Robert Hausmann

Professor Dr Robert Hausmann died peacefully at his home last month surrounded by loved ones. He was 82.

His ashes will be scattered at his request upon the graves of his parents at Arlington National Cemetery, in his hometown of Nicholson, within the floodplain of Rock Creek, in the sagebrush of Shineberger Creek, in Budapest, and a pinch in the subway system of Tokyo which he had in his last few trips to Japan "finally figured out".

A man proud of his humble beginnings in Appalachian Pennsylvania, Bob won a high school scholarship to Wyoming Seminary preparatory school. That education launched a career in academia that took Bob Hausmann to Penn State (from which he promptly flunked out) to the University of Alabama to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and finally to a job working as a Professor at the University of Montana.

A PhD in linguistics, Bob used his education and his position as a professor to establish the English Language Institute at the University of Montana sending countless teachers across the world promoting English as a path to educational and economic mobility and greater access to an increasingly globalized world.

Bob also used Missoula as a base for hunting and fishing adventures throughout Montana and across the globe: hunting grouse and pheasants in heaths of the Scottish Borders and trout in the lochs of the Outer Hebrides, hunting wild boar in the deciduous forests of Hungary, fly fishing the high mountain streams of Patagonia and New Zealand, and in the salmon runs of Alaska and Quebec. As a visiting professor he even rode along with the bürkütchü of Kyrgyzstan who hunt with golden eagles and got him a wolf pelt.

He kept globe trekking right to the end of his life, celebrating his last birthday with friends and family in Hungary, and traveling with a friend to Ireland just weeks before his death.

He is survived by me, his son Ben, by his adopted daughter Helen, by his adopted Hungarian sons Tamas and Krisztian, by his niece Heidi, by his honorary niece and nephew Raya and Sava, by his dog Dante, and by countless friends, colleagues, exes, neighbors, and students who loved him and in whose company he took so much joy.

To let him say it in his own words, "I have had a good and an interesting career, more money than I ever thought I would have in the bank, a nice place to live, the love of a few good women (and a couple of bad ones). I guess I am ready to go." He died with dignity holding my hand and the hand of a beautiful woman with his dog's muzzle on his knee. He will have no formal service, he preferred for "people to just come to the house."