Nathan S. Blount -- Sam to everyone who knew him -- died, undaunted on April 30, 1989. During his illness of the last year and a half we saw Sam maintain a strength and tranquility of aristocratic dimensions. As time passed he demonstrated the ability gradually to let go of 'things' and hold on to that which was of substance, including his religious faith. In his last days he gave each of us around him an example to remember -- one to follow in our own time. Nathan Samuel Blount was born on May 31, 1929. After he was graduated from Florida State University, he taught for five years at Miami Senior High School. He earned his doctorate at Florida State in 1963, the year he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He held a joint appointment in the departments of English and of Curriculum and Instruction for the most of his career. His style was unassuming. A colleague in English recalls that "Sam served the Department and its students so long, so quietly, and so well that he grew to be counted on, taken as there. His absence makes us all the poorer." His ways did not make him highly visible to or among his fellows. Some could even argue that he was not as recognized as he might have been because of the path he chose to follow, which was to know thoroughly and in depth what interested him but to say little about it unless asked. Thus Sam not only attended to his professorial duties faithfully, but he also cultivated a profound knowledge of music and art, read widely in the works of Freud and Wittgenstein, became the everyday familiar of characters and events in the fiction of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, and taught himself to cook with nearly incomparable success. From 1967 through 1972, Sam contributed, twice yearly, the bibliography to Research in the Teaching of English; and from 1966 through 1972 he wrote the annual "Summary of Investigations Relating to The English Language Arts in Secondary Education" for the English Journal. He was co- investigator, in the 1960s, with Robert C. Pooley and Lester S. Golub of "A System of Individually guided Instruction: English Language, Composition and Literature" at the Wisconsin Research and Development Center for Cognitive Learning. The reports on this project, which Sam co- authored, show that he was a pioneer in research on the learning and teaching of transformational grammar. They established a high standard that is still appreciated and acknowledged today. And as senior author, with Herbert J. Klausmeier, of a widely used college text, Teaching in the Secondary School, Sam reminded all present and prospective high school teachers of the significance of their work: "Teachers have always experienced gratification in helping young people acquire the understanding, skills, and attitudes that help each student attain a reasonable measure of success and achievement commensurate with his abilities and aspirations. Teachers have long found it gladdening to help young people assume positions in the adult world as efficient producers in and as socially conscious members of a democratic society. Teachers and teaching are important not only to high school boys and girls, and to their parents, and to communities throughout the United States, but also to the survival and advancement of civilization." Sam earned the respect and affection of many by demonstrating in action what he professed in words. And he did so because he himself was preeminently a highly civilized man. His whole career was also that of a thorough professional who disliked amateurs who pretended to be professionals. If, in recent years, Sam produced little in writing, it was because he felt that there had already been too much said about too little. But he knew the state of scholarship in his field intimately, and he shared his knowledge and insights with his students as their teacher and friend, their advisor and role-model. And he could inspire his colleagues as well. One recalls that "it took time to get to know Sam; ... time that was well spent, for he was a courageous and considerate friend. ... Sam patiently spent time ... answering questions, discussing plans, talking about teachers. ... His courage in the face of death was inspiring. I was often struck with his calm, with his enduring great pain without complaint, with his efforts to do his very best work." Sam inspired in another way too. He seldom made demands; rather, he made suggestions. These he made so reasonably and well that he saved his colleagues from many mistakes. Clearly he taught in the classroom as well as outside it with a quiet genius. A man like Nathan S. Blount whose interests ranged wide, whose knowledge was never superficial, whose mind was precise, whose taste was impeccable, whose wit was rare, and whose judgement was keen in a man not easy to find -- ever. He will be missed. [Author unknown, likely Ellsworth Snyder, colleague and friend.]
Portions of a Homily delivered by Joseph Wiesenfarth in honor of Nathan Samuel Blount:
'I was with Sam two days before he died.
On that occasion I witnessed his last attempt at trying. Sam's cancer had
metastasized some three weeks earlier, reached his brain, forced him back
into radiation treatments that left him constantly nauseated, and consequently
he was dying from malnutrition as well as from cancer. As I sat with Sam at
table, he plucked a daisy from a vase of flowers and bit into it. "I've got
to eat everything, Joe," he said, "or else I'll die." Sam, as so frequently
was the case, was right. The chiseled sentence, "HE TRIED" with all its self-
deprecating modesty and profound self-knowledge, IS a fitting epitaph for him.'Later in the homily, Wiesenfarth concluded...
'But as I saw him bite the daisy on that Friday before he died, I knew that for
himself and for us the love of the life that God had given him, Sam did not want
to die. I know now that he was showing us one last time in that beautiful but
desperate act how true it is that "he tried."'
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