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Robert ADOLPH Obituary
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Memories and Condolences
for Robert ADOLPH
9 Entries
Nee Shirley Le Blanc
September 21, 2025
Robert Adolph was my favorite professor when I attended York University in Toronto. I have thought of him often over the years , as he had a way of making us all feel the fun of learning, feeling comfortable expressing our thoughts and he had such a warm personality. Years later a new neighbour moved in next door to us, at our home near Stratford. I found out that he had taught at York too, and knew Bob quite well. What a coincidence. So sad to learn he has passed away. My condolences to his wife and family.
Joan Shoolman Myers Weimer
July 4, 2024
Bob was my first boyfriend when we were in high school and college and my name was Joan Shoolman. I went to an event at Williams when he was there and I was at Tufts. A brilliant and kind man.
Patricia Phenix
April 26, 2019
A magnificent teacher. Bob was unique, whimsical, funny, and unpretentious, with a great sense of humour about himself. He didn't confine teaching to the classroom, but outside of it as well. I'm sure many other students had the honour of calling him, and his beautiful wife Rheba, friends. I'm shattered to hear of his passing. It just seemed to me his life force would allow him to live forever. Thanks for the lessons, Bob, the laughs, and the unforgettable memories. You are missed.
March 5, 2019
Professor Adolph was singly one the most important influences in my life as a student, a writer and a thinker. Thank you for everything you did form. I wouldn't be me without your awesome mentorship.
Sincerely,
Lise Lafond
Your University
1986-1992
Fiona Fernandes
February 28, 2019
Bob was a well loved member of our Interdisciplinary Studies Executive Committee. He will be greatly missed.
My deepest condolences to Rheba and family.
Elizabeth Sabiston
February 28, 2019
I was so sorry to hear recently of the passing of Bob Adolph. Back in the day, I team lectured with Bob in the Humanities Images of America course. We had a lively discussion of THE GREAT GATSBY, I recall, as well as a mutual interest in Henry James's THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. Bob's Bostonian accent provided the correct pronunciation of (Henry David) Thoreau, as well as recreating the New England Transcendental context. Bob was sharp, funny, unpretentious, and always accessible, often self-deprecating. I also knew him through the C.A.A.S. (Canadian Association of American Studies), and through Graduate English. Bob supervised Brett Zimmerman's doctoral dissertation, and I was a committee member. I remember Brett treating us to dinner some time after. My sincere condolences to Rheba and Bob's family. Doing something nice for someone is perfect Bob Adolph advice.
Ruth Compton Brouwer
February 27, 2019
I didn't know Rob personally, but he was once a mentor to my brother-in-law. My sympathies to Rheba, whose wise and warm counsel was a great help to me in some times of trouble. I hope that she has a Rheba now to support her.
February 24, 2019
Any three minute conversation with Bob was simultaneously and always confusing, enlightening, entertaining, hilarious, unique, informative, and filled with sheer delight.
Happy the memories, sad the loss.
Paul Swarney
Brett Zimmerman
February 22, 2019
The world is a little poorer with the loss of Bob Adolph, and my life would have been a great deal poorer had I not known the man who would become not only my mentor but also my colleague and my friend. In fact, I don't know if I could have survived the stresses of graduate school were it not for Bobhis wit, his wisdom, his compassion, his counsel. And although he had sons of his own, I came to see him as Dad #2. So deep was my gratitude and admiration that I dedicated my second book, Edgar Allan Poe: Rhetoric and Style, to him. The choice was highly appropriate: stylistics and classical rhetoric comprised a subject taught to me by none other than Robert Adolph. In other words, the book that helped get me tenure would not have been possible were it not for Bob (even though, ironically, he hated Poe.) And so much of what I teach even now, thirty years after graduating, is based on what I learned from Bob not only in his graduate courses but also while a colleague in our old Humanities course, Images of America. We haven't heard his voice in York's classrooms for years but I channel him in almost every lesson I teach.
Bob's companionship extended beyond the classroom. Knowing my passion for astronomy, in 1986 when Haley's Comet returned, he brought his wife, Rheba, over to my house and from there we drove to York University to hunt down the comet with our binoculars. There are too many memories, too many to list here. Some come immediately to mindlike the time, in class, when a student asked me to translate some Yiddish from a Henry Roth novel, Call It Sleep. Not being Jewish (despite my surname), I was in no position to help the student. Bob leaned over and offered a translation. How did you know that, Bob? I asked. With a twinkle in his eye, he replied, I was born and raised that way, my son. Bob! All these years we've known each other and you never mentioned it! He did mention, often, his love of classical music, however. Do you like music? he asked one day. I pretended to have some culture with some stumbling answer, and then inquired as to his favourite composers. Well, he said, I like Beethoven, I like Brahms, but Mozart is God! At other times his enthusiasm bubbled up for some idea I had for an essay or book: Ah! Publish, my son!
I lost track of him these last few years. For decades I indulged in a ritual of sending him a Christmas card knowing that I wouldn't get one in returnit was just my way of letting him know I was thinking of him and his dear wife, Rheba. A few years ago, however, the card came back so I assumed he had moved to a new location. And that was it. Still, I believed he would live forever; I knew of the legendary longevity of his father. Bob used to regale me, and us grad students generally, with tales of how he'd have to fly down in a hurry to Boston because his dad, approaching the century mark in years, insisted on climbing a ladder to do a little work on the roof: Don't do anything until I get there, dad! His dad, he told us, furthermore, had so thick a Boston accent as almost to pass for a speech impediment.
I thought Bob would live forever. But his own publications carry forward his legacy, his footprint. As do mine.
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