William ROBERTS

Bill Roberts, our longtime colleague in French, who retired in 1994, passed away in Evanston Hospital on July 26 after a struggle with cancer. Born in New York, Bill received the PhD at Yale and taught in Texas before coming to Northwestern in the 1950s. He was a devoted student of seventeenth-century French literature, a constant bibliographer for the Seventeenth-Century French association, and a tireless specialist in the baroque poetry of Saint-Amant. In his student days he was an athlete, a runner, as anyone might have guessed who ever saw him dashing from Kresge to the library or back. During the Second World War he served in the infantry, and carried a machine gun across France from Normandy to Germany. A lover of Paris, its architecture and its art, he taught a course for many years in the history of the capital. He was very active in the Alliance Française and the AATF, and a Chevalier dans l'ordre des palmes académiques. He was also a great lover of music, baroque and otherwise, and transmitted this love to his children. He is survived by his children Cynthia, Timothy, and Bruce. We remember the Roberts's musical celebrations of the Christmas season, and the model railroad running around the tree, with warmth and affection.

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