Saturday, December 24, 2011
Lynn Eckman was known for love of books
The retired Roanoke College foreign language professor was also a prolific book reviewer.
Correction (Jan. 20, 2012: 11:30 a.m.): The originally published version of this story misspelled the last name of Martin Favata. This story has been updated. | Our corrections policy
Lynn Eckman was a lover of words, literature and reading — a bibliophile.
The retired Roanoke College foreign language professor and longtime Roanoke Times book reviewer died Tuesday of a heart-related complication. She was 83.
Her son David Eckman, the owner of Spike's Restaurant in Grandin Village, said his mother had been treated for lung cancer. She also suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and postherpetic neuralgia, he said.
"She read more than anyone I know," David Eckman said. "No Kindle for her. She was a book purist. If I picked up a book wrong and held it by the spine, I was chastised appropriately."
Lynn Eckman taught at Roanoke College from 1960 to 1994. She was a professor emeritus of foreign languages.
"She was a very fine lady. She was interested in people and things of the mind very much," said Martin Favata, a Roanoke College Spanish professor from 1974 to 1985.
Favata, who now lives and works in Tampa, Fla., said his afternoon office hours often coincided with Eckman's, at a time when other professors were in classes or gone for the day. Their schedules allowed the two to get to know each other better.
"There were six of us in the department," Favata recounted. "There was never any rancor. We could disagree professionally, but it was never personal."
Favata said Eckman was pleasant and a good colleague. She also was beloved by her students: In 1976 they awarded Eckman the inaugural Blue Key/Cardinal Key Outstanding Professor title, according to Roanoke College spokeswoman Teresa Gereaux.
Jeanne Schilgen was a student of Eckman's who later unofficially became part of the Eckman family.
"She used to invite students to her house. I just became a friend of the family," Schilgen said.
Schilgen and David Eckman hit it off right away, just like brother and sister, she said. Schilgen began to vacation with the family. Her friendship with Eckman spanned decades and Eckman's obituary lists Schilgen as her "surrogate daughter."
The pair traveled to London together several times and Schilgen was ever impressed by Eckman's knowledge.
"She loved history. She also knew the history of England — the lineage of kings, who was beheaded at the Tower of London. ... She could just spout that stuff off like nothing," Schilgen recounted.
Eckman since 1990 wrote more than 150 book reviews that were published in The Roanoke Times, according to the newspaper's electronic archives.
Eckman was preceded in death by her husband, Guy Eckman, a Roanoke College psychology professor who died in 1979. Her eldest son, Ted Eckman, died in the crash of a small plane near the Outer Banks of North Carolina two decades later.
"She was my mom, but she was so much more," David Eckman, 56, said Friday.
Tuesday was hard for him as it was a best-of-times-worst-of-times kind of day, he said. David Eckman received test results that a mass previously thought to be cancerous was in fact benign. He said he was able to deliver that information to his mother's bedside at LewisGale Medical Center minutes before she took her last breath. He said he feels like she comprehended it because she repeated the words "no cancer."
"It was almost too much to handle, the dichotomy of the good news and the bad," he said.
A memorial service is planned for 2 p.m. Wednesday at Roanoke College's Antrim Chapel.
