Campus community mourns the loss of professor

By Fritz Klug
News Editor

Nancy Cutbirth Small, a long time Western Michigan University English professor, environmentalist, and local war activist, passed away on Nov. 27, 2009 after a long fight with cancer in her Kalamazoo home.

Born on Sept. 1 in Port Arthur, Texas, Small spent many years of her childhood in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela and Santiago, Cuba where her father managed oil refineries.

She earned a Ph.D. in English literature at the University of Texas in Austin and began teaching in the Department of English at WMU in 1971. She taught Renaissance literature, Shakespeare, and English poetry, among many other subjects. Small met her future husband, Tom, also a professor of English at WMU. They co-taught a Shakespeare course as well as co-directing the annual WMU Shakespeare Festival.

She was also the editor of the Anthony Powell Newsletter. She taught for 25 and a half years at WMU.

Arnie Johnston, a retired English professor and department head, remembers the couple well.

“My memories of Nancy almost all involve Tom, because they were such a wonderful team, working ardently through their Quaker group for the cause of world peace, and tirelessly laboring on behalf of various initiatives to preserve and enhance the environment,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Johnston said that Tom and Nancy worked to improve the habitat at Maple Street Magnet School, where his wife Deborah Ann Percy, was principal until 2007.

“Nancy and Tom spearheaded the rehabilitation and flourishing of the Arcadia Creek area on Maple Street’s grounds, as well as the creation of a Rain Garden in the school’s courtyard. Debby remembers being impressed not only with Nancy’s willingness to do the hard work of digging, weeding, and planting, but also her enthusiastic inclusion in the project of as many of Maple Street’s students as possible,” he said.

“Both the cause of peace and that of nature conservancy will miss Nancy’s devotion. All of us at Western, however, will miss her as a wonderful friend and colleague.”

Nancy was also a founding member of Kalamazoo Non-violent Opponents of War (KNOW), which held a rally every Sunday in front of the Federal Building downtown Kalamazoo to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Raelyn Joyce, who taught at Kalamazoo Valley Community College for over 30 years and is secretary for KNOW, remembers her dedication to the group.

“[Nancy] not only started the idea of holding Sunday anti-war vigils as mentioned in the obituary, she actively promoted attendance at the vigil by speaking to each person who came to the vigil and getting the person’s name and contact information and eventually creating huge master list of KNOW supporters to whom an electronic KNOW newsletter was regularly sent by her and Tom,” Joyce wrote in an e-mail.

In 1999 they co-founded the Kalamazoo Area Chapter of Wild Ones, a national organization that is devoted to natural landscaping.

In 1995 Nancy began transforming the Small’s lawn of their house on Waite Avenue into wildlife habitat, with Michigan native plants. A Quaker, Small was a member of Friends Committee for Unity with Nature, a Quaker environmental organization.

“She loved beauty, natural beauty in the form of flowers, butterflies, trees, and such,” Joyce wrote.  “To encourage the Kalamazoo Friends Meeting [a Kalamazoo Quaker church] to continue to maintain its native plant garden, which she and Tom helped start, she put together for us, adults and children of the Meeting, an album of pictures of beautiful butterflies that would be attracted by these native plants.”

“Looking at this album of pictures of butterflies makes me happy and grateful to Nancy for her efforts to teach and lead the rest of us.”

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=13161

Posted by HeraldAdmin on Dec 9 2009. Filed under Campus, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Cody Kimball
Web Manager: I'm a Communication Student at WMU, a SCUBA Diver, Boater, Ordained Minister, Notary Public, Web Designer, Film Maker, DJ, and of course a Journalist. Born and raised in Port Huron, MI and a graduate of SC4. http://www.codykimball.com