[An-lang] Byron Bender, 1929-2020

[Joel Bradshaw]

I have the sad duty to report that Byron Bender passed away last Saturday,
January 4. Many of his old friends in Honolulu had planned a celebratory
luncheon for him on the occasion of his 90th birthday on August 14 last
year, but a medical procedure forced us to postpone the date, and his
health never recovered enough to set a new date.

Byron was a pillar of the University of Hawaii Department of Linguistics
for decades. He joined the department in 1965, served as department chair
from 1969 to 1995, and as editor of *Oceanic Linguistics* from 1991 through
2006. He was active in the faculty union (UHPA), and served a term as a
member of the UH Board of Regents.

Byron's valuable work as an administrator interfered with his larger
ground-breaking projects on Marshallese, but in retirement he was able to
publish (with Steve Trussel) a revised and expanded Marshallese-English
Online Dictionary <http://www.trussel2.com/MOD/> (2009-2011) and (with
Alfred Capelle and Louise Pagotto) his long-delayed *Marshallese Reference
Grammar* (UH Press, 2016).

The UH Department of Linguistics is planning a memorial for Byron. Ken Rehg
and I are working on an obituary to be published in *Oceanic Linguistics.* Much
more about Byron's life and work can be found in his Festschrift, *Issues
in Austronesian morphology* (Pacific Linguistics, 2001).

Joel
-- 
Joel Bradshaw (Retired)
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Dept. of Linguistics
University of Hawai‘i
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