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Marie Malmin Meyer dies at 102; she taught English for 45 years at St. Olaf College

mjc
March 5, 2001

NORTHFIELD, Minn. ? Marie Helene (Malmin) Meyer taught English for 45 years at St. Olaf College ? the longest term of service for any English faculty member in the college?s 126-year history. She died Saturday, March 3, in Northfield (Minn.) Care Center, at 102.

Services will be at 10 a.m. Thursday, March 8, in St. John?s Lutheran Church, Northfield, the Rev. Leslie Svendsen officiating. Burial will be in Oaklawn Cemetery, Northfield. Arrangements are by Benson Funeral Home, Northfield.

"I think of her every day," said David Wee, a professor of English who has taught at St. Olaf for 35 years, and who was a student in her popular Shakespeare class. In fact, Wee?s mother, Elizabeth, was a student of Meyer, as was Wee?s wife, Karen Herseth Wee.

"She influenced me to be a very careful reader," Wee said of Meyer. "I didn?t know how to read text carefully when I came here. She pushed us to pay close attention to the language of plays and the poetry. She was a model of careful scholarship and attention to text, and to the importance of our literary heritage."

Today Wee occupies Meyer?s former office in Room 506 of Rolvaag Memorial Library (named after the late Minnesota author and St. Olaf English Professor Ole Rolvaag). The office is dominated by an elegant wooden armchair, lovingly labeled the Marie Malmin Meyer Chair and a daily reminder of Meyer?s long influence on the college. When Meyer retired she gave the chair to philosophy professor William Narum, and when Narum retired he gave it to Wee.

Meyer drew special satisfaction from teaching first-year students at St. Olaf. She chaired the English Department for six of her 45 years at St. Olaf College, and headed the Language and Literature Division for another five years. But in 1950 she gave up the department and division chairs to return to teaching freshman English.

Her Shakespeare class was a favorite among students, and was crowded with English majors and non-majors alike. It also was Meyer?s favorite class to teach, because, as she told the St. Olaf magazine on her retirement, Shakespeare?s writing never failed to give students "some understanding of human life," and because she delighted watching students develop an excitement for literature. "It makes a tremendous difference in the kind of work they?re able to do all through college," she said.

Associate Professor Emerita of English Pam Schwandt was one of many students who learned Shakespeare from Meyer. "She went through the plays meticulously," Schwandt said. "There was very solid scholarship in her teaching. She always re-read the plays before she taught them each year."

Shortly before Meyer was to retire, Schwandt was looking for a book in Rolvaag Memorial Library. She found Meyer, then 70 years old, standing in the Chaucer stacks, looking up information for a course.

Early in her career she regularly hung a banner from an English Department window, inviting other faculty and staff members to coffee. The banner read "Tollite casus, Hortare timidos" ? Latin for "Raise the fallen; Cheer the faint," a reminder of the difficulties inherent in teaching writing and literature.

Marie Helene Malmin was born Aug. 14, 1898, in Leland, Iowa, to the Rev. Rasmus and Gabrielle (Aas) Malmin. She attended Thompson (Iowa) High School and Waldorf College, and then transferred to Concordia College (Moorhead), graduating in 1921 with a bachelor of arts degree.

She earned a master?s degree from the University of Minnesota in 1923 and a Ph.D. in 1929. She did additional study at Harvard University, the Shakespeare Institute at Stratford on Avon, England (for two summers), and the Library of Congress. She also spent a year studying in Norway as a Fulbright Research Scholar.

Before enrolling at Concordia she taught for three years in rural schools in Winnebago County, Iowa. After completing her master?s-degree studies in 1923, she began teaching English at St. Olaf, retiring in 1968 as a professor emerita.

On June 7, 1933, she married Allen Meyer, an instructor of economics and business at St. Olaf. He died in October 1975.

In 1981 St. Olaf dedicated a classroom in Rolvaag Memorial Library in Meyer?s name. In 1997 the college created the Marie Malmin Meyer Endowed Scholarship with a major donation from St. Olaf graduates Osmond R. and Elaine Kirchoff Springsted of Sarasota, Fla.

She was co-editor of two books, Ibsen Studies and A Manual of Examination. She also wrote many book reviews, as well as articles about Christmas in Scandinavia and literature and the church.

She was a member of St. John?s Lutheran Church in Northfield, the American Association of University Women, Delta Kappa Gamma, the National Council of Teachers of English and the Nordic Arts Club.

She is survived by several nieces and nephews and their families. She was preceded in death by her husband.

The family prefers memorials to the Marie Malmin Meyer Endowed Scholarship Fund at St. Olaf College or to St. John?s Lutheran Church.

Contact Michael Cooper at 507-786-3315 or cooperm@stolaf.edu.