Robert C. Dale
1936–2014
Bob Dale, born June 11, 1936 in Madison, Wisconsin, died November 6 at Vashon Community Care. His last hour, he spent laughing at a Carol Burnett Show. What a great way to go.
Bob loved film: at age 7, he ran his first film program for the local YMCA. At UW-Madison, he took a doctorate in French Lit, then moved to Seattle in 1962 to take an assistant professorship at Univ. of Washington. He helped found the Wisconsin Film Society, one of the country’s great film societies. Two years after arriving in Seattle, he started his own UW Film Series, and by 1970 had co-founded the Seattle Film Society, the first entity to regularly exhibit old films and foreign films in Seattle. The Society also published MovieTone News, a monthly magazine of film crit. Bob claimed that “the society’s programming and critiques we wrote and distributed with the films were often credited as the driving force behind making Seattle the best film city in the country outside New York. Practically the whole staff of Film Comment, the country’s foremost film magazine, cut their critical teeth writing program notes for my UW film series.” He wrote over 100 film notes himself and edited hundreds of others. He also authored two books, one on French novelist Prosper Merimee and one on french film director Rene Clair.
Bob was an excellent teacher of French and of film, mentoring some of his best students into their own academic positions. Seattle University professor Vic Reinking’s comments on a postcard in June 1990 says it best: “Of all the professors I encountered in my time as a student, I learned my most important lessons from you—how to read with more imagination, how to write carefully and interestingly. I am indebted to you for your superb teaching.”
Bob was into fermentations: he baked his own sourdough bread, made yogurt, and had been making his own home-brewed beer since college. When Washington state loosened its regulations against homemade beer, he started a Seattle home-brew club called “The Brews Brothers” who met monthly around his dining room table to quaff a few while talking recipes & techniques. Some “Bros” went on to work in Seattle’s craft beer scene.
Divorced for many years, Bob met his second wife Karen in 1984; they married in 1987. In 1990 they moved to Yachats, Oregon, a coastal village of 600 with a surplused elementary school that the Dales, along with others, soon turned into a beloved community center. There, as “Friends of the Yachats Commons”, they put on dances and performances and raised money. Bob ran the concessions stand during dances, was in charge of the events sign along the highway, and wrote a witty Commons Calendar for the weekly newspaper. Skilled in Hypercard programming, he wrote a monthly column for Mouse Droppings, the Corvallis Mac Users Group newsletter, as well as helped Karen with her many desktop publishing projects.
Old UW pal David Willingham invited the Dales to Vashon Island in December 1989; their visit coincided with snow, Art Studio Tour, and a typically great Island party. Enchanted, the Dales bought a house on Beall Road and moved here in May, 1990. He immediately joined the Vashon Athletic Club and went 3-4 times a week, water-walking and swimming right up to the last month of his life.
Always into community service (especially if it involved food), Bob was instrumental in early Labor of Love services auction, creating the catalog and offering to cater private dinners or teach bread-making. He and Karen volunteered weekly at the Food Bank, monthly as cooks for the Homeless Dinners of the IFCPH. Even at his sickest, he was always planning his next Third Thursday Dinner for his 24-odd diners. The Dale’s quilt squares for VAA’s annual quilt were always as cartoony as he could imagine them, and his “About Our Square” description full of his trademark winks and puns. He did good things in this world, and he will be missed.
He was preceded in death by his daughter Arden, a WSJ columnist who died of cancer this summer. Their ashes will be scattered in Quartermaster Harbor this summer. He is survived by wife Karen, daughter Laura Dale, grandson Malcolm Dale Richardson and Mal’s father Tom Richardson. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Vashon Community Care Foundation (vashoncarefoundation.org) or to IFCH (IFCHvashon.org). Bob would approve.
Paid Obituary.
