Bruce Boling

BRUCE BOLING

Marion

Bruce Dwight Boling, distinguished former professor and librarian at the University of New Mexico, passed away in Albuquerque on June 27, 2014.

Bruce was born Aug. 6, 1936, in Kansas City, Mo., the only son of Dwight Eugene Boling, a native of Cedar Rapids, and Ruth Vail Boling of Kansas City. During most of his youth, Bruce's family resided at 1262 11th St., in Marion, Iowa, and in 1954, he graduated at the top of his class from Marion High School. Bruce then attended the University of Iowa, graduating with highest honors in 1958, and, in 1966, he earned a Ph.D. in linguistics and Celtic languages at Harvard University. Subsequently, he was a Fellow at the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, and, in 1977, he earned an M.L.S. degree at the University of California, Berkeley.

Bruce was a faculty member or librarian at Harvard, University College Dublin, the University of North Carolina, the Library of Congress, the University of Wyoming, Brown University, and, finally, at the University of New Mexico, where he spent 17 of his happiest and most productive years, retiring in 2004 as emeritus associate professor and as a faculty scholar, UNM's highest honor for its most distinguished professors. During those years, Bruce was a parishioner at St. John's Episcopal Cathedral, Albuquerque.

Bruce was an extraordinary scholar in many fields, with a remarkable fluency in languages. His abiding interest, however, was Ireland's language, literature, folklore and history. Perhaps his happiest memories were of studying in Dublin and in Ballyferriter, on Co. Kerry's Dingle peninsula, where he learned to speak Irish. Bruce authored or co-authored numerous articles on the Irish, Hiberno-English and Ulster Scots languages, and on Irish history and Irish immigration, as well as the prize-winning book, Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan, published by Oxford University Press in 2003.

Bruce also was a superb teacher, with a remarkable ability to explain clearly the most difficult subjects, and his scholarly research won numerous awards and fellowships from the University of New Mexico, the American Conference for Irish Studies, and the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.

Bruce is survived by no family members but a host of former colleagues, students and friends gratefully attest to his genius, generosity and sense of humor. Alas, ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann (his like will not be seen again).