University Times

English professor emeritus Walter H. Evert, who authored a book and several articles on poet John Keats, as well as essays and articles on other Romantic-era poets, died April 5, 2012. He was 88.

A native of New York City, Evert served in the Navy during World War II as an air traffic controller and radio operator in Europe and the Pacific.

After the war, he attended Rutgers University on the G.I. Bill, earning his BA magna cum laude with special honors in English in 1950. He won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to Princeton, where he received his MA in 1953 and his PhD in English literature in 1960. While at Princeton he served as an instructor, 1952-53, and as assistant to the secretary of the university, 1953-55.

Evert then served as an instructor at Williams College, 1955-58. From there, he moved to UCLA, serving as an instructor and later an assistant professor, 1958-63. Evert joined the Pitt faculty in 1963 as associate professor and was promoted to professor in 1966. He retired in 1990 with emeritus status.

Evert also served in a number of administrative positions at the University, including associate dean of the Division of Humanities, 1963-67; associate dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 1967-68, and acting chair of the departments of fine arts (1963-64), classics (1966-67), Slavic languages and literatures (1966-67) and English (1970-71 and 1972-73).

During his career here, he chaired the faculty research committee, the national and international fellowships committee and the committee to restructure the study of religion at Pitt. He also was a member of the University Council on Graduate Study and the University Press committee.

Long-time colleague and friend Bob Marshall, professor emeritus and former dean of the then-College of Arts and Sciences, remembered Evert as a serious academic who nonetheless had a quirky, self-deprecating sense of humor. “Although there was another strong candidate, Walt was the one who championed me with the dean when I first came to Pitt in 1964 because he really liked me and we became very close friends,” Marshall said. “He was friendly, and had this funny little chuckle when he saw something funny, which was often — and often at his own expense.”

Marshall said that at heart Evert was an old fashioned, traditional academic. “But he didn’t want to seem to be stuffy. There were a lot of changes going on in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and he liked being around young people. He was truly fascinated by us young Turks. He would sympathize with us and he wanted to be hip, and so Walt was sometimes caught in the middle between tradition and change.”

Marshall recalled an annual “sports night” in which their group of friends held mock competitions, including writing an essay to win the “sports-related injury of the year award.”

“Walt had fallen off his bike riding in the streets of Pittsburgh,” Marshall said. “We were all just being goofy, and he was so serious, applying a formal academic approach to his essay to convince us he should win. That was just Walt.”

A versatile educator, Evert taught courses in Shakespeare, Homer, the Bible, contemporary poetry, literary criticism, remedial composition and writing for science majors.

He published “Aesthetic and Myth in the Poetry of Keats” in 1965, followed by a number of essays on Keats and fellow poets Shelley, Byron, Burns and Blake.

Among his professional activities was service as a reader of College Board and advanced placement examinations; he also helped develop the English literature exam for the Educational Testing Service.

He also was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Modern Language Association and the Keats-Shelley Association.

Evert is survived by his wife Jancy Evert; children Katherine Culver, Michael Evert and Elizabeth Huston, and five grandchildren.

—Peter Hart