Obits

One of my harder tasks is writing obits for faculty, staff, etc. In today's Inquirer is an obit about Dr. Howard Hannum, a retired professor of English who would join my lunch crowd every Wednesday until he became too ill to attend.

Dr.Hannum did not talk about himself much, and there weren't too many materials about him in the University archives: if you knew Howard, you would not be surprised at that. What made his obit so compellilng is that his family made a memoir he wrote available to Sally Downey, who wrote the obit. Called "Hannum's War," it is a 20,000 word document about his service in WWII; he went overseas when he was barely 20, and saw action. He also saw many horrors and wrote about them, but he never made any attempt to publish the piece. Again, if you knew Howard, you would not be surprised at that.

Colleagues and students described him as a tough but fair teacher, and John Seydow, a former student and current La Salle English professor, said he prepared students for graduate school better than any other teacher.

I will miss Howard, but thanks to the Inquirer, many people will know about him, and for that I am grateful.