CAAS TRIBUTE TO HOWARD MARBLESTONE

On behalf of the membership of CAAS, the Board of Directors mourns the loss of Howard Marblestone, Charles Elliott Professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Lafayette College, on January 29, 2008, at the age of 65. In 2003, CAAS honored him with an ovatio for his seven years of service as its Conference Coordinator.

After earning his A.B. in Greek and Latin from Cornell University in 1964, Howard received his M.A degree in 1966 and his Ph.D. degree in 1970 from Brandeis University, writing his dissertation with Cyrus Gordon, one of the 20th century's most distinguished and influential scholars of Near Eastern languages and cultures. He joined the Lafayette faculty as an assistant professor in 1974, and was promoted to associate professor in 1978 before being named full professor and granted the endowed chair of Elliott Professor in 2004. From 1985-87 and 1994-1998 he served as department head, and he also coordinated the Classical Civilization minor.

During his 34 years at Lafayette, Howard taught courses in a wide range of areas: Greek and Latin languages and literatures; Biblical Hebrew language and literature; classical literature in translation; classical mythology; the ancient history of Greece, Rome and Israel; a first-year seminar on "Of Males and Men: Myths of Masculinity"; and interim-session courses abroad in Egypt, Israel, Greece and Italy. In 2001 he received the Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award.

At a memorial service in Lafayette's Colton Chapel on March 7, Howard's colleague Eric Ziolkowski observed that "Howard was one of a kind at Lafayette, because he was not, like the rest of us, simply one member of a department. Rather, he was a department. He was Classics at Lafayette . . . with an equally masterful ability to teach Hebrew," sharing and perpetuating [his mentor Cyrus] "Gordon's famous vision of a grand 'synthesis' of Hellenic and Hebraic cultures that prevailed in the ancient Mediterranean world.

Eric went on to recall, "From my uncle, who taught Classics at George Washington University and was a long-time CAAS member, I had heard how cherished Howard was within that Association. I saw this myself at the [fall 1996] conference, which was held at Lafayette. [It] was heavily attended, and wherever one looked, Howard was there. He was ubiquitous, mingling with everyone, making sure that all was right, meticulously overseeing every facet of that wonderfully successful event. And over and over, the teachers and scholars I met there spoke reverently of him, his work, and his devotion to their Association, and they remarked how fortunate Lafayette was to have such a person on our faculty."

On April 8, 2008, a performance at Lafayette College by the Paul Taylor Dance Company was dedicated to the memory of Howard Marblestone, to acknowledge "his deep and lasting contributions . . . to the cultural richness of Lafayette College." Paul Taylor's own dedication wording to the most poignant dance, "Lines of Loss," is a verse from William Snodgrass:

No moon outlives its leaving night
No sun its day. And I went on
Rich in the loss of all I sing.
To the threshold of waking light,
To larksong and the live, gray dawn.
So night by night, my life has gone.

To these lines of loss we add the venerable Hebrew saying, zichrono livracha, "May his memory be a blessing."

Judith P. Hallett, CAAS Program Coordinator
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