Homage to Francis J. Whitfield

[Louis Pedrotti]

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        It was Frank Whitfield who effectively launched my career in Slavic
 studies.  On first arriving Berkeley in 1950, I met Frank as graduate advisor
 in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures there.  He gently, yet
 firmly, monitored my progress through the mazes and snares of graduate studies.
  It was he, along with Waclaw Lednicki, who directed me along the paths of
 Polish-Russian lore.  He and Celina Whitfield played no small role in
 implementing my dissertation, and later my professional obsession with the life
 and works of Jozef-Julian Sekowski, the enigmatic, brilliant Pole who matched
 the Russians in their own spheres of journalism and satirical literature in St.
 Petersburg in the 1830s and 1840s.

        Perhaps, however, my most vivid (and terrifying) academic recollection
 of Frank Whitfield as a professor was during the courses in Old Church Slavic
 that I took with him.  A no-nonsense taskmaster, who constantly lamented our
 weak heritage in Greek and Latin texts, he never forgot my most grievous
 blunder in OCS translation.  In place of the correct phrasing, "The birds were
 nesting in the branches," I had jumped to the facile solution of "The birds
 were making merry in the branches."  After one of the most healthfully
 deflating few moments of reprimand, Frank broke out into his unique form of
 laughter over the gaff, and the whole class dissolved in true "merriment in the
 branches."  Farewell and endless thanks to a dear mentor, dear colleague--and
 dear friend.

        Louis Pedrotti
        University of California, Riverside

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