Douglass George Boshkoff

Douglass George Boshkoff, 85, passed away on Nov. 15, 2015 after a brief illness. He was born on Nov 11, 1930, to Helen Douglass Boshkoff and George Boshkoff in Buffalo, New York where his father was an engineer and executive at Union Carbide and his mother was a Buffalo debutante.

Following his graduation from Park School in 1948, he went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in economics at Harvard University in 1952 and a law degree at Harvard Law School in 1955. After law school he returned to Buffalo to practice law. In 1957, he met Ruth Osborne when a friend brought him to hear her play organ at a local church. They were engaged within two months and married six months later. Doug and Ruth had four children and nine grandchildren, all of whom adored Doug, for his kindness, generosity, sense of humor and eccentricity, and who will miss him deeply.

Second only to his family, Doug loved teaching and Indiana University. In 1961, he was hired for a one-year position at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law on a temporary basis to fill in for a professor on sabbatical. After a year of teaching, his enthusiastic law students petitioned the law school to offer Doug a full time teaching position and in 1962 he began the first of more than 50 years teaching at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. Dedicated to education and the law school, he served as Associate Dean and then Acting Dean of the law school from 1972 to 1975. A keen scholar, he was the author of three books and more than 70 articles, and in 1992, he was awarded the McKinney Professorship for his excellence in scholarship.

Doug officially retired from teaching in 1995 but continued to teach his favorite class, Contracts, for another 20 years and as McKinley Professor Emeritus, he finally retired from a 50 year teaching career December 5, 2014. An inspirational and beloved teacher known for his kindness and attentive approach to students, Doug was also famous for his attention-getting classroom techniques including standing on his desk to emphasize an important point (a technique that he abandoned in his later years), reciting, from memory, a lengthy poem about the “Rose of Aberlone,” and sponsoring humor contests in his class. He wrote (and then published) a collection of limericks to illustrate the holding of each of his first-year contract cases. In his career, Doug taught more than 10,000 law students and one third of the practicing lawyers in Indiana. His excellence in teaching was recognized by generations of law students and his peers, who awarded him the Gavel Award, the Leon Wallace Teaching Award, and the Indiana University Distinguished Teaching Award—the university's highest award for teaching.

Doug was an avid traveller, art collector, food and wine connoisseur and a life long learner. Just one week before he died, he travelled to Chicago with his family to celebrate his 58th wedding anniversary. He is survived by his wife of 58 years, Ruth Osborne Boshkoff of Bloomington, daughter Katharine Boshkoff of San Francisco, CA, daughter Ellen Boshkoff of Indianapolis, IN daughter Mary Boshkoff of Mebane, NC and daughter Susan Boshkoff Roux of Durham, NC, and grandchildren Adam Hegedus of Santa Barbara, CA, Elizabeth Hegedus of Tacoma, WA, Emily Boshkoff of Washington, DC, Molly Heavilon of Bloomington, Indiana, Douglass Boshkoff of Swarthmore, PA, and Jackson Meisner, Ava Meisner, Liliane Roux and Tristan Roux all of the Raleigh Durham area in North Carolina.

A memorial gathering for friends and family will be held on Friday, November 20 at 3:30 pm at the Whittenberger Auditorium, in the Indiana University Memorial Union. At a later date, the Indiana University Maurer School of Law plans to hold an event commemorating Doug’s life and contributions to teaching and the legal profession. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the IU Foundation/Maurer School of Law (PO Box 6460, Indianapolis IN 46206) for the benefit of the Boshkoff Memorial Fund at the IU Maurer School of Law. Arrangements have been entrusted to Day & Deremiah-Frye Funeral Home.