By MELISSA NIX
RELATED: Obituary for Taddesse AderaTaddesse Adera, a well-known and well-loved professor of English at the University of Mary Washington, died Tuesday at his Spotsylvania County home. He was 53.
Adera failed to show up for classes on Tuesday. Teresa Kennedy, chairwoman of the English department, asked physics department chairman George King to check on Adera at home.
King, who had known Adera for 16 years, was one of his closest friends. He called 911 when his friend failed to come to the door.
Campus officials suspect Adera died of natural causes, spokeswoman Margaret Mock said, but that has not been confirmed by any medical officials.
"I miss my good friend," King said yesterday. "Taddesse was a quiet person and a good listener. Sometimes friends need that."
In addition to being a cherished friend, Adera was also an exemplary professor, King said.
"The only thing that separates one professor from another is their ability to connect with their students. What came across most with his students was that he was really able to connect with them in some way. He had participated in the things he was teaching from a life-experience point of view. He exposed them to things many of them had never thought about."
Originally from Ethiopia, Adera earned his bachelor's degree in English from Addis Ababa University in 1980.
He was a political activist in high school and college, and was imprisoned for three years because of his activism, friend and colleague Steve Watkins said. Adera left his homeland in the early '80s fearing for his life.
"He left his family behind," Watkins added. "If he stayed, his life was literally in danger."
Watkins last saw Adera on Monday.
"He seemed quiet," said Watkins, who is an associate professor of English. "But then Adera was very quiet and dignified."
Like King, Watkins had known Adera for 16 years.
After coming to the United States, Adera earned his master's and doctoral degrees in English from the University of Washington. He joined UMW's English department in 1989.
Adera brought something to the campus no one else had, Watkins said. He was one of the first scholars to translate and critically examine literature from the horn of Africa.
"He opened up wonderful worlds of literature that students and colleagues really knew nothing about," Watkins said, " the literature of protest, the literature of Africa, the literature of the Caribbean."
Rosemary Barra, vice president for academic affairs and faculty dean, commented on the excellence of Adera's teaching.
"He was an outstanding teacher and a very caring teacher," Barra said. "I think he would want to be remembered for his teaching and his wonderful rapport with the students."
Adera's teaching and research interests included South African, Caribbean, oral and postcolonial literature; literature of the Resistance; women of color; 19th-century British fiction; rhetoric and composition; and teaching English as a second language, according to a statement issued by the university.
He edited "Silence Is Not Golden: A Critical Anthology of Ethiopian Literature," and presented more than 20 scholarly papers at regional, national and international conferences. Adera served as an executive-committee member and chairman of the Division on African Literatures of the Modern Language Association, and as a member of the National Screening Committee for the Fulbright Program, the statement said.
Among his awards were Virginia's Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education and the university's Jepson Fellow Award for distinctive contributions in teaching, research and service. Adera also was the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study contemporary South African literature and culture.
"Everybody's pretty upset," Mock said. "He really was quite loved on campus."
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Email: mnix@freelancestar.com