MABEL L. LANG

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Bryn Mawr College

MABEL LANG Obituary

LANG
MABEL L., 92, July 21, 2010, of Bryn Mawr PA. Professor Emeritus of Greek at Bryn Mawr College. Survived by her sister, Marian Blanchard of Ithaca NY; 4 nephews and one niece. A Memorial Service will be held at a later date. Memorial contributions may be made in her name to Bryn Mawr College, 101 N. Merion Ave., Bryn Mawr PA 19010.
McCONAGHY F.H., Ardmore
www.mcconaghyfuneralhome.com

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Published by Philadelphia Inquirer/Philadelphia Daily News on Jul. 23, 2010.

Memories and Condolences
for MABEL LANG

8 Entries

Meph Wyeth

Planted Trees

Artemis Hionides

January 11, 2011

She was the closest I have come to understanding how Socrates might have taught. She would blow through my immature arguments laughing and taught me a way of being honest that was hard to stomach in my youth but which I appreciated later. It seems I will always remember her laughing, asking after my mother, and leaning back in her creaking revolving chair in Thomas. Because I saw her in Greece and dropped in often at Bryn Mawr, she became family away from home, my "aunt Mabel". I miss her experience and advice of "this too shall pass" when things seemed to overwhelm me.

Panetha Nychis Ott

July 25, 2010

Miss Lang was the form of a Greek professor. She not only imparted a love of and fascination for Greek in all its forms, but a deep respect for the liberal arts, on which she often shared her reflections. She was a formidable woman who could be frightening yet gentle and caring, and always had dry and even mischievous wit. This was a woman who was not afraid to berate Regis professor Hugh Lloyd-Jones, the daring of which I did not fully appreciate until I saw him berate others. This was also a woman who readily donned medieval costume to celebrate May Day with the rest of us, and bright yellow boots with red piping to cheer us on in the winter. Even Chase and Phillips came alive because she willed it. She cared as deeply about her students as she did about Greek.
At the end of my freshman year, she asked me to write to an incoming international freshman named Artemis Hionides, whom she thought I’d like, and about whose welfare she was concerned. She added that my father probably knew her father. One always felt proud to be singled out by Miss Lang to do anything, and anyway a refusal to a request of hers would have been out of the question, so I accepted. But I was puzzled – why did she think my father knew Artemis’s? “Because, Miss Nychis , “ she said, “all Greeks know all other Greeks.” Disagreeing with Miss Lang was also unthinkable, so I asked my father if he knew Mr. Hionides. And sure enough, Miss Lang was right; she was always right: my father knew a cousin of Mr. Hionides, which amounted to the same thing. She was also right that I would like Artemis, who became one of my closest friends.
I was ashamed, in 8:00 a.m. Baby Greek back in 1977, when Miss Lang could not understand why I did not recognize the modern Greek word for mosquito in its New Testament form, but elated, in 1981, when she taught me to recognize some classical Greek words in their Linear B form. I’m still not sure why poetry flourished in the age of tyranny while tragedy flourished in the age of democracy – even Mr. Lattimore had trouble with that question when we ran to him for help – but I know that few professors have had the influence over me to make me continue pondering that question and so many others so many years after they were first posed. It is hard to accept that the woman whom Brown Classics professor John Rowe Workman once called puella aeterna is no more.

Panetha Theodosia Nychis Ott, '81

Pam Johnston

July 25, 2010

None of us in T. Corey Brennan's Herodotus Seminar will ever forget Miss Lang's "Stupid or Lazy" Speech: one day, when our translations failed to pass muster, she delivered forth a scathing philippic in a voice quivering with indignation, asking whether we were lazy or stupid, as only this could explain our performance. Needless to say, we were chastened.

She could be terrifying, but also helpful, encouraging, with a wry sense of humor. She will be greatly missed.

Pamela Lackie Johnston, BMC Ph.D.'97

Marshall Johnston

July 25, 2010

Thank you, Miss Lang!

Kerry Mueller

July 24, 2010

In Baby Greek if you were unprepared, it was better to confess at the beginning of the class. By senior year, five of us took Comp Conference with her. When one wasn't prepared, the others would chime in with questions and answers to cover for her. Miss Lang saw right through us. I'm so sad that she's gone.

Kerry Mueller BMC '65

Todd Garth

July 23, 2010

Everyone who ever knew her--and that's a lot of people--has at least one Mabel Lang story. I took baby Greek from her at 8:00 am--she voluntarily taught an extra section of this class, five days a week, an hour before normal classes; that's how dedicated she was. Though I lived in Denbigh, just across the green from Taylor Hall, I could never make it to class before 8:03. More than once, as I entered the room, she would intone: "Mr. Garth, do you live *very* far from campus? Really, in many ways she was the ideal professor: she held her students accountable for a great deal, and in return would always go the extra mile. And absolutely everyone knew who she was. Todd Garth, Haverford College '81.

July 23, 2010

A loss to Bryn Mawr and a loss to the scholarly community. No one who ever had Miss Lang as a professor will ever forget her.
Sara Hoenig Pitts, Bryn Mawr College '82

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