Obituaries

Verdel Amos Kolve died peacefully at home and without pain on November 5, 2022 from complications of kidney cancer. Larry Luchtel, his husband and companion of fifty years, was at his side. Born in rural Wisconsin, he graduated Summa cum laude from the University of Wisconsin in 1955, and subsequently attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, earning an Honors B.A. in English Literature with a Congratulatory First in 1957, and an M.A. and D. Phil. from Oxford while serving as a tutor and Research Fellow at St. Edmund Hall, Oxon., between 1958 and 1962. In that year he accepted an assistant professorship at Stanford University, rising there to the rank of associate professor in 1968, before moving to the University of Virginia as Commonwealth Professor of English in 1969. In 1986 he joined the faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles, becoming the first UCLA Foundation Professor, and teaching there for fifteen years before retiring in 2001.

An internationally renowned scholar of medieval literature, with a particular interest in Chaucer, Kolve was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, serving as its President in 1992-1993, an Honorary Fellow of St. Edmund Hall, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was President of the New Chaucer Society for two years, in 1994-1996. In addition to many scholarly articles, he published four books: The Play Called Corpus Christi (1966), Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales (1984, winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Prize, for “the Best Book Published by a Faculty Member in the Academic Year 1984-1985,” the British Council Prize in the Humanities, for “the Best Book by a North American Scholar on Any Aspect of British Studies in the Humanities,” and the James Russell Lowell Prize of the Modern Language Association, for “the Outstanding Scholarly Book by a Member of the Association Published in 1984”), Telling Images: Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative II (2009, winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award, for “An Outstanding Book of Literary Scholarship or Criticism”), and with Glending Olson, an edition for teaching, Nine Canterbury Tales and the General Prologue (1989), subsequently reprinted several times.

Recognized as well as a brilliant and inspiring teacher at both undergraduate and advanced levels, Kolve opened the aesthetic triumphs of the Middle Ages to generations of students. His eloquence, learning, and close attention to all in every class were many times acknowledged (Outstanding Teacher Award of the Graduate English Faculty Club, University of Virginia, 1971; E. Harris Harbison National Teaching Award, Danforth Foundation, 1972; Luckman Distinguished Teaching Award with Special Distinction in Graduate Teaching, UCLA 1995), but in his view never better than by the lasting respect and affection of his students. In their successes he found great joy.

A. Kolve was much loved, and returned that love widely, but not without discrimination. His absence will be felt deeply by many for years to come..

Born in a log cabin in a northern Québec mining community on December 20, 1945, Tony Keefer gave early evidence of extraordinary abilities. Growing up in Toronto, where his family moved when he was six, he was a keen sailor at the RCYC Junior Club; a budding entrepreneur who supplemented his boyhood newspaper route with a solo business of designing, building and marketing wooden birdhouses across north Toronto; the most highly decorated Queen’s Scout in Ontario; and an outstanding student, routinely earning the highest grade average in the province.

Following in the wake of family members including great-grand-uncle Harold (College number 17), his father Thomas (2330), and his brother Bowie (6395), Tony entered RMC in 1963. He graduated four years later with the highest grades in the College’s history, with widespread gratitude for the generosity with which he had put his own abilities to work in assisting classmates and junior cadets in their studies, and with a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford.

Tony’s accomplishments at Oxford included (in ascending order of importance) piloting a fast and powerful sports car, writing a brilliantly complex doctoral thesis on control theory, and, in 1969, winning the heart of Deborah Syson, the love of his life, to whom Tony was very happily married for fifty-three years.

After several years of consultancy work for the UK government, Tony entered the Canadian civil service. His abilities were quickly recognized in Ottawa, and he enjoyed a meteoric rise to positions of senior responsibility in several ministries. He was subsequently ‘head-hunted’ for senior positions in the United Nations in Geneva: there he worked for several UN agencies, but concentrated his efforts in the World Intellectual Property Organization, whose work he guided for more than two decades.

Tony was impelled throughout his life by high ideals—to which he himself gave memorable expression at the time of his graduation from RMC in an address he was invited to give to the College’s faculty and students. Taking as his subject the pursuit of excellence, he demanded that we reject “the cult of mediocrity” and stand up to challenges and difficulties.

The “highest aim of life,” Tony said, “is not the negation of all that has gone before.” And yet “To excel, to become a person of integrity and quality, it is necessary […. to] make a positive offering to counter the error and ignorance that undoubtedly exist in the world; [… and to] accept the responsibility given us by the present and the future.” History, he said, “shows us the mistakes of the past. But it also indicates that it would be presumptuous to assume that we will not also make mistakes. Let us then use past experience, and more important, the lessons of the present, to minimize our inevitable errors.”

In working to make the world “a better place in which to live,” and at the same time to excel as individuals and as leaders, “we must try to replace apathy with enthusiasm, aimlessness with ambition, and complacency with determination. I believe that we must have the vision to set our sights high, the courage to adhere to a set of principles, and the self-discipline to keep ourselves headed toward our goals. Let us not be self-centered and petty; let us dedicate our lives not to small purposes but to lofty ideals.” In Tony’s professional and personal life, in which he was devoted throughout to the well-being and happiness of others, these ideals found a very full expression.

Following his retirement, Tony was invited to lecture at the University of Geneva. But he took more pleasure in following the brilliant careers in finance and business of his and Deborah’s two daughters, Lucy and Rosie, and of their husbands Piers Playfair and Simon Hansford—and greater pleasure still in the role of loving grandfather to Lucy’s and Piers’ children Scarlett, Georgina and James, and Rosie’s and Simon’s children Charlotte, Henry, and Nicky.

Tony died, after a long illness, on October 19, 2022. He is remembered, with imperishable love and deep admiration, by Deborah, by Lucy and Piers, by Rosie and Simon, and by their dear children; by Tony’s siblings Bowie (and his wife Anna), Michael (and Janice), and Anne Elise (and Marko); and by a wide circle of loyal friends and former colleagues.

On the afternoon of Saturday, October 15, 2022, in the culmination of a rich and impactful life, George Albert Drake, 88, died peacefully at home surrounded by his loving family. His memory lives on through his wife of 62 years, Sue; son Chris and spouse Kay, and their children, Nick and spouse Jenny, Elizabeth, and Hannah; daughter Cindy and partner Louie Vencato, and Cindy’s children, Danielle, Lila, and Samantha Drake-Flam; daughter Melanie and spouse Tom Wickersham; and the countless other lives he touched.

Spanning from February 25, 1934 to a beautiful autumn afternoon in October 2022, George’s life was many things. Indeed, you would be hard pressed to find a piece of writing about George, before or after his passing, that does not highlight his numerous facets: husband, father, grandfather, athlete, historian, musician, president, two-time pastor, volunteer, mentor, and so much more.

When not speaking confidently and knowledgeably on a seemingly endless number of subjects, informed by his voracious reading and boundless curiosity, he was quietly observing and asking questions; always learning. Though to hear him tell it, this was not always the case. “I was a pretty obstreperous young man,” he claimed when describing family dinners of his youth, particularly those involving Roy Smalley, friend of the family and shortstop for George’s beloved Chicago Cubs.

George excelled at the college of his choice, Grinnell, winning the Archibald Prize for the highest grades in his 1956 graduating class. He also led the cross country team to its first conference championship and personally qualified for the national championships, where he placed 49th. George was inducted into the Grinnell College Athletics Hall of Fame in 2002. He remained active throughout his life: just weeks before his passing, still riding a recumbent bicycle.

Upon graduation from Grinnell, George embarked on a Fulbright Scholarship in Paris, followed immediately by a Rhodes Scholarship that took him to Merton College at Oxford from 1957-1959. After Oxford, George returned stateside, where he initially pursued his seminary degree through the Chicago Theological Seminary and eventually completed his Ph.D. in Church History at the University of Chicago. It was during this time that he reconnected with a fellow Grinnell alum, Sue Ratcliff, and, after a whirlwind courtship, the two were engaged and soon married.

Less than a year later, the couple found themselves in the mountain town of Marble, Colorado when George took a summer job as the pastor of the small church there. George and Sue fell in love with the beautiful Crystal River Valley and together built a cabin they would return to frequently for the rest of his life. George taught at Colorado College from 1964 to 1979, teaching history and eventually becoming Dean. During this time, he and Sue grew their family by three: Chris, Cindy, and Melanie.

Eventually, George found his way back to Grinnell, first as a trustee in 1970 and then in 1979 as the first alumnus to serve as president. In his memoir he writes of his surprise when his fellow trustees found him qualified to serve as Grinnell’s president, and yet, George served that role with distinction for twelve years. The changes he made during his presidency helped put Grinnell on the path to becoming the top tier liberal arts institution that it is today.

In 1991, after stepping down from the presidency, George and Sue joined the Peace Corps in Lesotho where George taught English to high schoolers, while Sue trained local elementary school teachers. Upon their return to Grinnell in 1993, George taught history full-time for the next ten years, which he recalled as “among the most satisfactory of my life. I loved being back in the classroom, and I loved the students.” Although he retired at age 70, George continued teaching a tutorial at Grinnell and in Grinnell’s Liberal Arts in Prison Program at Newton Correctional Facility, a cause to which he remained deeply devoted.

In 2020, in the face of the remote instruction necessitated by the global COVID-19 pandemic, George reluctantly elected to stop teaching. Despite the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer that came soon afterward, he remained deeply involved and connected to the College. To the very end, he was, in his words, “a Grinnell College junkie.”

George also gave his time and talents widely to the Grinnell, Iowa community including through the library, their UCC Church, the hospital, and the Mayflower Home, to name just a few. He had a lifelong love of singing, and many fondly remember him on stage as a member of Shults & Co., performing songs as well as dance routines, much to the audience’s delight.

When concluding his 2019 biography of Joe Rosenfield, Mentor, George wrote that he wished to remind his readers of “the richness of the man.” It seems fitting, then, to do the same for him, although it will no doubt be unnecessary for those who knew, loved, and were forever changed by George Albert Drake, a good man who lived richly and well.