David Wilfrid Paul Lewis

David Wilfrid Paul Lewis
Born	1932-01-24 Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, England
Died	2015-05-15
Occupation	professor of modern languages and diplomat
Employer	Lakehead University
Partner	Avril (wife of David Wilfrid Paul Lewis)
Children	Nicholas Lewis (son of David Wilfrid Paul Lewis) Rosamund (daughter of David Wilfrid Paul Lewis) Lydia-Maria (daughter of David Wilfrid Paul Lewis) Diana (daughter of David Wilfrid Paul Lewis) Olivier Lewis (son of David Wilfrid Paul Lewis)

David Wilfrid Paul Lewis ((1932-01-24)24 January 1932 – 15 May 2015(2015-05-15) (aged 83)) was a British-born linguist, educator and European diplomat who taught in the Department of Languages at Lakehead University from 1968 to 1975 and later led the Warsaw campus of the College of Europe.

Education

Lewis was born on 24 January 1932 in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, the second of three children; his elder brother Brian and sister Audrey shared his childhood in rationed wartime England. As a boy he studied French near Paris, where he made a lifelong friend of his pen-pal's brother Michel Roche, and at school he was chess captain. He earned a B.A. in French and German at The Queen's College, University of Oxford (1953; M.A. 1968), a diploma (1950) and doctorate (1973) from the Sorbonne, where his thesis on the poetry of Paul Verlaine received the highest honours, and studied at the College of Europe in Bruges, where he was elected president of the students and became friends with the rector, Hendrik Brugmans. In Bruges he converted from his father's Methodism to Roman Catholicism and took the baptismal name Paul.

Career

From 1958 to 1968 Lewis worked as a diplomat at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, on adult education, study abroad and environmental protection, and helped create a European Information Centre for Nature Conservation. From 1968 to 1975 he taught in the Department of Languages at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, and during these years he sat on the board of the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra Association (1970–75), the Ontario Federation of Symphony Orchestras (1971–73) and the Canadian Association of Symphony Orchestras (1974–76). He sent Lakehead students to Mexico, one of many overseas study programs he created wherever he worked. He later chaired the Department of Modern and Foreign Languages and directed the Center for International Studies at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, where he was president of Phi Beta Kappa and wrote The Road to Europe on the history, institutions and prospects of the European Union; the student newspaper The Brown and White reviewed it on 3 November 1993.

The book and his College of Europe ties led to his appointment as vice-rector and head of the College's new Warsaw campus (1994–96), where he postponed retirement to the south of France to help train a new generation of Europeans for work in the European institutions. In retirement in Provence he painted and co-edited the 1999 conference proceedings What Security for which Europe?: Case Studies from the Baltic to the Black Sea. He held British, Canadian and American citizenship, and in his last years the French government made him a member of the Ordre des Palmes académiques.

Family and death

Lewis met his first wife, Felicity, on a ferry across the Channel; they had four children, Nicholas, Rosamund, Lydia-Maria and Diana. In Canada he met his second wife, Avril, while they were producing French-language television programs; her children were William, Jonathon, Emma and Matthew, and she and Lewis had a son, Olivier. He had fourteen grandchildren. Diagnosed during his Warsaw years with Parkinson's disease, later thought to be Lewy body dementia, he gradually lost his ability to paint and, by 2010, to speak in full sentences. He died on 15 May 2015, aged 83, asking for a funeral with no speeches and Haydn's Cello Concerto in D.

Possibly related records

Two notices on the page David Lewis possibly concern this Lakehead professor, because they mention Lakehead University teaching facilities and the Cambrian Players; both are name-only and the other page records a death in 2009, so they are not treated as confirmed.

• Photo notice in Fort William Daily Times-Journal, 15 November 1969 (index note: new Lakehead University teaching facilities).
• Photo notice in Fort William Daily Times-Journal, 19 February 1972 (index note: Cambrian Players production).

Notes

The page David Lewis (recorded death 6 May 2009) is kept separate because that death year differs from the 2015 death in this memorial. A third notice there, from 1966 (index note: in court), probably concerns someone else.

News of his death reaching RALU

The September 2015 issue of RALU News reports that the son of "a professor who worked at Lakehead in the early days, David Lewis" had found the retirees' association through an internet search and emailed it news of his death. The newsletter gives no date, but the timing and the early-days Lakehead service fit this professor, who taught there from 1968 to 1975 and died on 15 May 2015.