Emeritus professor Roger B. Wilkenfeld (1938-2013), who taught in the Department of English from 1963 until his retirement in 2011, died recently.
He was a specialist in the poetry of John Milton and 19th- and 20th-century English and American verse, and his published scholarship focused primarily on Milton and on Victorian poetry and fiction.
A co-founder of the UConn Honors Program, he also helped develop the annual Wallace Stevens Poetry Program, which brings visiting writers of international renown to UConn. Wilkenfeld was a much-loved presence at UConn, possessed of a rare joie de vivre. Throughout his career of nearly 50 years, he was a popular, gregarious, and creative professor.
A tireless mentor of innumerable graduate students and undergraduates, he is credited by adjunct faculty member Trudi Bird for giving her the confidence to become one of the first in her family to complete college. Bird recalls that he insisted, “Of course you are going to graduate!” Professor emeritus Tom Roberts remembers that he was “immediately identified by students as a great teacher, and they flooded into his classes.” He was known for brilliant wit and encyclopedic knowledge of poetry, painting, ballet, and film.
Looking back on the days when Roger and Joan Hall shared an office near his own, emeritus professor Herb Weil recalls, “Their lively banter and arguments were more than a breath of fresh air. Their disagreeing, insulting, and refining were wonderfully alive. Arguing with Roger was always stimulating, often maddening, never offensive.”
Wilkenfeld was an amusing and at times cantankerous fixture at the faculty lunch table. Professor Hap Fairbanks remembers a long table in Arjona Building, where “Roger sat at the head and presided. He was the Master of Ceremonies, the Autocrat of the Lunch Table, and still managed to remain loveable. He would often propose a topic of conversation, and if someone else introduced one that bored him, he would sometimes just announce that we were changing the subject.”
Professor Lisa Sánchez González remembers “the lunchroom ritual” as “a battle of wits and erudition. Pronunciation wars. Debates over the proper use of shall. The name of Faulkner’s greatest critic. Serious verbal sport.”
The Department called on Wilkenfeld again and again to use his gifts of eloquence and wit in tribute to his colleagues. Professor emeritus Arnold T. Orza reflects, “I am struck, as many others will be, by the absurdity of my trying to memorialize Roger, since the only one who could do the job properly would be Roger himself. Anyone who recalls his remarks at various retirement or memorial events knows that he was the absolute maestro of the form. It was always arranged that he would go last, since following him was impossible.”
Three weeks before his own death, Roger eulogized his dear friend and colleague Joan Hall.
Jacob Wilkenfeld says of his father, “Those who knew him will always remember him warmly as a true original.”
A memorial service was held at the UConn Co-op on Oct. 27.
Contributions in his memory may be made via the UConn Foundation to the UConn Honors Program: http://honors.uconn.edu/alumni-and-friends/giving-to-uconn-honors/.
This notice was first published on the English department’s website.
