/ Faculty Obituaries /

Game-Changing In his class, student play- written, you had to go and wrights brought in scenes see him in his offi ce, which Foreign Correspondent to be read by actors. “Some- felt a bit like visiting the lion times Derek would let the in his den. You had to screw and COM Dean scene go for a page, and up your courage. He knew sometimes he’d stop it after this and relished it, I think. Bernard Redmont reported on world events, the fi rst line,” she says. “He’d The writing of poetry was a moved the college forward | BY TATIANA M. R. JOHNSON ask all sorts of questions brutally serious undertaking about the fi rst line, the fi rst to him—something requir- moment, what happened ing plenty of courage. I was before the lights went on. lucky enough to have many “I remember a classmate extraordinary conversations As a broadcast journalist in of mine who literally could with him in his offi ce. We in 1968, Bernard S. not get through the fi rst line, were both from islands, and Redmont was the fi rst to re- because they spent 20 min- he never got tired of talking port that North Vietnamese utes of class time discussing about the sea.” offi cials were willing to begin what happened before that Born in 1930 on the island peace negotiations. speech,” she says. “I watched of Saint Lucia in the West A foreign correspondent my classmates just squirm Indies, Walcott published for 40 years, Redmont also and squirm, all of them his fi rst poems as a teenager. covered Leon Trotsky’s wondering where this was He taught school at various assassination in Mexico, going, and then there was places around the Caribbean Juan Peron’s dictatorship the ‘aha moment,’ where we after graduating from the in Argentina, and the Six- all got his point, which is University College of the Day War in the Middle East, that the play starts before West Indies in Jamaica. according to the Washing- anyone speaks. Derek didn’t The fi rst of his collec- ton Post. did explain—he . And waited tions to catch the atten- A former professor of jour- Bernard Redmont, pic- In a for us to catch up. And that tion of critics was nalism and dean emeritus of tured here in , Green Night could be terrifying if it was , published in the College of Communica- was a foreign corre- you. But he was right.” 1962. Among his friends tion, Redmont died on Janu- spondent for 40 years. Lopez recalls that in 2009 and supporters over the ary 23, 2017. He was 98. Walcott was visiting Boston years were Robert Lowell He arrived at COM in and came to see a production (Hon.’77), Joseph Brodsky, early 1982, and was dean project between the United of her play From Orchids to and Seamus Heaney, the from 1983 to 1986. He led States Information Agency Octopi at the Central Square latter two also Nobel laure- the college through cur- (USIA) and BU. Redmont Theater in Cambridge. “He ates. Walcott was also a riculum reforms and a had favored an alternate pro- was lovely and gracious,” talented painter, and his name change—from the posal—to train the journal- she says, “and then he said watercolors of Caribbean School of Public Communi- ists at COM, in an academic to me about the play, ‘That scenes sometimes appeared cation (SPC) to the Col- and independent frame- was a lot of words.’ That on his book covers. lege of Communication—a work—and his disagree- was so Derek, because it was His fi rst play was pro- result of his 1983 long-range ments over the project with absolutely spot-on, a very duced in 1950, and he study of the school. He also John Silber (Hon.’95), then good critique that I would founded the Trinidad helped pilot the continuing the University president, learn from, and it had his Theatre Workshop (then London Internship Pro- led to his resignation. devilish humor.” called the Little Carib The- gramme in 1986. Caryl Rivers, a COM pro- His approach to poetry atre Workshop) in 1959. In response to a 1985 fessor of journalism, recalls class was similar. “Derek The troupe performed two call for proposals from the Redmont as “a man who didn’t use class time for of his plays at the Boston US government, Redmont cared deeply for journalism, workshopping student po- University Theatre in 1995, proposed a project to train both in his career and in his ems,” says poet Kirun Kapur the Elliot Norton Award– Afghan refugees as profes- time in academia.” (GRS’00), who recently pub- winning The Joker of Seville sional journalists in the Redmont served in the US lished the collection Visiting and the Obie winner Dream wake of Soviet intervention Offi ce of the Coordinator Indira Gandhi’s Palmist on Monkey Mountain. Wal- in Afghanistan. The train- of Inter-American Aff airs, (Elixir Press, 2015). cott hit Broadway in 1998, ing ultimately was held in coordinating broadcasts “If you wanted to talk with The Capeman, a col- Peshawar, Pakistan, near to Latin America. A World

FACING PAGE: KALMAN ZABARSKY; THIS PAGE: COURTESY OF BERNARD REDMONT OF COURTESY THIS PAGE: KALMAN ZABARSKY; PAGE: FACING about something you’d laboration with Paul Simon. the Afghan border, in a joint War II veteran and recipient

Summer 2017 BOSTONIA 75

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For Love of the Past and Present of a Purple Heart, he was a combat correspondent for University Professor Herbert Mason celebrated voices of the the marines. After the war, ancient and modern worlds | BY JESSICA ULLIAN he was the Latin America bureau chief for what would become U.S. News & World Report, and later was trans- Those who knew Herbert ferred to Paris, according to Mason by reputation saw his . retelling of the Epic of Gil- In the early 1950s, Red- gamesh in verse narrative, a mont was subpoenaed by the fi nalist for a National Book House Un-American Activi- Award in 1972, as evidence ties Committee to testify in of his interest in ancient one of the trials of William religion. His students and Remington, a Commerce friends knew there was more Department offi cial accused to his appreciation of the of being a Communist. After ancient Mesopotamian nar- his refusal to name Reming- rative: its enduring celebra- ton a Communist cost him tion of friendship. his job at U.S. News, he re- Mason, the William mained on the McCarthy-era Goodwin Aurelio Professor blacklist for a full decade, of History and Religious and no American news outlet Thought, a University Pro- would hire him. fessor emeritus of history Claude Erbsen, a retired and religion, and a College Associated Press vice presi- of Arts & Sciences professor dent and director of world of history and religion, died services, describes Redmont on January 1, 2017, at age Over decades at BU, then sat down at his desk, on as “a man of absolute and 84. Over decades at Boston Herbert Mason taught which there was a small type- unfl inching integrity, which University, he taught courses courses on subjects writer and sheets of paper cost him dearly in the Mc- on subjects ranging from Su- ranging from Sufi sm scattered about along with Carthy era.” fi sm to Irish history, infus- to Irish history, infusing a book open on which he Redmont worked for ing his scholarly expertise his scholarly expertise had been making notes with Agence France-Press, the with anecdotes and wisdom with anecdotes and a pen still held in his left Canadian Broadcasting he’d gleaned from long wisdom he’d gleaned hand. ‘Yvonne tells me you Company, and as Paris bu- relationships with collabo- from long relation- are interested in Gilgamesh,’ reau chief for Westinghouse rators and mentors. Such ships with collabora- he said in English. Broadcasting Company connections shaped his life tors and mentors. ‘Yes,’ I said shyly. (Group W). It was there that and career and formed his ‘He went on a long journey he broke the story that the abiding belief that the voices in search of the secret of im- North Vietnamese were will- of the past were instrumen- centers on a quest to conquer mortality to bring his friend ing to hold peace talks with tal in understanding it. death in the name of love. Enkidu back to life.’ the United States. He later “He believed history After reading in English I said nothing but stared received an Overseas Press needed to be taught with the and French literatures, his- at him and waited for him to Club Award for Best Radio stories of the people who tory, and philosophy as an say more. Reporting from Abroad. lived at that time,” says his undergraduate at Harvard, ‘Eternal love is to be He also worked at CBS News wife, Jeanine Young-Mason he moved to France, where wrung from our inmost in Moscow and Paris before (SON’74, SED’82). “It is an acquaintance introduced heart. I learned that fi fty- joining the BU faculty. the person’s voice that’s the him to the great scholar of one years ago when I lost a He was born Bernard Sid- real history.” Islam Louis Massignon. friend to death.’ ney Rothenberg. He earned Mason’s early life was Mason recounted their fi rst I sat still staring at his an undergraduate degree largely shaped at age seven meeting in his 1988 book parched lined face and sad from the City College of New by his father’s sudden about their relationship, eyes as he pointed slowly York and a master’s degree death—a loss that forever Memoir of a Friend: with his now empty left hand from ’s linked him with the Epic of “He was standing upon toward the window or to school of journalism. Gilgamesh, a narrative that my entering his study, but he some place beyond.”

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