Sean O’Neill
(This was originally posted on the In Memoriam 2022 page for the on-line 2022 Annual Meeting)
Most of you know about Victor Golla, as the founder of this organization (SSILA) and is the namesake for one of the awards. Many of you also knew him, either personally or in passing. If you knew him at all, you knew that he loved backstories, especially those with intrigue and lurid details.
I first met him when I was a motorcycle-riding teenager Northwest in California, and after taking one of his classes on linguistics, I never looked back. There was nothing dry about it. Even as we took a fine-grained look at the mechanics of languages, it felt more like we were learning about the inner workings of the human soul.
His storytelling was mesmerizing, and he knew so many backstories about the great scholars--not just in anthropology or linguistics, but throughout history. He shared things you would never find in the literature, cobbling together poignant psychological sketches of the brilliant minds throughout the ages. Many of them were what we might politely call “characters,” like John P. Harrington, but Victor could always see beyond all those quirks and foibles. Of course, the value in each character was hearing their unusual—and often hard-won—insights and perspectives, not to be found elsewhere.
In this spirit, let me now share a few backstories on Victor, who was as fascinating as some of characters that intrigued him—on par with Sapir or Harrington or all of the others, some of them less famous, that he admired. In his own work, such as his monumental volume on California Indian Languages, Victor was able to distill a lifetime of insights from past generations, weaving that wisdom into the stories he was telling in his own writing. Hence his interest in backstories had a purpose, giving him a panoramic view of the profession. He cared about every voice, which was probably part of his vision in bringing this organization into existence.
For my part, I will always picture Victor at two o’clock in the morning furiously typing out another paper, away from the fray of academic discord—and with a cat nearby. He was so quick to return emails between two and four PM! (He loved typewriters and once showed me some special ones that were modified for working on Indigenous languages, with their special characters.)
Some of you may not know Victor’s pathway to linguistics, which was circuitous, to say the least. Inspired by Alan Turing, he sought to build his own machine—this one, for translating Russian scientific literature into English at the height of the Cold War. His first love was Russian linguistics, and he always had an eye for science. But the mainframes of his time (with punch cards and vacuum tubes) were simply not up to the task. His dream is probably still out of reach today, and others, like Chomsky, encountered difficulties here, moving on to more tangible problems.
As it became clear that challenge—however worthy—was impossible, given the limited technology of the day, his mentor, Mary Haas, stepped in to talk some sense into the young Victor Golla. As he parted ways with this impossible dream, Haas convinced him to take up the study of an Indigenous language. She apparently had a quiet sense of social justice, and she often asked the students to forge relationship with one of the communities near where they grew up.
At that point, his fate was sealed. Victor grew up near Mount Shasta, and he was a great admirer of Edward Sapir, who shared his fascination with linguistic diversity and the psychological that animates human social life. She showed him an unfinished manuscript, left behind by the great Edward Sapir, something he hoped (in vain!) to publish in a few short years. In time, Hupa became the subject matter of his dissertation, and an endless, lifelong fascination which culminated in volume 14 of the Collected works of Edward Sapir, which I helped him finish with my knowledge of computer programming, a shared passion.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention his love of cats. Apparently, he wanted his pets to be mentioned in his obituary--the ones that sat at his side on his deathbed and the ones that accompanied him in the night when he was writing.
Now I have one more cat story to share. When news came that his mentor, Mary Haas had passed away, Victor was understandably shaken. We were working together that night on Sapir’s unfinished works. When our meeting ended, I walked him to his car, a little worried about his shell-shocked state of grief. Along the way, we encountered a small cat, which was somehow drawn to him. (Somehow, they sense a cat lover!) At that moment, Victor Golla, the great scholar, set his books on the ground and lovingly pet the cat on the street for a few minutes, perhaps finding solace. At that moment, I remember him telling me that Mary Haas was also a lover of cats.
With both scholars, I feel this sense of kindness reveals something about the depth of their empathy--the same trait that made both great scholars: seeing the people behind the social and linguistic facts we study in linguistics. At that point, Victor treated the cat with same care and devotion that can be seen in all his professional work. Never too important to connect with a cat! Never lost on the facts, but cognizant of the human dramas that shape and echo through the linguistic forms.
Let me end on a note of humor, directly from the mind of Victor Golla. His wife, Ellen, shared a note that he wrote in his final months, with his vision for a memorial. He pictured a tribute where I would read short passage in Hupa, and Andrew Garrett would read something in Yurok. In the background, a song by Monty Python would be playing, namely, “Always Look on the Bright side of Life,” the tune Pythons wrote to accompany the death of “Brian,” fictional contemporary of Jesus. Let me add that Michael Silverstein also loved the Pythons, raucous comedy from a highly intelligent troop and a sign of a great deal of right-brained thinking--seeing larger patterns beyond the obvious minutia, the global thinking that might be lost on a more narrowly focused mind.