Francis Lide passed away at the Omega House in Houghton on Sunday, January 15, 2017, after suffering multiple complications after a urinary tract infection.

Francis Pugh Lide, Jr. known to friends and associates as Frank, was born in 1930, as the fourth of six children to American missionary parents on the Shandong Peninsula of China. All of northeastern China, from Beijing to Shanghai, was quickly overrun when Japan invaded China in 1937. Tensions between the Western powers and Imperial Japan grew to the point that by mid 1940 American nationals in occupied China were advised by the State Department to leave. Frank's mother and five of her six children left China on an American ship chartered for the purpose. His father stayed behind on the mission field and was interned by the Japanese when war broke out. He was repatriated in late 1943.

Frank’s mother and five of her children settled eventually in the town of Wake Forest, North Carolina, where his older brother was a student at Wake Forest College.

Frank enrolled at Wake Forest College in 1947, graduating in 1951 with a major in Economics and a minor in German. He then enrolled as a graduate student in German at Rice University in Houston, TX, in 1951, receiving his Master’s Degree in the winter of 1953. He was inducted into the U.S. Army in January of 1954, and, after basic training and two other postings, was sent to Germany in October of that year. He was assigned to an intelligence unit at the Iron Curtain. After he took his discharge, he remained in Germany in order to study German language and literature at the University of Göttingen, where he was enrolled for five semesters.

In September of 1958, he returned to the United States to continue doctoral studies in German at the University of Illinois. Upon completing his course work, he became an instructor at Kenyon College in Ohio. After three years at Kenyon, he was given a one-year instructorship at Illinois, where, in addition to teaching, he continued working on his dissertation on Alfred Döblin, a writer best known for his avant garde novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. During that year, he met Barbara Bluege, a graduate student from Chicago. They were married in 1967 and lived in Lawrence, Kansas, where Frank was teaching in the German Department.

In 1971, he accepted an appointment as Associate Professor at the University of Nevada in Reno. Denied tenure there after two years, he was unemployed in Reno in the 1975-76 academic year. Meanwhile, his wife, Barbara, completed her PhD. in Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois in early 1975. She accepted an initially one-year faculty appointment at Michigan Technological University starting that September. Frank followed her to Houghton in 1976, and after another year of unemployment, was offered a part-time position teaching freshman English at Michigan Tech. Eventually, he was made a part-time adjunct professor of German, teaching full time as needed. He retired from Michigan Tech in 1995.

After retirement, when it became safe to do so, he became active in Republican politics, running unsuccessfully for the Houghton County Commissioner in 2002, and holding various offices in the Houghton County Republicans, including a two-year term as chairman.
Also after retirement, he was recruited by his friend George Love to teach English as a foreign language on a volunteer basis to family members of foreign students at Michigan Tech. He derived great satisfaction in teaching and mentoring newcomers from other countries, an activity he continued to be involved in until ill health forced him to give it up.

He is survived by his wife Barbara, a professor emerita at Michigan Tech; by two younger sisters in North Carolina; nine nieces and nephews, and several grand-nieces and nephews scattered around the country, and by his little dog, Frederic der Kleine (a.k.a. Fred).

Online condolences for the family may be left at www.ericksoncrowleypeterson.com

The Erickson Crowley Peterson Funeral Home in Calumet is assisting the family with the arrangements.

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