Portuguese wasn’t Russell
Hamilton’s first language, but it defined the course of his life.
He grew up in New Haven, Conn., a community rich with people from the
island nation of Cape Verde, and was drawn to the Portuguese tongue at an early
age.
In his later years, Hamilton could trick native speakers into thinking
that he, too, knew the language from infancy.
“He was a language buff,” said his wife, Cherie, listing a half-dozen
other languages he studied. “But I guess it wasn’t until his uncle gave him his
first Portuguese dictionary and it just took off from there.”
The love of language was lifelong for Hamilton, a lauded professor and
associate dean at the University of Minnesota. He died Feb. 27 at Walker
Methodist in Minneapolis after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease and pneumonia.
He was 81.
In 1964, Hamilton was among the first people to receive a doctoral
degree in Portuguese from Yale University, and he eventually became the first
black dean at Vanderbilt University.
“The fact that he had gone to Yale in the ’60s, and all the places that
maybe he was the first or only black person in the field, speaks volumes,” said
his son David. “He was able to bridge gaps, bring people together and walk into
any situation and succeed.”
Language wasn’t his only love.
On their first date, Hamilton took Cherie to see a foreign film at the
University of Connecticut, where they were both undergrads. He studied English
and Spanish. She majored in math and minored in Spanish.
Maybe he wanted to impress her with the movie choice, but it didn’t
matter — she was already smitten. Before he went to Madison, Wis., for his
master’s degree in English and Spanish, they eloped in New York. She stayed in
Connecticut to finish her studies, and he came back to enroll at Yale. She also
joined her husband in Brazil, where he worked on his doctoral thesis as a
Fulbright scholar.
After graduating from Yale, Hamilton was whisked away to the University
of Minnesota, where he introduced Portuguese studies to the school’s romance
language department. The young couple lived in Prospect Park — close enough for
him to walk to work every day. There, they raised their four children: two boys
and two girls.
After 20 years as a professor and associate dean at the U, Hamilton
moved to Nashville, Tenn., where he was the dean of the graduate school at
Vanderbilt. He retired from Vanderbilt in 2005 and returned to the U as a
visiting professor.
A teacher and adviser beyond the classroom, Hamilton often invited
graduate students to his home, where Cherie would prepare dinners from Portugal
and Brazil, and other international cuisine.
The family traveled the world, living in Brazil, Portugal, Cape Verde,
Angola and Mozambique during sabbaticals where they forged many lasting
friendships.
“He exposed us to a lot of different things and we were able to learn
cultural differences — that was the norm,” David said.
In the obituary published by Vanderbilt, Hamilton was quoted as telling
a reporter in 1985 that “there was never any doubt in my mind [about going to
college]. I wanted to be a professor.”
His study was lined wall-to-wall with scholarly books — 90 percent written
in Portuguese.
“He always had a book open or was writing something,” Cherie said.
She recently donated 200 books to the U, 150 to a school in Michigan,
and another 150 to a university in Brazil. There’s a crate bound for another
university.
“And there’s still about 1,000 left here,” she added.
David said he’ll miss their talks. “He was the smartest person I’ve ever
met,” David said. “When I was in grad school we talked about world politics.
His perspective was so insightful. He was so worldly on many things.”
In addition to his wife and son David, Hamilton is survived by daughters
Cherie Andrea and Melissa Elena, son Russell Malcolm, a sister, 14
grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. There will be a symposium in his
honor at the University of Minnesota in October.
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