Article published Sunday, July 26, 2009 KENNETH A. ROBB, 1933-2009 BGSU professor enjoyed gardening
BOWLING GREEN - Kenneth A. Robb, a retired English professor with wide-ranging pursuits - Victorian literature to modern fiction - who offered his expertise as a master gardener to the community, died Thursday in his home of an apparent heart attack.
He was 76 and in poor health in recent years, his wife, Jane, said.
Mr. Robb retired in 1991 as an associate professor of English at Bowling Green State University, where he became a faculty member in 1970.
"He was a wonderfully kind and gentle guy, and the students responded to that as well," said Tom Kinney, a retired English professor. The slightly ironic in literature amused him, and colleagues enjoyed his sense of humor.
"We liked him very much," Mr. Kinney said.
"He paid attention to his classes and his teaching and his reading, and of course to his family."
Mr. Robb taught linguistics and, since graduate school, courses in English as a second language.
At Bowling Green State University, he also taught courses in how to teach English as a second language.
He taught grammar to prospective teachers, his wife said. He was a supporter of the Dictionary of American Regional English and invited its editor, Frederic Cassidy, of the University of Wisconsin, to lecture at BGSU.
Mr. Robb taught courses on Victorian literature. His doctoral dissertation was on Idylls of the King, the cycle of poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. And he taught courses in modern American fiction.
"He read everything," his wife said. "He had a wide range of interests."
He and his wife held annual picnics for foreign students and those taking classes in teaching a second language.
In retirement, Mr. Robb became a master gardener after taking the proper courses.
He volunteered at the Wood County Historical Society, the Simpson Arboretum, and the butterfly garden at the Wood County District Public Library in Bowling Green.
He was a past president of the Black Swamp Herb Society.
The family formerly lived on three acres just outside Bowling Green, where he grew day lilies and irises, gooseberries and currants, and planted 300 trees - apple, peach, cherry, nectarine .
"He liked to experiment with what people enjoyed, but was a little bit on the edge," his wife said.
He was an opera devotee from age 12. He was a tenor and sang in church choirs and barbershop groups.
The couple traveled the world, and he liked meeting people wherever they went.
"He really valued people and was interested in what they did," his wife said. "He remembered people. He didn't just meet someone and forget."
Mr. Robb grew up in Rochester, N.Y., and received degrees from Colgate University, the University of Rochester, and the University of Wisconsin.
He was an Army veteran and was stationed in Greenland.
He was a member of First United Methodist Church in Bowling Green.
Surviving are his wife, Jane, whom he married June 22, 1963; daughter, Catherine Bevier; son, Stephen Robb, and four grandchildren.
Services will be at 11 a.m. Wednesday in the Dunn Funeral Home, Bowling Green, where the family will receive friends after 10 a.m.
The family suggests tributes to the Wood County District Public Library, Bowling Green, or the Bowling Green Parks and Recreation Foundation for the Simpson Arboretum. Permanent Link
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