1946 ~ 2024
Andrew Robson passed away after a long illness in Northport, Michigan on October 28, 2024.
Andy was born in London, England, on November 21, 1946, to Eric and Norah (Brown) Robson. He spent his teenage years in the town of Praa Sands, in Cornwall, England, where he excelled in rugby and cricket, and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Nottingham in English literature.
Upon his graduation, Andy joined the British Overseas Service and was assigned a tour of duty teaching English in Samoa, where he met his future wife, Ione Edahl. The two traveled extensively throughout the South Pacific, teaching at schools in the Solomon Islands, Fiji, and New Zealand, and eventually returned to England to be married. Andy subsequently received a master’s degree from the University of London and a PhD in the pedagogy of ESL (English as a Second Language) from the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, where their daughter Laura was born in 1979. Upon returning to the United States the following year, Andy and Ione settled in Northport, where they welcomed their son Geoffrey in 1981.
Andy taught at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina, for several years in the mid-1980s, before moving to a position as a professor of English and postcolonial literature at Utica College in upstate New York, where he taught for more than ten years. He subsequently served as chair of the English department at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Oklahoma; as Dean of the School of Humanities at St. Edward’s College in Austin, Texas; and as Associate Dean of the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. In 2001, Andy founded the Earth Charter Community Summit at UW Oshkosh, which subsequently became one of the first American university institutions to sign on to the Earth Charter Summit. His environmental activism was recognized with a 2011 Community Engagement Award from the American Democracy Project, who noted, “Lives and attitudes have been positively affected because of Dr. Robson’s courage and dedication to this noble cause.”
Andy was the author of several scholarly articles and two books: a textbook entitled Thinking Globally: Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum, which encouraged a content-based approach to composition and rhetoric, and a monograph entitled Prelude to Empire: Consuls, Missionary Kingdoms, and the Pre-Colonial South Seas Seen Through the Life of William Thomas Pritchard, a biography of a notable missionary working in Tahiti, Samoa, and Fiji in the nineteenth century. In his retirement he was working on another biographical project, this one detailing the history of the Scottish poet Robert Louis Stevenson’s years in Samoa.
Andy is survived by his daughter Laura Robson, son-in-law Tam Rankin, and two grandchildren, Andrew and Silje Rankin, of New Haven, Connecticut, and by his son Geoffrey Robson and his partner Kristen O’Connell, of Little Rock, Arkansas. His wife Ione preceded him in death by 10 days.
Cremation has taken place and a memorial service for both Andy and Ione will be held in the summer, on a date to be announced.
Memorial donations in their honor can be directed to the Leelanau Conservancy. Please share condolences with the family at www.martinson.info.
Arrangements are with the Martinson Funeral Home and Cremation Services of Leelanau.
