I came across a website dedicated to the memory of Professor William Alfred, from whom I took Old English and Beowulf as an undergrad. There were only a few posts on this site, so I wished to add my own. Here is a copy of it.

"I never had the pleasure of a friendship that many enjoyed with Professor Alfred, but I have never forgotten his teaching. He had the ability to create an aura, a time and place apart from the little room where we were meeting for "Beowulf". The room would quieten in anticipation, and it felt to me like the lights were dimming to the red coals of an ancient firepit; and each student was not a twentieth century erudite studying a long dead language, but rather we were all alive, sitting around the mead hall more than a dozen centuries earlier. I imagined smelling the smoke from the fire as it wafted towards the ceiling. Then Professor Alfred would start....

"Hwaet! We Gardena / in gear-dagum..."

with that richly cultured voice, and it was clear that no, we were not listening to a dead language at all, but one that was brought very much alive by Professor Alfred.

I probably deserved to fail the first semester of Old English; I had been indifferent all semester and completely choked on the final exam. But a desperate plea, written by me at the end of my blue book, was apparently heeded with his legendary kindness, and a barely acceptable in-major grade of C- was given to me by this forgiving man. I took the second semester, Beowulf, and earned a B+, my highest grade ever (save one) at Harvard, and my most cherished, for I had fulfilled his faith in me. I always said a special prayer for him when I saw him at mass at St. Paul's, and even now I still do at times. The kindness we do for others, especially that which can never be repaid, is the truest measure of our humanity.

Dave LeLacheur '87"