RIP, Ferenc Morton Szasz

Last night, I was picking through a mountain of unread mail, when I came across this announcement:

A cel­e­bra­tion of the life of Regents’ Pro­fes­sor of His­tory Fer­enc Mor­ton Szasz, is set for Fri­day, Aug. 27 from 2–4 p.m. in Rodey The­atre, in the UNM Cen­ter for the Arts.

Oh no! That can only mean one thing. Dr. Szasz, one of my favorite college professors, has passed away:

The chairman of the university's Department of History, Charlie Steen, said Szasz was a "unique presence" who managed to combine his personal and academic traits. In approaching students, on display was Szasz's familiar "open, friendly and very intellectual manner." He invited discussion.

"He was one of those people who can teach without telling you how to do it," Steen said. "Student after student would comment on this, and those of us in the department could observe him doing this, just informally walking with students, chatting with them.

"He was a very quiet, very warm person. He truly had a presence here, and I mean it when I say that we're never going to replace him. He was a standalone."

Szasz, who died June 20 at age 70, was hired by UNM as a one-year instructor in the late 1960s - he hadn't even finished his dissertation - and he ended his 43-year teaching career at UNM as a Regents' Professor, a Fulbright Scholar and Teacher of the Year award winner. Last year, he received the honor of delivering the university's annual research lecture.

An "enthusiastic," "prolific" writer, his works such as "The Day the Sun Rose Twice: The Story of the Trinity Site Nuclear Explosion" were not only absorbed by academics but proved popular in the public realm. That and other publications, including the 2008 book "Abraham Lincoln and Robert Burns: Connected Lives and Legends," left him with international scholarly standing.

"He approached American history as part of the world expression," Steen said. "So that he could talk about Americans in the present and also in the context of their origins and the hopes and aspirations that people still hold in common. ... He was so wide in his interests - he was interested in comic books for heaven's sake. But he saw them as a cultural value, as a cultural expression in the same sense of the seriousness with which he approached Abraham Lincoln."

..."His training was in social and intellectual history, which is almost a nonexistent field now," Connell-Szasz said. "Because of that, it meant that he was interested in everything in American history - in society, culture, the intellectual world; just common, ordinary, everyday things that included folk history, philosophy, religion, science - you name it."

...Szasz had just finished his book about Abraham Lincoln and Robert Burns - Lincoln and Scotland being two of his "passions."

"And after the chemo, and when he was going through all of the post-chemo time, he decided that he wanted me to bring all of his stuff down on Lincoln - huge volumes, new volumes he'd bought on Lincoln, all of his long yellow pads on which he wrote every one of his books and articles," Connell-Szasz said.

"So he did this rough draft of this 'Lincoln and Religion' manuscript sitting in the hospital bed, and he wrote like crazy. ... He had this deadline. He knew he had to finish this before he got out of the hospital. He did."

Dr. Szasz had the most amazing facility to connect storytelling with history. History WAS storytelling, and no one told better stories than he did! His classes were among the most-popular at the University of New Mexico.

Ferenc Szasz was particularly interested in the role of religion in American life, and how it affected everything we do.

Several stories stand out even today. A newly-published article (c. 1978) regarding the various hidden meanings in "The Wizard of Oz". Very fun! And one of Szasz's real finds: the journeys of a lay preacher through 19th-Century New Mexico; a man who just happened to look exactly like popular representations of Jesus Christ. Plus the trials and tribulations of the Puritans, of course!

It is no surprise that Szasz would have been interested in Trinity Site. The collisions in world views of scientists facing the infinite would have arrested his interest.

The world is a poorer place without him!