I remember very well when I first met Keith and Martha. Someone was building a house in the neighborhood and we were watching as the construction progressed. One day in late November Brooks, the self-appointed “neighborhood guardian” announced that somebody was moving in and that he was going over to meet them. He came back and said that he had invited them to Thanksgiving dinner so that everyone could meet them. That was our first dinner with Keith and Martha at John and Linda’s house, but not the last. In fact, that Saturday we were assembling a metal storage shed for John and Linda and Keith and Martha came over again to help and joined us for another meal of Thanksgiving leftovers. We had a wonderful group of neighborhood friends—John and Linda, Gordon, Carle, Keith and Martha, Karen and Brooks-- and spent much time socializing together. Every party began with a glass (or two) of Gruet Brut.

Brooks and I became good friends with Keith and Martha. Keith and Brooks loved to talk about any and every topic imaginable and their conversations were fascinating. Keith had a wide range of interests and a great sense of humor. He was always a genial host and companion and a wonderful person to know. I have great memories of many lunches and dinners with Keith and Martha, just the four of us, enjoying each other’s company, good food and fun. Eventually Keith no longer came to New Mexico and we missed seeing him.

Now Brooks and Keith are both gone—gone but never forgotten. They live on in our thoughts and in our hearts and in our memories. These days I often think of Keith and I always smile—what a lovely man. I was so lucky to know him.

Karen Stoll, April 28, 2014
Santa Fe, NM

Keith at Michael's graduation, Kenyon College, 1992

Catherine Fruhan

Keith was a person of many dimensions and I’d like to talk about just a few of them that stand out most in my memory:

As a Friend:

Keith was the kind of friend that we all want to have—smart, interesting, insightful, and kind.  But what was most precious and unique to me about his friendship was his gift for the art of listening.  By listening I don’t mean being silent while the other person speaks.  I mean a generous, focused, patient and committed kind of listening--which always felt like a gift.  In this age of distraction and multi-tasking--when people talk to you and text; look past you; check their phones; or click away at their computers, Keith’s attentive “presence” in friendship and conversation seemed like a form of grace.  He was a generous listener and a generous speaker.  If the soul is in the voice, Keith was a sanguinary soul.  He was the rarest of all creatures: a Norwegian with a sunny disposition—genial in temperament, joyful in spirit—the ultimate oxymoron: A Nordic optimist.

As a person both cerebral and hands-on:

Keith had an amazing intellect; thought deeply about things (aesthetics, politics, literature, the dynamics of family life); and was very widely read.  He was a marvelous source of literary recommendations and two of the authors he recommended—Annie Proulx and Pat Barker--were life changing for me.  He was also a bon-vivant and a fabulous cook.  Over the years I’ve had many wonderful meals and conversations at Martha and Keith’s home.  Keith was a bread maker—who took care and time to get the perfect, divine loaf—crusty and chewy—beautifully formed--worthy of representation in a 17th century Dutch still life.  This is another aspect of his character that it took me awhile to find out—Keith was an inveterate maker of things—an artist at heart—skilled with his hands, who was a builder and a wonderful woodworker.  He created gorgeous furniture out of cherry wood.  When Martha was the gallery curator for the Art Department—and I want to say parenthetically that she was an incredible curator—with practically no budget she came up every year with a roster of stunning shows.  When Martha was our “curator extraordinaire,” Keith was embraced as an honorary member of the Art Department; it wasn’t until much later--when I saw his woodworking skills--that I knew he was a genuine member of the tribe.

As a Colleague:

Keith was also a wonderful colleague and mentor.  Most recently, last summer, I wrote to him and asked if he had recommendations of poems or novels for a new interdisciplinary course I was teaching called Time/Space/Memory.  A couple of days later I received, not just a list of reading suggestions, but thoughts about the ways the texts tied into the subject of time; how they might be most effectively used; which ones would work in comparison.  I never had the privilege of seeing Keith teach but we had many conversations about teaching, a subject about which he thought a lot and about which he spoke passionately and eloquently.  He was a committed teacher who made demands of students.  Achievement was what he expected, rigor was what he required, and I always admired him for his insistence on keeping the bar high.

As a Husband:

I want to say a couple of things about what I saw of Keith as a husband.  Keith and Martha were an incredible team.  He was a great supporter of Martha’s artwork—her biggest fan and greatest admirer.  One time, in Almost Home, when I was eating there with a friend, we noticed Keith and Martha at a table across the room—leaning towards each other; each completely absorbed in what the other had to say; taking pleasure in each other’s company—like a couple of newlyweds. It was an inspiring partnership—I was especially awed by the way that they managed to be both fiercely independent and bound together, in Robert Frost’s words, “by countless silken ties of love and thought.”

Meditation on Death:

To end, I’d like to read a short meditation on death—written by Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo--in 1888—which I’ve always found inspiring and comforting.  Asniere, which the poem mentions, is a suburb north of Paris.

“At one time the earth was supposed to be flat.  Well so it is even today from Paris to Asnieres.  But that fact doesn’t prevent science from proving that the earth as a whole is spherical.  No one nowadays denies it.  Well, we are still at the stage of believing that life itself is flat, the distance from birth to death.  Yet the probability is that life itself is spherical and much more extensive and capacious than the hemisphere we know.”  

Catherine Fruhan

long-time friend, DPU colleague, and fellow movie buff

participated in the Program for Keith's Remembrance Gathering, May 10, 2014

Greencastle IN

Keith with Cristina, 1970

Margie Aufiero Koller

 Keith was known and loved by all of us as a scholar, a professor, an author,  a beloved husband, and dedicated father. I had the chance to see him through another perspective, yet one that reflected very much the wonderful person he was. I was his sister-in-law living with the Donovan family in Lima, Peru.  His visit to Lima to be with his wife’s family one summer when their children Michael and Cristina were both quite young, provided me an opportunity to get to know him better.  He, much like my father-in-law at the time, Dr. Donovan, had a way of adding an intellectual sense of humor and wit to any event.  Having him around was a welcoming  breath of fresh air. 

My fondest memory of Keith took place that summer during his visit to Peru.  We all had rented an apartment in Ancon which is a popular vacation beach resort just north of the capital city of Lima.  Peru, as many of you know, is famous for being the center of the ancient and noble Incan Empire which once extended in South America from Colombia down through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile.  Keith, Martha and their two children were preparing to explore some excavations near Ancon.  Keith sat out on the balcony of the apartment on a bench between his two children and began explaining to them about the Incas in advance of their outing.  I was quite touched by his patience and fatherly tone as he prepared them, giving appropriate background knowledge for them to understand at their young ages about these once proud ancient Incas and their vast empire.  The whole family sat nearby, impressed with the accuracy of his narration.  The children listened attentively.  Finally he ended saying, “and as we go out, we need to learn and sing the Incan National Anthem.  (Now indeed, we were all listening quite curiously.)    “It goes like this, he said…”   Keith then sang Jimmy Durante’s  famous song  “Inca – Dinka – Doo”!

…..   “In-ka  dinka  din-ka  dinka   din-ka,  din-ka  doo…….”   

Margie Aufiero Koller

former sister-in-law

member of the Donovan Spouses Club

May 10, 2014

Fairfax VA

Martha Glesne Cussler

I did the math and discovered I've known Martha Donovan for 56 years.  We met as freshmen at the University of Wisconsin in 1958, a long time ago.

One summer we rented an apartment on State Street, the main drag stretching between the Capitol and Bascom Hill.  We lived above a guy who called himself Bird.  Predictably, he loved Charlie Parker, pot, pretty girls and parties.  

Fortunately for us, we were like sisters.  But good little girls that we were, we loved the parties, a far cry from life at Elizabeth Waters Hall.

Keith Opdahl was not yet in the picture, but I suspect he would have watched with amusement as his future wife with great energy executed the twist, Ray Charles blaring in the background.

When I did meet Keith a couple years later, I thought, "Wow!  This is the one! Smart, good-looking, witty, charming! What a guy! What's not to like!

Regrettably, in 1965 I was in Australia when Martha and Keith got married, but we kept up.  Now and then the phone would ring, Ray Charles in the background, and Donovan laughing.  When we both stopped laughing we would chat and catch up.

Beyond memories through those phone calls, letters and emails, a portrait of a marriage emerged.  A marriage between two lovers, friends, helpmates, partners in the very best sense of the word.  A marriage between two talented and creative individuals remarkably well suited for each other.  As Martha said,  “He was the love of my life.”

And a portrait of Keith as a devoted father became clear as well.  A father who delighted in his kids, a father who offered steady encouragement and support......

Keith who brought so much happiness to the lives of his wife and  children will be missed.

But as Wendell Berry reminds us,

 We clasp the hands of those that go before us.

And the hands of those who come after us.

We enter the little circle of lovers,

Whose hands are joined in a dance.

And the larger circle of all creatures,

Passing in and out of life,

Who move also in a dance

To a music so subtle and vast that no ear can hear it...except in fragments...

Martha Glesne Cussler ‘62 UW-Madison

college friend when Keith and Martha were dating in early ‘60s

participated in the Program for Keith's Remembrance Gathering, May 10, 2014

Cranston RI

Dan Bronson

Some years ago, I wrote a little television film about an upscale community in which a shocking murder took place.  It was my modest attempt to reinvent Dreiser’s An American Tragedy for our time. After it aired, I received a long, thoughtful letter about it from Keith.  He totally “got” what I was attempting to do and offered insightful comments about the shallow, materialistic, class-conscious, status-seeking community and the destructive effects of its values upon its progeny—the fathers and mothers visiting their sins upon their sons and daughters.

But what he loved most of all was my high school principal’s speech at the opening assembly of the fall semester.  Keith loved it because, out of the context of the film, it gave voice to one of his deepest convictions…

 PRINCIPAL

It is excellence—excellence in the classroom, excellence on the playing field, excellence in the community—that distinguishes Santa Mira from its rivals.  So, today, the first day of the rest of your lives, I issue this challenge to each and every one of you:  I challenge you to be the best.  The best son or daughter.  The best student.  The best athlete.  The best individual it is in you to be.  We live in a competitive world, a world in which second best simply isn’t good enough.  And so, I ask you, what is your goal this year at Santa Mira High?

 CROWD

 TO BE THE BEST!

 PRINCIPAL

 AGAIN.

 CROWD

 TO BE THE BEST!

It could have been Keith himself speaking. He challenged his students …and everyone else around him…to be exactly that—the best!  It was, of course, this passionate conviction, along with the C’s he awarded the students who failed to pick up the gauntlet he threw down before them, that led to his nickname, Captain Hook. Keith lived by his own words. He was the best teacher, the best husband, the best father, the best friend any of us could hope to have. How did he do it? By being the best listener I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing.

Not long ago, I had lunch with a bunch of friends from my days in the Paramount Story Department. One of our number started telling a story of how difficult it was for him to get into the Story Analyst’s Guild.  Almost before he finished, another jumped in with her story of how it was ever harder for her. And the instant she finished, I assumed center stage with my tale of how it was still harder for me. None of us was really listening to the others. The only voice we were genuinely interested in hearing was our own. And this, I suspect, is true of most of us—probably everyone here today has, at one time or another, been guilty of exactly this kind of behavior.

Keith was not. Keith was different. He listened…and he heard. He listened and he heard because he was genuinely interested in everyone and everything around him. It was this quality that made him such an extraordinary teacher, husband, father and friend. He listened to me, I know, with such attention and interest that I’m convinced he was one of the few people on the face of this earth who wholly understood me.  I’d be very surprised if most of you here this afternoon did not feel exactly the same way.

If Keith was interested in everyone and everything around him, he was also amused, responding with gentle, sometimes critical, sometimes affectionate laughter to his government, his society, his colleagues, his friends, and most of all himself. He wrote a wonderful, semi-autobiographical novel in which all these qualities shine through, and I’d like to share a brief passage from it with you…

       "She had married a glamorous young professor (never mind that I was a teaching assistant) and had awakened in bed with a Norwegian peasant …I might have looked like a typical American, but I had an unnatural need for smoked fish…As my wife, Sarah had become ‘Mrs. Olaf Solomon Olsson, Jr.,’ confirming the tragic truth:  she had married the kind of fellow who wears a hat with ear flaps."

Self-deprecating, modest, amused and amusing.  That was Keith.  But what you hear in this passage and in every aspect of his life is warm, gentle laughter at a world that he found endlessly fascinating.

Perhaps my favorite of all the characters I created in a long career as a writer was an old man named Will Clare.  I thought of him as Davy Crockett in a wheelchair, and we first glimpse him sitting in that chair on a railroad track, reciting “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” to the rising sun—and then daring an approaching train to hit him.  I loved that old man.  He was as real to me as anyone I’ve ever known.

Keith, of course, did go gentle into that good night.  By choosing surgery, he chose to live, but he was completely accepting of the possibility that his time had come.  When Sonja and I spoke to him the week before we lost him, he said to us that he’d had a wonderful life and had no complaints at all.  And as he reviewed his life with us, there was that  familiar, gentle laughter—the perpetual amusement, laughter in this case at his own infirmities, at the weight he’d picked up late in life:  “Who could believe it?  I was such a skinny kid.”

Keith laughed at himself, at life, and at death.  He embraced the possibility of death as fully as he had embraced life, going gently into that good night.  And I loved him for it as much as I loved my old man in that wheelchair daring the universe to strike him down.

He lived and died by his own words.  He was, quite simply, the best.

Dan Bronson

DPU colleague, friend, and Hollywood screen writer

taught at DePauw University 1971-’79

participated in the Program for Keith's Remembrance Gathering, May 10, 2014

Tehachapi CA.

Keith at DePauw University, mid-80s

Istvan Csicsery-Ronay

Keith taught full-time in the English department at DePauw from 1967 until 1992. He drove me to campus for my on-campus interview, and cheerfully coaxed me through the manic talking-jag that was my class presentation. He was, in many ways, a mentor to me in my first years here. He was passionate about teaching, and he made a difference in many students’ lives. He taught careful writing, used imaginative methods in the classroom, and led discussions masterfully.

He was equally passionate about literary scholarship. He wrote one of the first academic studies of Saul Bellow – his hero among contemporary writers – and spent many years working out a sophisticated theory of affective reading. He was curious and informed about the recent schools of theory that my cohort was bringing to the university; like many of his generation, he disagreed with their directions, but he never denigrated or dismissed them. In 2002 he published his ideas in the book Emotion as Meaning: The Literary Case for How We Imagine, a book that displayed his gift as sophisticated literary reader. I will confess that at the time, in my youthful pride I considered his ideas old-fashioned. Keith may have felt satisfaction in knowing that reading for emotion eventually became a strong current in literary theory.

Keith was a fine talker, always curious to know what his conversation partners believed; and we always knew what he believed -- he was an ardent left-liberal, with a passion for social justice. He had an omnivorous intellect – he loved nature and art equally, and knew a lot about both. He could be contentious and political; there are few among us of whom that can’t be said. I will remember him as generous and bursting with vitality. And I will miss him.

I’d like to say a few words about Keith as an intellect and a scholar. In the past weeks I re-read his book, Emotion as Meaning – The Literary case for How We Imagine, a book he labored over for many years and which he considered his major scholarly contribution. I read it with a sense of intellectual pleasure, mixed with sadness. Pleasure at the sophistication and high ambition of its goal – which was to arrive at a cogent theory about how literary fiction becomes intimately meaningful to readers by evoking emotion. Sadness because the book did not receive the recognition it might have received – not only from the academy at large, but from me personally.

For what it’s worth however, I don’t think it could have been otherwise. Keith’s project was difficult from the start, and he knew it. Writing about the way emotion works as a cognitive force is difficult by definition, since almost every conceivable way of articulating it favors the rationalistic side of things. That’s precisely why Keith thought literature was the place to locate it. But in a sense Keith was also writing full-on against the prevailing winds of literary culture. Keith loved American realistic fiction above all other kinds, and the English romantics were (rather secretly) his favorite theorists. By the time his project took shape, the academy was dominated by exactly the opposite aesthetic. Metafiction and genre fiction were the darlings of the younger generation; and the profoundly analytical and skeptical schools of structuralism, semiotics, and deconstruction dominated theoretical discourse. These were the founding ideas of what is today called post-humanism.

Keith was inspired, no doubt about it, by a stubborn sense that the baby was being thrown out with the bathwater; he wanted to put a humanistic view of fiction on a firm foundation in this new climate. He wasn’t alone, and his book draws together many of the somewhat like-minded writers of the time – mainly the various reader-response theorists, and the main theorist of affective interpretation, Suzanne Langer. But the stars were not aligned in their favor. Recently, this whole question of emotion as meaning has become interesting again, and Keith would have gladly used new hypotheses drawn from neuroscience. The book itself, but also the piles of folders stacked on his carrel shelves, and my many conversations with him in the library corridors, all gave evidence that he was excited by the opportunity to study from so many different fields.

But then, Keith’s path was hindered by the Zeitgeist. The history of scholarship is full of paths that began as well-paved roads and then gradually become gravel, and finally grassy lanes. Sometimes later generations discover them, and repave them – often they don’t. At that time, in age of the structuralism and semiotics, realistic style and the notion of general human emotions were considered old-fashioned. The tidal wave of new young lit scholars coming out of the 1960s had little tolerance for the old regime. Hence, my feeling of sadness reading Emotion as Meaning. It’s a book I could have learned from, and at the very least that I could have respected more. But I was a Young Turk too. Add to all this that Keith wrote with an attitude that many of us are familiar with at DePauw. Isolated in the corn-desert of central Indiana, far from the academic battle royals, but also insulated from the lightning-fast exchanges of ideas of the academic centers, Keith enjoyed taking his time, crafting his ideas, and shaping his very personal and even idiosyncratic views. It’s what makes the scholarship that comes out of a place like DePauw so engaging.

Keith’s book displays the ideal of the liberal arts scholar-teacher – not just because it tries to explain difficult and important ideas in ways that all educated readers can understand, but because it expresses the profound personal importance of ideas and art, all with the serenity and self-possession that comes from doing it on one’s own terms.

Istvan Csicsery-Ronay

English Department colleague DPU

participated in the Program for Keith's Remembrance Gathering, May 10, 2014

Greencastle IN

"Cabin" on Fisher Lake property, Mercer WI, 1965

John McElroy

Meeting Keith, early in the fall semester of 1966 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was part of a wonderful experience: my first fulltime university appointment after receiving my PhD. I have still in my minds’ eye the remembrance of his smiling face and hear still in my memory his mellow voice of welcome. He impressed me as somehow wise and watchful: an extraordinarily observant and effective participant in the academic life we had both chosen to pursue.

Although we were the same age—1934 being our shared year of birth—Keith got his doctorate before I did, and was well on the way to academic successes. The year after we met he published his book The Novels of Saul Bellow: An Introduction, one of the pioneering studies of that twentieth-century American novelist who less than a decade later would win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Keith had, it must be said, good judgment and foresight, as well as his trademark sincerity, friendliness, and honesty. He was what was once called in America “a man of parts”: a man of more than one virtue.

Keith had invited me and my wife and our kids to visit him and Martha at his summer getaway on the shores of a small lake in northern Wisconsin. This “summer home,” as I remember it, consisted of a couple of rooms made by fastening swaths of heavy, black plastic to conveniently spaced trees. Keith had invented—did I mention he was an inventive guy?—a simple method for fastening heavy-duty plastic sheets to trees so they wouldn’t tear from their moorings in a stiff wind. The method was to fold a pebble in the plastic and then taking several good turns of stout cord around it, tie it off; then tie the cord to a tree. He had used this method to put up his plastic lean-to as a bachelor’s getaway in which to write his book on Bellow. But when he married the lovely Martha, the black-plastic lean-to also became a honeymoon retreat as well. Talk about combining work and pleasure—and doing it on the cheap!

Long may the memory of this man’s virtues live in the hearts and the minds of his wife and offspring and in the hearts and minds of his friends!

John McElroy

professor emeritus, University of Arizona

author of three books on American cultural history

Tucson AZ

May 10, 2014

Roger Mitchell

The thought of Keith takes me right back to the beginning of my working life when I was a brand new Ph.D. in English, starting my first job. The University of Wisconsin – Madison had hired me sight unseen since I had gone to graduate school in England.
 
Keith, as I remember, had been hired the year before. It was 1963, back before the beginning of time. We somehow managed to get Kennedy elected and of course bungled badly in The Bay of Pigs, but because I had been out of the country for two years, it felt like a new place when I showed up one day in this little city in the Midwest. I’d never seen it. The Midwest, that is.
 
I was one of eight new junior hires in English that year. The English Department had a lordly look to it. Under the firm control of its Chair, the venerable Helen C. White, who every morning marched from her bachelor quarters at the bottom of Bascom Hill up to its noble prominence, Bascom Hall, The English Department sat at the center, so it seemed, of the entire campus, staring down the whole length of State Street to the Capitol downtown.
 
All eight of us had come to Madison with Ph.D.’s in hand. In those day, we were given the title of Instructor and four different courses to
teach in, none of our own design. These being the glory days of literary studies and affluence, English hired eight more new, first-time faculty members the following year. In a department of 60-some faculty, roughly a quarter of us were greenhorns.
 
I never worked so hard in my life as those first three years in Madison, and luckily for us, we junior faculty members bonded and banded together. We somehow managed a slight but close social life, meeting at one house or another for drinks now and then, leaving early since we had 30 exams to read or a novel to finish before class the following Monday.
 
In this tight little world, Keith was a beam of light and sanity. He would always greet us with his large warm smile, thereby encouraging us
to think about life, too, not just whether we would get tenure. In a department devoted primarily to professional advancement, Keith seemed more interested in teaching students. He was the first teacher I ever heard speak of his students as though he liked them.
 
I forget when I heard Keith had had a book on Saul Bellow accepted for publication, but in the eyes of his peers, he instantly became a minor god. We knew he’d get tenure, and we were glad for him. It was what he did when he got tenure that marked him for life as a major deity. He said thank you (I’m sure), but he also said no thanks. He wanted to teach in an institution that cared more for its students, where the teacher/ student ratio was better and, frankly, where less of the teaching was done by graduate assistants.
 
It took me eight or nine years to finally land a job in Indiana, and one of the things that made me glad was reconnecting with Keith and Martha. We certainly didn’t see each other as much as I liked, but it was always a pleasure to see them. When I read my poems at DePauw in the Spring of 1980, Keith came to the reading and made comments so perceptive I’ve never forgotten them.
 
He would blush to hear me say it, but he had a kind of unassuming grandness to go along with his gentleness and self-reliance.
Condolences, everyone!
 
 
Roger Mitchell, poet

colleague at UW-Madison, English Dept., in the early ‘60s

Professor Emeritus, Indiana University-Bloomington

Jay NY

May 6, 2014

 Dean Mark Smith

I can’t think of a student at Denison that I remember more clearly or with better feelings than I remember Professor Opdahl – and that’s what I called him when he was a student.  One of the reasons I remember him so well is that his incredible intelligence and curiosity made me so nervous.  When you’re a Dean whose major asset is height, you desperately count on the benefit of the doubt.  Because he was so damned smart and knew so much, there was never any doubt, so he always had me dead to rights.  Vague explanations, one of my most highly developed skills, never worked with him, but we had a good relationship and he never embarrassed me. 

Fortunately, he had a wonderful sense of the ridiculous – that certainly helped me.  The only time I ever complained to him in connection with the Denisonian was when I found out more than 50 years after the fact (from Doug Colwell, of course) that there had been an article in the paper by Bill Giles about the victory of the Theta Eta Chi touch football team over the faculty team, of which I was the quarterback, that was won by a field goal in the last minute by another Phi Gam, Tommy Rodgers.  My complaint was that this was absolute nonsense, both because the game was played on an intramural field that had no goalposts and because Tommy wasn’t drunk enough to be able to kick a field goal.  I also mentioned that we won the game because of two epic passes that I threw to Tris Coffin.  When I called Keith in Greencastle to express my concern, he accepted it with appropriate condescension – he obviously didn’t think it was very important.  I then called Giles, who seemed pleased that I had finally caught up with his hoax. 

For almost every student from my time at Denison, I have a specific memory or feeling that is the most vivid.  For Keith that memory is of how pleased I always was when I saw him in the outer office waiting to see me, but how guilty I felt that his valuable time was being wasted on waiting.  It’s possible that I might have told Mrs. Lichtenstein to sneak him in, but I know he wouldn’t have allowed that.

Keith always made me aware of how fortunate I was to be in that position at Denison at that time, with responsibility for all those wonderful individuals, and my memories of him fill me with appreciation.  I’m sure Blair Knapp would say the same.

Mark Smith

Former Dean of Men

Denison University

April 16, 2014

Doug Colwell

I AM DOUG COLWELL, A FRATERNITY BROTHER OF KEITH’S AT DENISON. I WAS A YEAR YOUNGER AND THE PERSONALITY OF OUR RELATIONSHIP WAS ONE OF KINDLY AGGRESSION.

HE OFTEN REMINDED ME THAT I WAS ONLY A MEMBER BECAUSE HE FORGOT TO BLACKBALL ME.  I SUCCEEDED KEITH AS EDITOR OF THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER.  HE SAID HE WAS NOT PRESENT FOR THE SELECTION PROCESS.   HE WAS A SUPERB  EDITOR.

 WE LOST TOUCH , BUT IN 1982 BEGAN AN ALMOST DAILY DIALOGUE ON THE INTERNET.

IT WAS THEN I MET MARTHA, "THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE." HE WAS CONSTANT IN HIS PRAISE OF HER IMPORTANCE.  WE MET ON VACATIONS 3 TIMES AND MARTHA WAS HIS GREAT SUPPORTER. THEY WERE ALWAYS IN LOVE.

HIS CONSIDERABLE INTELLIGENCE  WAS A TRADEMARK, BUT HE NEVER FLAUNTED IT. HE WAS FORTHRIGHT AND CHALLENGING, BUT NEVER INTIMIDATING. I  HAVE NOT KNOWN ANYONE WITH THAT ABILITY.

I HAD HEARD OF HIS EXCELLENT REPUTATION AS A TEACHER AND ASKED HIM TO ALLOW A YOUNG MAN IN ONE OF HIS CLASSES AS A STUDENT. HE WAS NOT AN ENGLISH MAJOR, BUT ENDED UP TAKING THREE COURSES  FROM HIM DESPITE GETTING THREE C'S FROM CAPTAIN HOOK..

 I FEEL FOR YOU ALL....HE WAS AN EXTRAORDINARY PERSON.

 HE WAS A VALUED FRIEND....WHEN I THINK OF HIM, I SMILE.

 Doug Colwell

long-time friend since Denison University years as undergraduates 1952-56

Bloomfield Village MI

John Field

One of my earliest encounters with Keith was in Cub Scouts, when he joined the Den of which my mother was Den Mother.  We met in the basement of our house along with 7 or 8 other boys.  The meetings were riotous and frequently ended early when my mother couldn't take any more--but it was here that Keith, Carl Kalbhen and I really began our friendship, which endured until Keith's death.

We attended Whittier elementary school and Oak Park-River Forest High School, a very happy circumstance. The Oak Park educational system was one of the highest rated in the country and was the principal reason our parents decided to live there.  We did not disappoint them, as all three of us graduated with very high marks and went on to notable careers.

But back to Keith.  In his youth he enjoyed and participated in most sports, such as football, softball, basketball and ice skating.  To my knowledge, he never attempted to join any of the high school teams, but was an enthusiastic booster. He and I did, however, become selected to join the Lincoln/Douglas Debating team, which was highly rated and, I'm sure, became background for his successes in later life.

Our high school years also marked the emergence of "pizza parlors" in America, and one in particular played a major role in Keith's future—Jim & Pete's Pizza.  It was just a local joint, close to our homes, and open to midnight or so.  It was here that our friends would frequently congregate and argue/discuss anything and everything.  It was here that Keith developed his talents that proved useful in later life:

      love of the English language

      a creative thinker, but aggressively argumentative

      a very funny and sociable participant in any discussion worth having

One final remembrance about Keith.  At an early age—high school—he quickly became our resident "socialist/communist."  He was the only one among us espousing those thoughts, and frankly, I don't think we ever really knew if he was sincere or just being his argumentative self.  In any event, he was one-of-a-kind, and an unforgettable friend!

John Field, Oak Park High School, '52

life-long friend since Whittier Elementary days in Oak Park IL

 Oak Park IL

 May 10, 2014

Keith in Chicago, circa 1947

Jimmy Chamberlin (cousin)

    I would like to share a few memories with you. My family often visited the Opdahls in Oak Park when I was very young.  And they visited us in Pontiac, Michigan.  My parents and I and my two sisters stayed with them in their home for several days at a time to visit our Grandma Holmquist, Aunt Florence and Keith and Jon.  As I think about it, I can't imagine how they managed to accommodate five of us in the same home with them.  What I remember is that Keith always had time for me. We played catch with a football in their backyard --- and ours when he visited Pontiac.  We wrestled a lot.  I was so proud of the fact that I would always win the wrestling matches with such a strong, and bigger, kid.   And I remember Keith letting me drive a car. I don't know whose, and I didn't care.  I would sit in Keith's lap and I would do all the steering except when he would, for some reason, grab the wheel and take the car in a little different direction. I also remember playing basketball in our Pontiac driveway and baseball in a field nearby. 
    As I look back, Keith had a magical way of making me feel that it was the most important thing in his life to be playing with a 5 or 8 or 10 year old ---- me.   I had so much fun and to this day I believe he really did too, because he always seemed to relish whatever he was doing.  He always smiled and laughed and enjoyed whatever was going on.  And Keith asked me questions about what I thought about things.  Tell me, who really cares what an eight year old thinks?  Keith did.
    I am so very pleased that you and Keith came to visit Debra and me in our Florida home. It was a wonderful chance to see my favorite cousin and you again.  And now, with his passing, it has become one of the important memories I will keep until it is my turn.  That one final chance is now so extremely important and precious to me.  It is my final memory of my cousin Keith ---- the most generous, gracious, funny, gregarious and pleasant person I have ever known.  I wish all of us could be that way, but we can't.  God blessed him with that wonderful embodiment of all those traits. The rest of us can only wish we were like that.  But we were blessed too, lest we forget.  We were blessed to know him, live with him and be able to say he is family.  I was always so proud to say to people, "this is my cousin, Keith."  And now I can say so proudly, "Keith Opdahl was my cousin and part of our family."  He was very special.
 
                                                                     Jimmy Chamberlin, cousin
                                                                     Bonita Springs FL
                                                                     January 4, 2014

Keith teaching in Asbury Hall classroom, DePauw University

Laura Stebelton Mason

         I was saddened today to read of Professor Opdahl's passing, having thought fondly of him just this past weekend while discussing a Hemingway novel with my father.  Professor Opdahl taught a Hemingway and Bellow course my freshman year at DePauw (1983-84). While it was a challenging course for a first-semester college freshman, I will always remember his incredible smile, sparkling/dancing eyes, enthusiastic delivery of subject matter, and encouraging words for me as I pursued success in his classroom.  Professor Opdahl's gift for teaching was evident each time the East College bell tolled and he "took the stage" of his classroom in Asbury Hall. 

          I extend condolences, as well as prayers for peace and comfort, to his family, and all who loved him most.  Thank you, Professor Opdahl, for the kindness and the knowledge you shared with me so many years ago. May you rest in peace.

Laura Stebelton Mason ‘87

January 6, 2014

Keith in his Asbury Hall office, early '80s

Katherine Pennavaria

I have wonderful memories of Professor Opdahl, who was my teacher and also work supervisor during my years at DePauw in the early 1980s. During the early weeks of my first class with him, he came in one day with a large picture of Walt Whitman, which he leaned against the blackboard. Then he turned toward the class with a dazzling smile, swung both hands toward the portrait and proclaimed, “The Camarado!” I had no idea what he meant or who that burly, bearded figure was, but I was immediately hooked by my teacher’s enthusiasm.

Professor Opdahl went on tell us all about Whitman, including the fact that he was a homosexual. Everyone stopped breathing—this was 1980, and no one said such things in public. I don’t remember his exact words, but he said the equivalent of “Get over it.” I have never had another teacher like that.

I also worked for Professor Opdahl as a research assistant through the work-study program. As part of the job, I frequently had to write him notes explaining what I’d done with the library search tasks and book summaries he assigned. Early in the process I began addressing him in those notes as “K.O” rather than writing out his whole title and surname. It always amused me that his initials meant “knock out” in boxing slang.

I’m glad Professor Opdahl was part of my DePauw experience, and I will never forget him.

                                                                        Katherine Pennavaria, DPU ‘82 

Tom Barnard

The following has been transcribed in part from a video made by Keith’s former student Tom Barnard for his memorial, May 10, 2014.

I have not been back to Greencastle since I graduated. […] Let’s dial back to 1968, freshman year at the dinner table in Bishop Roberts Hall. I listened to reports of Dr. Opdahl’s class frequently while we were eating pigs in blankets and whatever other stuff they were serving us. I wasn’t paying that much attention because I was at that point a math major, not a very successful math major. I found math teachers uninspiring and not connecting the material well to the world. So, I took a psychology class and I thought that was more interesting. The professor was a guy named Goodson, I think, and I found the stories in his class even more interesting than the subject matter. It turned out that he was a writer himself. I know this because my classmate Dennis Huey was given one of his manuscripts to read and critique. I think it was about his WWII experiences.

 So I was hearing about Doctor Opdahl from Dennis Huey, who was the leading student in the class. He had the highest SATs in Indiana and was a National Merit Scholar. He was brilliant. Eric Sutherlin was a scholarship student at Phillips Exeter Academy, the best prep school in the country and a brilliant student. Paul Anderson was a brilliant, brilliant poet. So I was hearing about Dr. Opdahl from all of these people. Finally in my sophomore year, I guess the first semester, I attended one of Dr. Opdahl’s classes, or audited one of his classes. He noticed me when he came in the room, but he ignored me and went about his question and answer session which was a scary and terrifying thing for someone like me who had no ready opinions on anything. It was like a courtroom examination. It was designed to get everybody thinking and I think he succeeded. I knew that I wouldn’t succeed in it because my mind was unformed. But I did devise this clever way, this work-around, which was for me to make him my advisor.

So I went up to his office and he agreed to take me under his wing and signed me up for Intro to Poetry, which was one of his signature classes. I did ok. I think I got a B. Some of my papers were A-, B+s. Not extraordinary or anything. But I would observe that my mind was unformed and if Opdahl had been in the Physics Department, that is to say, the most interesting mind on campus, then I might have ended up a physicist. As it was, I ended up in the English Department, and ultimately a writer, although I took no creative writing classes while I was at DePauw. I at least knew that I didn’t have enough material or sense of the world to undertake that.

I did sign up for the Winter Term with Dr. Opdahl, with the class he was teaching which became known as “the Poetry Circus.” Most of the brilliant minds that I came across at DePauw were in that class…a lot of them, in that group….in that experience. Perhaps nobody except Opdahl at DePauw would be capable of pulling off that class with this group of powerful minds.

My senior year, Opdahl went off to Portugal on a Fulbright fellowship and I took some education classes. I got my 3.O finally and was able to graduate. Many thanks, of course, to Opdahl who decided somewhere in my junior year that I wasn’t getting enough studying done. He insisted I go up to the English Department every afternoon and do some studying, which I did. It probably aided my chances of graduating. I probably got to know Opdahl a little better than my classmates around the table at Bishop Roberts because I saw him every day up in the English Dept.

 DePauw ends….school ends, but somehow we stay in touch. I seem to remember writing him care of the English Department and we stayed in touch. The time line is not clear. I can’t locate my correspondence file. I know that by 1973 I was working in an insurance agency. By 1974 their most famous customer was Saul Bellow. In 1975, Humbolt’s Gift came out—this is my favorite novel. By 1977, Bellow’s insurance agent died, so when Bellow called the office, I took those calls. […]By 1980, we had a breakthrough conversation about Dr. Opdahl.

             “My advisor at university wrote a book of criticism about your novels.”

            “Who’s that?”

            “Keith Opdahl.”

            “I know him. Mr. Barnard, our connections increase.”

 This great connection to Bellow ended in 1991. I kept Keith—changes to “Keith”—posted. He said that I was exceptionally lucky because Bellow was known to be touchy and difficult. Not only that, but he has very high standards. I generally wrote him [Keith] around his birthday. He sent me a chapter of his novel about a student that had plagerized something and his politic way of dealing with that.

 I would say in closing that I am…..I feel deprived. I feel I would like to dash off an email to him and get his seasoned opinion and now I can’t any more. I have nothing but gratitude for Keith Opdahl. He was very important in shepherding me through my college years, getting me through those years. In one of these emails he says “wouldn’t it be nice if you could go to college with the knowledge that you have now? “ Well, yes, it would be nice. I would be able to talk up in his classes. I have opinions. He makes the point maybe that students sometimes don’t need to go to college right away. And certainly, four years of doing something else...because my father didn’t want to pay for it for I was on academic probation most of the time…only aided by studying in the English Department and taking these education classes…That was crucial for me.

 I think that he had the best instincts as a teacher […]I thought Opdahl was a very wonderful teacher.  I’m sure, even though he was considered Captain Hook [for the Cs he awarded average work], even his detractors seemed to feel that he was among the best professors that they ever took a class from. I would echo that, and so conclude, it is hard to imagine a college advisor having a more profound effect on a student than Keith had on my life.

                                                        Tom Barnard  DPU ’72

                                                        former student and long-time correspondent

                                                        Oak Park IL

Keith in the early '70s, DePauw University

Dennis Huey

       Dr. Opdahl was my favorite professor at DePauw, and the winter term we called Doc Op's Poetry Circus was one of the best times in my life.  I probably couldn't appreciate the full breadth of his character, because at the time I was committed to seeing him as a father figure, with myself as the rebel son.

        Dr. Opdahl made his points concisely and playfully, with warmth and a bit of an edge at the same time.  Once he assigned the class to write a dialogue.  I played it cute and wrote mine in verse.  I don't remember what I wrote, but I still remember his critique, word for word, more than forty years later:

       "Not bad, though it's sad, you've been had.

        You confuse word play with life today.

        You use the occasion to mount an evasion."

Dennis Huey DPU ‘72

Keith in front of the Commerce Building, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1966

Toby Fulwiler

            I studied with Keith in several classes as a senior undergraduate English major in 1964-65, where he was, indeed, a major influence on my life and career.  As you probably know, the academic world can be many things, from pretentious and stuffy to stimulating and humane; what I learned from Keith was the stimulating and humane part. After graduating in 1965, I pursued further English studies at Wisconsin, receiving my Ph.D. in 1973, and concluded the last twenty years of my academic life at the University of Vermont where I taught American literature and directed the writing program; I formally retired in 2002 at 59, to pursue other interests that are remarkably close to those Keith also followed, including photography and woodworking.

            From studying with Keith I especially learned the power of classroom dialogue and conversation as opposed to lecture and presentation--classroom talk stimulated by an instructor who asked provocative questions and listened carefully to student responses--never with condescension and always with a smile. Subsequently, I followed those "Opdahl" practices in my own teaching--seldom lecturing, always listening, usually smiling--crucial methods for me as a classroom teacher, and also methods I used when I became a consultant for a movement known as "writing across the curriculum" where I passed on similar methods to college instructors in disciplines other than English.

            It was in this capacity as a writing workshop consultant that I last talked with Keith when I visited DePauw around 2000-2003, passing on teaching lessons and strategies whose lineage can be traced back to Keith's stimulating and humane classes in Madison some thirty-five years earlier. Keith and I had dinner one evening where I was able to thank him for being the fine teacher he was and explore our other interests in our ongoing lives. We corresponded for a while via e-mail, then over the past ten years or so, just drifted apart as people are wont to do--that is until I tried to revive our connection, but too late.

Toby Fulwiler, UW-Madison '65

former student of Keith’s at UW-Madison in the mid-‘60s

Professor Emeritus, University of Vermont

Fairfield VT

April 21, 2014

Kim (L) and Bill Donovan (R) + Martha Donovan Opdahl, Keith's wife, at Keith's Remembrance Gathering, May 10, 2014

Bill Donovan

 I’m Bill Donovan. I’m Martha’s cousin. Her father and my father were brothers.

I have a unique perspective on Keith which Martha asked me to share. I was a student at the University [of Wisconsin] and I had to take a humanities course.  I had to take 4 credits and I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about it.

I’d heard that Keith’s course was relatively difficult—it was an introductory survey course—and that he was fair but hard. So I decided to take the plunge.

It was quite a change in my life because I embraced literature after taking the course.  The initial part of the course was reading Moby Dick which, when I first picked it up, I thought, “My god, this is going to be impossible!”  But within the first five or ten pages I came upon this quote of man being attracted to the sea and seeing his image. That the image seen—and I think the sea also can be interchanged with nature—was "of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all." 

I’ve never forgotten that quote and the role that Keith had in explaining and leading a neophyte through some really difficult concepts and changing me in terms of embracing literature.  I think about that course probably at least once a week...and I’m not exaggerating.

So, Keith, thank you!

Bill Donovan

Madison WI

former student of Keith's at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, early '60s

participated in Program for Keith's Remembrance Gathering, May 10, 2014

Most critics consider Saul Bellow one of America's leading novelists, but few of them agree in the interpretation of his work. Much of this disagreement, says Opdahl, is the result of misunderstanding, but much of it also stems from an unresolved conflict in Bellow's imagination. The novelist continually returns to the opposition between the willful and the loving, the skeptical and the believing. This conflict pervades Bellow's style, the structure of his novels, and the psychology of his protagonists; it is at once the unifying element of his fiction and the source of his difficulties.

Although 'placing' Bellow on the current intellectual scene and discussing how this conflict reflects current intellectual and social issues, the author puts his main emphasis on the novels themselves. He studies the influence of this polarity on technique, explaining many of Bellow's shifts in form and substance, and analyzes how it shapes theme and plot. The novelist's ultimate purpose is religious: Religious issues and longing drive his heroes to rage, withdrawal, comic intensity. Viewed in this perspective, the formal problems of the novels disappear or are explained by Bellow's difficulty in achieving, expressing, and sustaining his vision. Offering perceptive interpretations of the novels as well as some of the shorter fiction, Opdahl presents a fresh view of Bellow's work and shows how he expresses the problems and doubts of our time.

EMOTION AS MEANING: The Literary Case for How We Imagine (2002)

Emotion as Meaning offers a new model of the mind based upon a new understanding of emotion. It resolves the debate between the imagists and propositionalists by tracing the translation of language into vicarious experience, showing that the mind represents its imagined world by means of not only image and idea but emotion. Emotion as Meaning proves its thesis by surveying existing theories of mental representation and analyzing the mind's construction of literary texts.

How does the reader of a novel (or a person remembering or daydreaming) conjure up that internal, imagined world that extends over time and within its own mental space? Until the nineteen eighties, most believed that we imagine within the medium of language. Then psychologists like Allan Paivio and Stephen Kosslyn showed that we think also by means of images, triggering a debate between the propositionalists, who define thought in terms of idea (or word), and the imagists, who insist we think in picture-like ways.

Opdahl shows that emotion provides a third mental code, representing those elements that elude idea and image: relationships, mental states, large entities like cities or eras, and--always--context or background. Emotion provides the primary mode of the identifying reader, as he or she shares the emotions of the protagonist.

Each of these three codes offers advantages that make it necessary to mental representation. Just as language expresses causation, and image expresses visual relationships, so emotion expresses meaning. This last capacity permits the reader to distill large bodies of information into a single affective representation, making reading possible.

Some readers will appreciate this book as a study of mental representation and the problems involved in its understanding. Other readers will appreciate this book for its essays on specific works: Ernest Hemingway's Big Two-Hearted River, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady, John Updike's The Centaur, and Toni Morrison's Beloved. Opdahl shows that a study of the functions of emotion in literature is practical and illuminating.

For all readers, however, the ultimate point is the affective code. Emotion gives form to not only our reactions but our representations. It is not only expressive but depictive, serving as an effective mode of thought. To understand this is to appreciate the contribution the humanities can make to our understanding of the mental process. It is also to revise our current models of the mind.

Book jacket illustration: Jacket image is First Letter, oil on canvas by Martin Lam Nguyen, 1996, art professor at Notre Dame University.