Francis Xavier Newman *63

Frank died Nov. 25, 2021, in Silver Spring, Md. 

He was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1932. The first in his family to attend a university, Frank earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Notre Dame in 1955 and a Ph.D. in English from Princeton in 1963. 

He began his teaching career at Northwestern before moving in 1962 to Harpur College, now Binghamton University, where he stayed until retirement in 2006. His specialties were Old and Middle English, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and he chaired the cinema department. He was pivotal in establishing Binghamton’s distinctive collegiate structure, an annual medieval studies conference, the Afro-American studies program (now Africana Studies Department), and the Harpur Film Society. 

Frank launched the Semester in London Program, and his walking tours of London and towns across England were legendary. He received two university awards for his dedication to this life-changing program. As he closed his career, Frank blended research on his family’s roots with great American novels to create a course on New York City in 19th and 20th-century literature.

Predeceased by his wife Betty, Frank is survived by his children, Katharine, Thomas, Sarah, Mary, John, and James; and 10 grandchildren.