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JILL BARNUM Photo courtesy of Jennifer Franko and her colleagues at the University of Minnesota. B ob Wallace will always see Jill playing her flute among the figureheads in the Mystic Seaport Museum for the opening ceremonies of the International Conference on Melville and the Sea, which she cochaired . Chris Sten cherishes her extraordinary managerial skills which he realized for the first time during that conference; appreciating the imagination, intelligence, and care she brought to all of her endeavors, he comments that she threw herself into every job and she always got right to it, no matter whether the task was large or small. “But the thing that made her such a joy to work with, and so brilliantly successful in all her professional roles, was her emotional presence—the warm, exuberant, personal feeling she brought to each moment, and to each relationship, with the consequence that every relationship became a friendship.” Mary K. Bercaw Edwards remembers the work she and Jill did as members of the editorial board for the Encyclopedia of American Literature of the Sea and Great Lakes. “All of us looked forward to our thrice-yearly meetings, held around the East Coast, with much excitement and anticipation. Jill fostered a deep camaraderie amongst all of us that made our work on the Encyclopedia so much FUN.” Wyn Kelley recollects the journey which Jill organized during the conference on “Melville and the Pacific” at C  2006 The Authors Journal compilation C  2006 The Melville Society and Blackwell Publishing Inc L E V I A T H A N A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S 87 J I L L B A R N U M Maui to watch the sun rise on Haleakala and to read Melville poems aloud. John Bryant is grateful for Jill’s careful and intelligent critiquing of his essay for the volume from that conference. Sandy Marovitz thinks of Jill’s kindness, gentleness, and competence, of the fact that she was always doing something for somebody. The memories of Jill, who died on October 3, 2006 after an ordeal with melanoma, overflow. We knew of her reputation as one of the University of Minnesota’s finest teachers: she was the Horace T.-Morse Distinguished Professor of Teaching, and only a few days before her death, she was awarded the 2006 College of Continuing Education Distinguished Teaching Award. But as well as a Melville apostle, we knew her in other capacities—as beloved friend, distinguished scholar, far-sighted visionary. Born in Key West and spending her early childhood in the Philippines, Jill had her heart always with the sea. I remember Jill, like Melville himself, as always moving to oceanic rhythms—capacious like the sea in her kindness and imagination; adventurous like seafarers in her scope and yearnings; fluid in her dreams and hopes. She was, sea-like, boundless in her enthusiasms and in her desire to experience life. Her joy in living was irresistible, and to share its bounties was to increase her own joy and ours. The sea dominates Jill’s literary legacy. She was the editor of the Sea Vocabulary: A Glossed Concordance and Analysis of the Sea Language in Melville’s Nautical Novels (1978), Encyclopedia of American Literature of the Sea and the Great Lakes (2001), and Whole Oceans Away: Melville and the Pacific (forthcoming from Kent State University Press). In addition, she reviewed novels about the sea, interviewed Derek Walcott, and chaired sessions for College English Association on Literature and the Sea. Her dedication to Melville was exemplary; not only was she the first woman to serve as Executive Secretary of the Melville Society, but also she was an energetic member of the Melville Society Cultural Project, committed to its archival, scholarly, and literacy goals. Her “Chowder” columns, summarizing the activities of the Society, were lively accounts of its diverse activities. Wyn Kelley, Bob Wallace, and I visited Jill in her Minneapolis condo in the weeks before she died. We observed that she was surrounded by loving friends, including her older son, who, in nurses’ training, placed himself in her...

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