Multiple emails and Carolyn Quintero

[ROOD DAVID S]

I called John Koontz's office this morning and left a voicemail message 
for him.  I hope the multiple emails will soon stop.

I have been mulling over what I wanted to say in response to Justin's very 
sad news about Carolyn, and I can't figure out how to express myself. 
Obviously it was a surprise and a shock to everyone, as well as to me.  I 
think Jimm's response is as close to what I would say as anything.  I, 
too, met her when she and Robert Bristow were working together on Osage. 
She was a student at the Univ. of Massachusetts then, and wanted to write 
a grammar of Osage as her dissertation.  But in those days lingusitics 
departments of the UMass type were not accepting descriptive 
dissertations, so she just stopped trying for a while.  In the mid 1980s I 
successfully got a grant for her to continue her Osage work, and that 
resulted in the first draft of her grammar, which by then was also 
accepted as her dissertation for her PhD degree.  All this time, of 
course, we were communicating about both academic and financial issues.  I 
found her extremely flexible, but also astute both as a linguist and as a 
businesswoman.  She made the grant money go a long way.  Her dedication to 
the work, and to preserving Robert Bristow's efforts as well, was 
unwavering.  I can only begin to guess how much I'm going to miss her.

David

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu