Colleagues, students mourn ex-U. professor
The Salt Lake Tribune
1/11/2005
By Jessica Ravitz ([email protected])
As word of the tragic fire spread Monday, past students and colleagues
mourned the loss of Leonardo “Nardo” Alishan, a poet and former
University of Utah professor.
“His untimely death has robbed us all of a wonderful person and
beautiful mind,” wrote Lucian Stone Jr. – once Alishan’s graduate
student, now a visiting professor at Ball State University in Indiana –
in a Monday e-mail that circulated across the country.
Alishan, who taught at the U. from 1978 to 1997, died early Sunday after
a three-alarm fire raged through his Salt Lake County duplex. He was 53.
The cause of the fire, which started around 2:30 a.m., is under
investigation.
“It’s a shocking thing,” Bernard Weiss, a professor of Arabic and
Islamic studies, said Monday. “He was a very gifted teacher. He lived
and breathed literature.”
After leaving the university, where he had earned awards of distinction,
Alishan focused on his poetry, for which he received great recognition.
His most recent book, Through a Dewdrop, was published in 2002.
Alishan was born to Armenian parents in Tehran, Iran. He came to the
United States in 1973 and earned a doctorate in comparative literature
from the University of Texas at Austin before moving to Utah to teach.
His family – his parents and a brother – left Iran after the Islamic
revolution of 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini deposed the Shah. They later
joined Alishan in the Salt Lake Valley, where the three preceded him in
death. He is survived by three grown children, who live in California.
Service details are being determined.