Fwd: Bill Bright

[Leila Monaghan]

For those not on the SLA list--the sad news of the death of Bill 
Bright.  He will be much missed for, among many things, his kindness, 
his desire for justice and his huge intellectual breadth and depth.

A memorial is being planned at the LSA meeting in January.  I'll pass 
on other information as I get it.

Leila

----- Forwarded message from kkhall at colorado.edu -----
    Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 11:21:51 -0600
    From: Kira Hall <kkhall at colorado.edu>
Reply-To: Kira Hall <kkhall at colorado.edu>
Subject: <sla_discussion> Bill Bright
      To: List for the International Gender and Language Association 
<GALA-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>, sla_discussion at lists.berkeley.edu

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


----- End forwarded message -----


--
Leila Monaghan, PhD
Department of Communication and Culture
Indiana University
Ashton Mottier Hall
1760 E. 10th Street
Bloomington, IN 47405-9700
(812) 855-4607
monaghan at indiana.edu
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