Michael V. Deporte ’60

After a courageous battle with non-Hodgkins' lymphoma, Michael died at his home in Dover, N.H., Dec. 9, 2003. He was 64.

He attended the Milne School in Albany, N.Y., and the Grange School in Santiago, Chile. He enrolled at Princeton but later earned a bachelor's degree from the U. of Minnesota, and a master's and PhD in English and humanities from Stanford. He taught for seven years at the U. of Chicago, and briefly at Stanford before joining the English Dept. at the U. of New Hampshire in 1972. He was promoted to associate professor in 1973 and to full professor in 1981.

Michael was a teacher "known for his brilliance and generosity," according to Dr. Christopher Fox, director of the Keough Institute for Irish Studies at Notre Dame. In 1986 Michael received the first Lindberg Award for Outstanding Teacher-Scholar in New Hampshire's College of Liberal Arts. He served for 10 years as chair of English, the largest department at the university.

As a scholar, Michael wrote the monograph, Nightmares and Hobbyhorses: Swift, Sterne, and Augustan Ideas of Madness (1974), and more than 25 scholarly articles and reviews. In 2002, after his retirement, he was invited to deliver an address on Jonathan Swift in the deanery of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, where Swift himself was dean from 1713-45.

Michael was devoted to his family. Early in life he edited and published his father's memoirs of his experiences in the Russian Revolution of 1905. He is survived by his wife, Judy Lindberg; daughters Catherine and Rebecca; stepson Peter Jon Lindberg; two grandchildren; his brother, David; and many family members and friends. To them all, the class sends condolences.

The Class of 1960