30876: Fouche (obit) Tufts University Professor Gerald Gill dead at 59 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: R. Fouché <fouchnickens@yahoo.com>

I thought that this news would be of interest to the list since 
Professor Gill was a great mentor, supporter, and friend to generations of 
Haitian and Haitian American students at Tufts.  If you choose to post this, 
could you please post this anonymously as I am still recovering from another 
sudden hospitalization and maintaining "internet silence" until I feel like 
myself again (this year and last are not my years, it seems..).

Rachel Fouché
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Boston Globe Obituary for Gerald Gill:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2007/08/02/gerald_r_gill_at_59_was_professor_of_history_integral_part_of_tufts_campus/?page=full
It's safe to say that Gerald R. Gill never crossed the Tufts University campus 
quickly. There were just too many people to greet along the way.
"The most important thing to know about Gerald Gill was that he touched 
everyone," said Jeanne Marie Penvenne, an associate professor of history whose 
office was down the hall and who often accompanied Dr. Gill on what turned into 
long strolls to grab a bite of food.
"He knew everyone in the entire Tufts community," she said, "from the woman who 
handed him his cup of coffee in the morning to the custodian cutting the grass, 
to his students, to his students' parents, to his graduate students."His 
classes filled to capacity, and yet he memorized the name of each student. A 
scholar of African-American history in the 20th century, he took pains to 
bridge the gaps between various ethnic communities on campus. He also served as 
a key consultant on numerous broadcasts, including the award-winning television 
series "Eyes on the Prize."
Dr. Gill died of arterial sclerosis July 26 in his Cambridge home. He was 59 
and had been honored so often for his teaching that one prize, the 
distinguished service award bestowed by the Africana Center-African American 
Center at Tufts, was renamed for him seven years ago.
"He's absolutely beloved in the department and across the university," said 
Virginia Drachman, who chairs the Tufts history department, for which Dr. Gill 
was deputy chairman. "He devoted himself to Tufts. He was the kind of person 
you could go to and he never said no. The students adored him. You couldn't 
walk across campus without student after student after student calling out to 
him. He was the kind of person who, if you went to Tufts, you were told to make 
sure you take a class with Professor Gill."
Arriving in Boston on a fellowship at Harvard University in 1979, Dr. Gill 
became intrigued by the city's racial history.
"I was trying to come to grips with a city I didn't like," he told the Globe in 
1997.
Two years ago, he touched on the subject again in an interview conducted by a 
Tufts student for a profile that is posted on the university's website.
"I became interested in looking at race relations and African-American protests 
in Boston, largely because many of my friends from graduate school asked me 
questions about why I was staying in Boston," he said in the interview. "Boston 
doesn't have the best reputation in terms of being a city that's hospitable 
towards African-Americans. There are people who would argue that Boston is the 
most racist city in the United States."
Pointing out that some of the modern era's most publicized racial incidents 
have occurred in New York City and Los Angeles, he added, "Each city has its 
own racialized history."
   Born in New Rochelle, N.Y., Dr. Gill graduated with a degree in history from 
Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., in 1970, then taught eighth-grade social 
studies for two years in New Rochelle.
In 1974, he received a master's degree in US history from Howard University in 
Washington, D.C., and pursued a doctorate while working as a research assistant 
and research fellow at the college. Dr. Gill received a doctorate in history 
from Howard in 1980, the year he began teaching at Tufts.
Having studied the history of African-American opposition to wars in the 20th 
century that involved the United States, Dr. Gill secured conscientious 
objector status during the Vietnam War with the help of US Representative 
Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress and the first 
African-American candidate from a major party to run for president.
Dr. Gill quickly became a popular professor on the Tufts campus with 
eye-catching approaches to the topics he taught. He asked history students at 
the outset of the school year to name 10 prominent African-American men who 
were no longer alive. If they succeeded, he asked them to name 10 black women.
During his early years at the front of the class, he found that many students 
were hard-pressed to name four women. Not until the early 1990s could his 
students regularly name 10 in each category, a change he attributed to the 
increased emphasis on African-American history in high schools.
In a profession in which many professors are more interested in publications 
than students, Dr. Gill was a lively exception, colleagues say. A tribute page 
on the Tufts website has dozens of entries from colleagues and from former 
students who had taken his classes, such as African-American history, the Civil 
Rights movement, and sports in American history.
"His courses were unbelievably popular," said Drachman, the Arthur and Lenore 
Stern Professor of American History at Tufts. "People came into this school 
knowing that Professor Gill's was the course to take before they left. When my 
daughter came to Tufts, I made a promise to her that I would never look for 
her, I would never call her, I would never tell her what to do, except for one 
thing, to take a class with Professor Gill."
He was voted Professor of the Year for Massachusetts twice, according to the 
university. Dr. Gill also was the first to be awarded the Lerman-Neubauer Prize 
for Outstanding Teaching and Advising, and the first to receive the Tufts 
Community Senate's Professor of the Year Award. In 1995, he was among the 
teachers honored by the Carnegie Foundation.
Dr. Gill saw such awards as an endorsement of the notion that professors should 
step away from campus and immerse themselves in civic affairs.
"I would like to see historians more actively involved in public policy 
concerns," he told the Globe in 1995.
Within the relatively small African-American community at Tufts, Dr. Gill was a 
key figure, but he made sure that race never limited his interaction with the 
campus.
"I can think of a score of young black men for whom he was a role model, a 
mentor; he never let them down," Penvenne said. "And I can say the same for 
many young white men and young Asian-American men. He was everyone's man. It 
didn't matter."
"This loss is more than just of an individual," Drachman said. "He was part of 
the essence of the school. He helped to make Tufts what Tufts is."
Dr. Gill, whose marriage ended in divorce, leaves a daughter, Ayanna Ettann 
Gill-McGee of Jackson, Miss.; two sisters, Willie Butler and Mary Smith, both 
of Germantown, Md.; and a grandson.

The Tufts Community announcement (you may leave your thoughts here):
http://enews.tufts.edu/focus/13/2007/07/30/BelovedProfessorandScholarGillDies




[url=http://riniart.org/][img]http://www.riniart.org/media/Lgif/03644_213_215b.gif[/img][/url]