Dr. Robert J. Lordi

Dr. Lordi died March 5, 2026. He was 102 years old. As a professor of English Literature, he taught at the University of Notre Dame from 1958 to 1995. He was born on October 18, 1923 in Rockland, Massachusetts, the fifth of eight children of Nicola and Carmella Lordi, both immigrants to the United States from Italy in the early 19th century. At Rockland High School he became a member of the ProMerito Honor Society during his junior and senior years. He ran cross country and played basketball (lettering in neither). After graduation in June 1941, he worked at a number of jobs, including as a sheetmetal apprentice at the Fore River shipyard and on the Bunker Hill aircraft carrier. He was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Corps in March, 1943. After basic training in Atlantic City he spent 12 weeks in New York City training to become an airplane engine mechanic at Stewart Technical School. From there he was sent to Hays Kansas Army Air Base to begin work overhauling aircraft engines; but he soon applied for and was accepted into the Air Corps' cadet program in the hopes of becoming a pilot. He was sent to Utah State University in Logan, Utah where for four months he studied physics, math, meteorology, etc. While there, he had 10 hours of dual flying instruction. In only his third lesson, he was told to land by his instructor, whereupon he bounced off the runway, dooming any chance of his becoming a pilot. At pre-flight school in Santa Ana, California, he took a series of physical and psychological tests that determined his future training as a bombardier. He was sent to gunnery school in Kingman, Arizona for six weeks where he was qualified on 50 caliber machine guns, free-standing and in the nose and belly turrets. In January 1945, he finally was sent to bombardier school in Carlsbad, New Mexico where for six months he flew almost daily on practice bomb runs, managing to keep his hits on target within acceptable limits. Then on June 5, 1945 he was awarded his wings and commissioned a Flight Officer. When Japan surrendered two months later he became a lame duck and so was discharged in October 1945. After a year of carousing with his high school friends back from the war, financed by the 52-20 club, he entered Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he majored in English Literature in the AB Greek honors program. Graduating in 1950, he began to study at Boston College on a Master's degree with a view to teaching at his old high school. But encouraged by a professor there to pursue a PhD, off he went to the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Since the G.I. bill funds had expired, he and a fellow graduate student spent one day a week installing 18 foot T.V. antennas on snow covered roofs in the faint hope that they could provide customers with reception from Milwaukee and Chicago. In 1953, he moved to the University of Illinois, Urbana, where he taught freshman composition courses each semester while working on his PhD. There he met Dorothy Eckert, a senior Journalism major, whom he married in 1955. He received his doctor's degree in 1958 upon completion of his dissertation– a critical edition of Richardus Tertius (i.e. Richard III) written in 1579 by Thomas Legge, the headmaster of St. John's College, Cambridge University. His dissertation was later published in 1975 by Garland Publishing in its Outstanding Dissertation series. In 1958, he joined the English Department of the University of Notre Dame where he taught a variety of courses, undergraduate and graduate, until his retirement in 1995. In addition to a number of scholarly articles on Shakespeare's plays and on other authors, he edited two plays of George Chapman: Bussy d'Ambois (pub. 1964) and The Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois (pub. 1977). The latter was also published in Volume II of The Complete Dramatic Works of George Chapman (pub. 1987). Later he edited the Neo-Latin play Solymitana Clades (i.e. The Fall of Jerusalem (pub. 1989). He was awarded several grants-in-aid to carry on his research at various libraries in the United States and England, including the Folger Shakespeare Fellowship (1962), American Philosophical Society grants (1963, 1965, 1971), a NEH travel grant (1984), and research grants from Notre Dame (1962-1985). He served on a number of English Department and University committees, including the English Departments Promotion Committee, its Latin Exam committee and the Faculty Senate. From 1965 to 1966, he served as an associate editor of the Neo-Latin News. In 1965-1966, he was the assistant director of Notre Dame's Sophomore Year Abroad program in Innsbruck, Austria. While there, he taught a course for the Notre Dame students and a seminar on Shakespeare's plays for the Austrian students in the department of Englische Philologie. After retiring from Notre Dame in 1995, he taught a variety of courses each semester at the Forever Learning Institute until he was 94. Meanwhile, he pursued his hobby of tool collecting, especially of vintage woodworking planes. This led to his starting, with his wife Dorothy, an antique business at Picker's Antique Mall in Niles, Michigan. He is preceded in death by his wife of 70 years, Dorothy, and his son Paul. He is survived by his daughter, Margaret, and three grandchildren who live in Florida.