Gordon Griffiths, resolute activist
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Though he was old and frail and dying from liver cancer, Gordon Griffiths walked door to door last fall handing out campaign literature for the Democratic Party. And, to the end, the Italian Renaissance scholar was gathering signatures on petitions for causes like universal health care.
"He was a lesson to young people not to give up, to be resilient," said his daughter, Katherine Cameron.
Mr. Griffiths, an emeritus history professor at the University of Washington, died Jan. 13 at his home in Seattle. He was 86.
He was widely known as a kind of Renaissance man himself - an intellectual, political activist and musician - gifted with an enduring belief that the world really could be a better place.
At the same time, he "was a very, very disciplined atheist," said Cameron. That absolute belief in the finality of life on this Earth informed his optimistic activism, she said.
Mr. Griffiths was born and raised in Berkeley, Calif. All of his higher-education degrees, including a doctorate in history, were earned at the University of California.
A shared passion for civic involvement brought him and his wife, Mary, together while he was pursuing graduate study at Oxford University in England in the mid-1930s. Introduced through mutual friends, they both marched against fascism and Adolf Hitler. The couple married and returned to the United States before World War II broke out.
Mr. Griffiths worked for the State Department during the war. Afterward, he taught history at UC Berkeley, where his father was a regent.
A heavy strain was put on the relationship between father and son when a controversy erupted on campus during the 1950s McCarthy era over what was called the Loyalty Oath.
Some professors were feared to be indoctrinating students and secretly following a Communist Party agenda. The university tried to get academics to sign an oath that they were not communists. Mr. Griffiths, along with many others, believed signing such an oath meant surrendering intellectual and academic freedom. Eventually, he left UC Berkeley to teach at Lawrence College in Wisconsin for four years.
He joined the history department at the University of Washington in 1959 and retired as a full professor in 1980.
Throughout his career, he championed civil and women's rights. During the Vietnam War, he participated in teach-ins. He also authored many scholarly publications, was fluent in eight languages and played the viola and violin in quartets in Seattle.
In 1999, the leading Italian academic institution published a book by Mr. Griffiths on Leonardo Bruni, an important figure during the Renaissance.
It's "quite remarkable that he was able to bring that to completion in his 80s," said Howard Kaminsky, a retired professor of medieval history living in Florida and one of Mr. Griffith's closest friends.
In the last decade of his life, Mr. Griffiths also took care of his wife, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease.
Along with his wife and daughter, he is survived by sons John of the Netherlands and David of Portland, and eight grandchildren.
No public memorial services are scheduled. The family suggests remembrances be sent to the Southern Poverty Law Center.