Daniel L. Heiple: : December 22, 1943 – August 10, 1999 in Memoriam

D A N I E L L . H E I P L E DECEMBER 22,1943 - A U G U S T 10,1999 L N M E M O R I A M Elizabeth S. Boyce H o u s t o n Baptist University The news of the death of Dan Heiple, in August 1999, was unexpected and hard. Dan had been an especially good friend all through graduate school at the University of Texas, in the early 1970s. He and I had shared an office all the years we were there, and I am sure I had learned as much from Dan as I had from some of our professors . Dan, of course, went on to teach and chair the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at Tulane University and soon became appreciated by Golden Age scholars all over the country and world. To me, he remained the dear friend from our shared professional infancy. Fred de Armas has summarized Dan's many academic achievements (Bulletin of the Comediantes 51.1-2[1999]), tracing themes that ran through many of Dan's investigations. One cannot help but admire Dan's scholarly contributions, his incisive thought and extensive factual knowledge. But the Dan I keep in memory was of varied interests and talents, and it is that endearing person I would like to celebrate here. Dan Heiple was a walking compendium of knowledge both scholarly and practical. He knew obscure and interesting facts no one else knew, particularly historical and classical details, and could insert them into conversation in the most natural fashion, so that one invariably wondered at having read in Spanish Golden age studies for so long without knowing the particular information Dan had offered. Those of us who shared graduate classes and seminars with Dan as students—Julian Olivares, Bernard Bentley, and I, and others *—soon learned that the most efficient way to find information we needed was simply to ask Dan. Did he know a useful source on, say, the tyrannicide debates underlying Fuenteovejuna or, perhaps, on emblem books of the mid-17th century? Dan would look surprised, briefly, at being asked, and then would matter -of-factly list author, title, date and publisher, adding, "It's on the third floor of the library in the PQ 4000s, the fourth set of stacks or so, second row, about a third of the way in from the aisle, toward the top. It's a thin blue book, not too tall." And over the years, as we met at professional meetings orjust for lunch because he was in town, Dan remained a walking annotated bibliography. At some point in every conversation, Dan would invariably ask, "Have you read...?" And, regardless of whether I CALIOPE Vol. 6, Nos. 1-2 (2000): pages 7-13 «5 Elizabeth S. Boyce • I V