March 25, 2005 Martin F. Andic

There is, sadly, another Class death to report. Ken Reich sends the following: "Word comes from his family and the university where he taught for many years of the death of our classmate, Dr. Martin F. Andic, a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
 
"A year into his retirement, he died of pancreatic cancer on March 25, 2005 at a hospital in St. Catharines, Ont., where he had gone to live.  Dr. Andic, a fervent student all his life, was working on a philosophic paper for a conference when he died..
 
"He came to Dartmouth from Salem, Ore., but  grew up in New York City and spent most of high school at Bronx Science. He was shy and younger
than most of his classmates after skipping two grades. A resident of Topliff, Martin often enjoyed long walks around Occom Pond. At first, he thought of going to medical school, but after he won a Reynolds Fellowship and spent a year's study at St. Johns College, Oxford, he enrolled in a philosophy graduate program at Princeton University, and received his Ph.D. there in 1967,
 
"He taught initially at Reed College in Portland, but soon moved to UMass, Boston. In a statement, the Philosophy Department there declared that "Professor Andic was much loved as a classroom teacher and renowned for the range and breadth of his courses. While most faculty focus on one or two of the areas of ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary philosophy, he taught all these areas in addition to 19th Century philosophy, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of religion, mediphysics and the philosophy of science.
 
"Dr. Andic's published writings were equally unusual, ranging from works of Greek philosophy, medieval philosophy and religion to the writing of particular thinkers, including Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Iris Murdoch and the 20th Century French philosopher, activist and mystic Simone Weil. He had planned a retirement of scholarly projects, which he began by reading voraciously and ordering large numbers of books. Martin Andic is survived by his wife, Victoria, and two children from an earlier marriage to Lorraine Hope, Nicolas and Clarissa, Dartmouth 1994, now a psychiatrist practicing in Los Angeles."

From Francis Dauer, his Senior roommate, for inclusion in the Andic obituary:

Martin and I were fellow philosophy majors and since we talked philosophy (and other matters) endlessly, we became roommates for the senior year.
Martin’s delightful personality was clearly visible on his cherubic visage and the slightly mischievous sparkle that often lighted his eyes. He was, of
course, very smart, but I was always most impressed by his imagination and his knack of finding relevance in the obscure and the unexpected. His
philosophic interests tended to bridge the hardheaded Anglo-American analytic tradition and the more romantic tradition associated with the European continent. In this way, he absorbed the entire spectrum of philosophy that was taught at Dartmouth in the late 50s. Upon graduation, Martin went to Princeton with his bride and I to Harvard. We kept in fairly close contact till we got our Ph.D.s and started our jobs on the opposite sides of the country. The last time I met Martin was over a leisurely lunch during at a philosophy conference in the early 90s. He talked with pleasure of his children (one of whom had gone to Dartmouth and the other who was beginning to apply himself) and of his then current philosophic interests (which were attuned to his imaginative side). The years in between seemed to have taken no toll on him whatsoever and he was exceptionally happy and excited – understandably, because he introduced me to his new wife, a philosopher, with whom he was starting a fresh life.

Ken Reich