress and hair color and skin tone after all
those cigarettes), seemingly unflappable, always working, “cutting sheets,” listening
to the opera and the Cubs game, with advice for every situation (how many husbands
a woman should plan for over her lifetime, buy your souvenir fez in Yugoslavia) — always
seemed to be the hedgehog, knowing one big thing and building his entire
life around it. George was a teacher first, last, and always.
But when I try to assemble all the memories into one coherent package, I
am unable to do it. George walking home from the movies (eight hours of War
and
Peace) with Maxine, holding hands, and then word of the divorce. George
lecturing on the value of the adage "a place for everything and everything
in its
place" and then the sight of his dripping, rain-soaked tent in a Polish
campground, obviously an unfit place for man or beast. George, the dedicated
professor, and George, the ambitious world traveler. Maybe he was the fox,
after all, a man of contradictions and foibles, conflicts and inconsistencies.
I can’t pigeonhole him, but I am grateful to this day, 35 years later,
for his willingness to start a winter-quarter section of Russian 101 for
me, for all that he taught me about linguistics (an unexpected and wonderful
bonus) in addition to all he taught about Russian,
for developing a system that let his students read real literature from the
beginning, for all those Army dialogues he gave us to memorize, for building
an outstanding department that gave me the foundation to go on to graduate
school and get a Ph.D., for a transformative travel experience camping through
the USSR and Eastern Europe, for always opening doors onto life for his students. —
Pat Suhrcke, ’71, Director, Cambridge Forum, Cambridge, Mass.
Teacher, mentor, and friend
While at different times, we both studied extensively with George at Lawrence,
he also devoted significant time to each of us beyond the classroom. For
us, George was a teacher, mentor, and friend, but more importantly, he was
our
guiding light in understanding the meaning of lifelong learning. A wiser
mentor would be hard to find. He was truly a master teacher. He touched each
of our
lives significantly and contributed powerfully to our decisions to pursue
the work we do today with our students. We now work together as teachers/administrators
at an independent college-preparatory girls’ boarding school. We miss
him. —
Anne MacLeod Weeks, ’77, and George Swope,’72, Oldfields
School, Glencoe, Md.
Thank you
Professor Smalley was the best teacher I ever met.
Who can forget trudging to the fourth floor of Main Hall to assemble dozens
of military dialogues, where we learned how to "ask fellow soldiers for
cigarettes" or "request directions to a chicken farm"?
Useful dialogue that has stood the test of time.
Seriously, valuable things were learned on the fourth floor in a circle around
George’s chair. I learned the love of language and of education. Why
was it that in springtime the college radio station played so much Russian
music? The answer. We were all taking Professor’s assignment to learn
to identify Slavic music seriously. It’s not that we wanted an A for
identifying music. We wanted to show George that we cared about his assignments.
Who can forget the Russian trips, beginning in 1969 and going into the ’70s
and ’80s? In a time of suspicion and cold war, Professors Smalley and
Yatzeck pioneered trips into Eastern Europe. It was as close to space travel
as many of us would ever know. I remember asking directions to a campground
from some gypsies on a moonless night in a rainstorm (honest). Whatever language
I spoke, they barely understood, but I communicated and found my way. How I
communicated I don’t know. But I’m sure George would be able
to explain it.
To Lawrence, thank you so much for hiring Professor Smalley and keeping him
when he obviously didn’t fit
into all the traditional molds of being a teacher. But he was an educator.
I have lost my mentor. He wanted me to be a linguist and to teach others.
My path was different. It is too late to tell him that I have taught 10,000
poor
and marginally educated clients how to use computers. I hope he would be
proud.
So, Lawrentians, tell your teachers thank-you. Write them and thank them, as
they grow older. Visit and surprise them.
Thank you, Lawrence University, for employing Professor George Smalley. And,
please offer my condolences to the Smalley family on the passing of George. —
Richard Kraneis, ’76, Chicago, Ill.
A working linguist
I imagine that any Lawrence student who interacted, however briefly, with George
Smalley would remember him. Those who studied languages with George for several
semesters not only remember him, they think of him often.
George remains an influence on numerous former students, not only because
of his dedication to teaching and linguistics but also because of his passionate
and contagious love of art and life. Those of
us in academia today also remember his rebel spirit, getting, perhaps, our
first taste of dissatisfaction with the more mundane aspects of the job of
university faculty member.
George was a true working linguist. One of the last times we met for dinner,
years ago, I picked him up at his Appleton apartment. He came to the door,
greeted me, and asked me to come in, saying he would be just a minute. He was
finishing a page for an update of Arabic grammar that he pounded out on an
old manual typewriter.
Slavic volleyball at Alexander Gym, Slavic picnics, and the Slavic Trip are
all legendary. But, given my profession, I guess, I think George would most
want to be remembered by the Lawrence community for anecdotes like the one
above and for being willing to help any student who approached him with an
interest to learn a language that was not taught as part of the regular curriculum
of the language departments at Lawrence. —
John Hellermann, ’86, Department of Applied Linguistics, Portland
State University, Portland, Ore.
Professor Smalley’s Commencement Address to the Class of 1970
(excerpt)
Parting is always hardest on those who remain behind, so that it’s
more difficult for us to bid farewell to you than for you, who have all sorts
of new, interesting, exciting things ahead. We have helped
each other to change and develop during these last four years, and let’s
hope that the development continues at an equal pace for us all. Part of
you will always remain here with us, while I hope you’ll be taking
away something of us besides course credit and a diploma.…Goodbye,
good luck — and make us proud of you.