Thomas J. Garbáty

I was a student in two of Professor Garbáty's classes in the mid 1980s. He was one of the biggest influences on my academic life. He was a wonderful teacher, but what I most remember was his deep concern for his students. He was the first college professor I had who truly went out of his way to help students individually. His influence also helped steer me toward a PhD in medieval literature. I am a professor myself now, and I often remember Professor Garbáty and try to follow his...

An annual holiday card and letter from me to Tom went out today just before I read the UM English newsletter and learned of his death. I am heartbroken. He was the best teacher of my graduate studies throughout the '80s. I still repeat many of the funniest and most brilliant quotations from him in my own classes now.

Hello!
I am very sorry to hear about this.
I had contact to him concerning the manufacturing of his family in Berlin.
I found some originals signs from his former Garbaty - factory, some of them I have sent him.

With kind regards from Germany
Andreas Henseler
[email protected]

I met Tom when I was a graduate student at the university, from 1968 to 1972. Although I did not study with him, I knew Tom to be a man of great integrity and serious scholarship, and one who took delight in his calling, in his students, and in his friends. Over the years, I came to know Tom quite well. He was my guest lecturer at a medieval symposium at Haverford College (and was thrilled to return to his beloved alma mater), and I saw him often on my visits to Ann Arbor over the years. ...

Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:38:25 -0400

Tommy was one of my first students at Haverford College, where I arrived direct from graduate school (he was infinitely intrigued when I interrupted my teaching for a day to go take my Ph.D. orals in New
York!) What made us friends -- not too distant in age, to begin with -- was a quality in him of gentle wonderment at all that the world had to offer, together with an unreserved confidingness that
made mutuality...

Tom Garbaty was one of my two truly outstanding undergraduate professors at UofM (early 1960s). He gave me an appreciation for Chaucer and early and medieval English literature that I never lost although I never went further with English lit. Tom and I became personally friendly though I was a mere junior, then a senior. And newly married at that time, he invited me more than once to dinner at his house. When Bettina was born, the thrilled parents invited me over almost immediately and I...

Tom Garbáty will be fondly remembered by his friends in Berlin, the city where he was born in 1930. His grandfather was a prominent businessman in the district of Pankow, where he founded and ran a cigarette factory. The Garbáty company was famous for the exemplary way they treated their workers. Thanks to the family's philanthropy, a Jewish orphanage was founded in Pankow in 1913. The building, which survived World War II,now houses a public library. A square in Pankow has been named after...

As the first tenured woman in the English Department, I found in Tom the longest and truest friend I had at the University of Michigan. After he retired, until nearly his last days, he regularly joined Earl Shulze’s widow (Aileen) and me to draw and paint in my basement on Thursday nights. For many years, Earl and Tom were not just office mates but best friends, and Tom would not wish to leave us without some mention of Earl. For years to come, memories both of the joy of knowing Tom as a...