Robert L. Saitz

Robert Leonard Saitz, 86, of Stoneham, died in the presence of family on March 12, 2015 at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was joking and enjoying life until the day he had a sudden cerebral hemorrhage related to a recently treated heart valve infection. His parents were Morris (Mordecai, Motel) Saitz and Ida Shalit. Ida was born of Polish parents living in Lithuania who emigrated to the West End of Boston and subsequently to Dorchester where they took in a boarder—Morris. Morris, a jeweler, was of Ukranian (Savran, Odessa region) origin and escaped the pogroms leaving on an ox cart (hidden under hay avoiding soldiers seeking escapees with pitchforks) in 1921 (last name Shoyhet but his father Kalman, a cantor, took the name Saitz (his first wife who had died) on moving to join family in the US in 1913).

Bob is survived by his wife Herlinda, son Richard, sister Marilyn, and his grandchildren Isabella and Tatiana. He was Professor Emeritus, teaching English and linguistics for the Department of English, Boston University starting in 1962, having taught most recently fall of 2014, and preparing to teach in the fall of 2015. He grew up in Dorchester and West Roxbury and graduated from English High School (5th in his class of over 800; the oldest public high school in the US) in 1945. He earned degrees in English--an A.B. from Boston University in 1949, an M.A. at the University of Iowa in 1950 and a Ph.D. (English and Linguistics) in 1955 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with membership in Phi Beta Kappa and Pi Gamma Mu.

He was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army in 1957, where he had served as a Private – a financial disbursing specialist, with training in radio communications—in Vicenza, Italy, where he taught Italian to US service members.

He joined the faculty of Boston University in 1962, and was an expert in kinesics (gestures), applied linguistics and teaching English as a second language. He was awarded three Fulbright lectureships (in Bogota, Colombia (Teaching award 1962: Professor Extraordinario), Seville, Spain, and Universite de Montpellier, France), consulted with the Peace Corps and government ministries in Peru, Panama, Indonesia, Argentina, and Brazil, was appointed to the State Board of Education advisory council for bilingual education (1971-1974) and published some 25 scholarly books, including Ideas in English, a Handbook of Gestures, a series of Turning Points Workbooks, bilingual texts for teaching English, books for children at the pre-literacy and elementary level including texts, interactive software and teacher’s manuals (Tapestry Emerging Literacy Program (e.g. Elenita Goes to Market, The Magic Tent Show)), and recent translations with his wife Eight Novellas by Ramon Gomez de la Serna and Until the Wedding Does Us Part. He also wrote numerous music reviews and opinion editorials about the environment for local newspapers, and translations of Spanish songs for community sing-alongs.

He was a founding member of the international Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL, 1964), Chairman of the Association of Teachers of English as a Second Language (ATESL, 1969; National Association of Foreign Student Affairs (NAFSA)) and the founder and first President of the Massachusetts Association of Teachers of Speakers of Other Languages (MATSOL) in 1972. He was awarded grants for his work from the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) Institute in English for Speakers of Other Languages, the State Department, the Ford Foundation, and NAFSA. He led a Japanese teachers exchange program, programs for Boston University employees who did not speak English, and teacher training for local paraprofessionals with the cooperation of the Urban Institute and Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD). He also created the program leading to a Masters degree in the teaching of TESOL. He founded and directed the Boston Area Seminar for International Students (BASIS), an intensive English program that in 1975 became the current day Center for English Language and Orientation Programs (CELOP) at Boston University.

Donations in his name could be made to your favorite charity. He enjoyed his family and colleagues around the world, the Boston Symphony, the Reading Symphony Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera, his students at Boston University (who consistently said his teaching was so insightful that textbooks were superfluous), the Boston Bruins, the Boston Red Sox, the New England Patriots, the Boston Celtics (especially the language of the sports announcers and the Boston Globe sports columns), and nature (e.g. the environment, trees, birds (owls and hawks, along with the more common), squirrels, dogs (and the bunnies they chase and sometimes catch), turtles, wolves and skunks. His family and friends will meet privately to celebrate his life; no formal burial service is planned.