Bill Bright

[Cameron, Richard]

Thank you for sharing this with us. - Richard Cameron


On Wed, October 18, 2006 12:21 pm, Kira Hall wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I thought that many of you would want to know that one of our great
> sociolinguists, Bill Bright, passed away over the weekend.   We are all
> very sad here at the University of Colorado, where he has been an
> adjunct professor for many years and a friend and mentor to so many of
> us (and the husband of one of our faculty members, Lise Menn).  We will
> miss him dearly.
>
> Attached is today's obituary from the LA Times.  Please accept my
> apologies for any cross-postings.
>
> Kira
>
>
> ************
> OBITUARIES
>
> William O. Bright, 78; UCLA Linguist Worked to Preserve a Tribal
> Language
>
>  From Times Staff Reports
>
> October 18, 2006
>
> William O. Bright, a linguist who studied Native American tongues and
> worked to preserve the language of California's Karuk tribe, died
> Sunday of a brain tumor at a hospice near his home in Boulder, Colo. He
> was 78.
>
> Bright was among the first professors of linguistics at UCLA, where he
> taught for 29 years, retiring in 1988. For 21 years, through 1987, he
> was editor of Language, the journal of the Linguistic Society of
> America.  He wrote more than 200 books, articles and reviews, including
> several dictionaries of Native American languages that were on the
> brink of disappearing and books on the origin of place names in
> California and elsewhere.
>
> His work preserving the Karuk language, begun at age 21, ultimately led
> the tribe to make Bright its first honorary member in the days before
> his death.  "He had an appreciation of the larger problems we were
> facing, and he used his talents not just for his own benefit but for
> our benefit as well," said Susan Gehr, Karuk Language Program director,
> who was authorized to speak for the tribe.  "When Karuks felt
> emboldened to revitalize our language and culture," she said, "he
> actively supported us by visiting many times to do workshops and
> consult with Karuk individuals on anything related to the Karuk
> language that we wished."
>
> William Oliver Bright was born Aug. 13, 1928, in Oxnard. His mother was
> a homemaker, and his father was a butcher who turned to chicken
> farming.  Bright entered UC Berkeley and was taking summer courses in
> Mexico City when he became interested in the Aztec language.  He
> graduated with a bachelor's degree in linguistics in 1949.
>
> Drafted by the Army in 1952, Bright was assigned to a military
> intelligence unit in Germany.  After returning to Berkeley for a
> doctoral dissertation on the Karuk, he taught in India and at the State
> Department's Foreign Service Institute before joining the faculty at
> UCLA in 1959.  Bright worked in several areas of linguistics, including
> sociolinguistics, which examines language in a social context.
>
> Twice widowed and twice divorced, he is survived by his fifth wife,
> University of Colorado linguistics professor Lise Menn; a daughter,
> Santa Cruz erotica writer and essayist Susie Bright;  granddaughter
> Aretha Bright; and stepsons Stephen Menn, a philosophy professor at
> McGill University in Montreal, and Joseph Menn, a staff writer at the
> Los Angeles Times.
>
> In lieu of flowers, Lise Menn requested donations to fund the newly
> created Bill Bright Award for research, in care of the Endangered
> Language Fund, 300 George St., Suite 900, New Haven, CT 06511, or to
> the American Civil Liberties Union.  Memorial services are to be held
> at the University of Colorado early next month and at the January
> meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in Anaheim.
>
>
>
> **********
> Kira Hall, Associate Professor
> Director, Program in Culture, Language and Social Practice (CLASP)
> Departments of Linguistics and Anthropology
> Campus Box 295
> University of Colorado
> Boulder, CO  80309-0295
> Phone: 303-492-2912
> Fax: 303-492-4416
> Web: www.colorado.edu/linguistics/faculty/kira_hall
>