Remembering Deborah Garretson, Scholar of Russian Linguistics and Interpreter for World Leaders

Deborah Garretson, retired associate professor of Russian, died on March 2 at the Jack Byrne Center for Palliative and Hospice Care. She was 80 years old.

"In her more than 40 years at Dartmouth, Debby enriched our academic community immeasurably with her unique expertise in Russian linguistics and second language acquisition, and her leadership of our Russian language foreign study programs," Dean Elizabeth F. Smith said in a message to the Arts and Sciences community. "With her caring and compassionate nature, and genuine enthusiasm for teaching and learning, she made a lasting impact on her colleagues and generations of students."

Garretson was born in 1945 in Syracuse, New York. At just two years old, she and her family relocated to Ethiopia, where her father served as an advisor to the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry and to Emperor Haile Selassie. Her family returned to the United States in 1957, where Garretson finished secondary school and went on to earn her BA in French with honors from McGill University. It was there when she began studying Russian. She later remarked, "It was the Cold War era, we were young and optimistic and wanted to find a way to forge peace in the world. Understanding the Russian language and culture felt like a way I could contribute to this."

Following her undergraduate education, Garretson accepted a Swiss fellowship and studied Russian and translation at the universities of Lausanne and Geneva. In 1967 she began graduate studies at New York University, where a prestigious International Research and Exchanges Board fellowship enabled her to study at Moscow University and travel to many parts of Russia and Europe in 1971 and 1972. She completed her PhD in Slavic linguistics in 1975.

Garretson joined the Dartmouth faculty in 1976. Her scholarship focused on Russian linguistics and interpretation, with papers on topics including psycholinguistics in the acquisition and teaching of Russian, and the linguistic attributes of language loss. She was named an associate professor in 1982.

Garretson developed two new courses in the 1980s that became mainstays of Dartmouth's Russian curriculum: History of the Russian Language and Structure of Modern Russian. "For many years she was the only person in the department with the expertise to offer a linguistics-based syllabus to our students," says Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature John Kopper. "The diachronic history course introduced students to texts in Old Russian and Old Church Slavic, and perfectly complemented her synchronic offering on morphology, aspect, and syntax in modern Russian."

Additionally, Garretson developed one of the department's inaugural cultural studies courses, Understanding the Russians: The Role of Language in Culture and Communication. This immensely popular offering introduced students to concepts of the public/private sphere in Russian life, culture-driven structures of time and space, and friendship hierarchies among Russians.

In addition to her teaching and research, Garretson worked as an interpreter for the State Department's Russian language division. Beginning in 1985, just as relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were beginning to thaw, she worked in Geneva as an interpreter for the Strategic Arms Reductions Treaties. Among her many other travels as an interpreter, she accompanied Colin Powell on his trips to Russia and she interpreted for the "summit of first ladies," a meeting between Raisa Gorbachev and Barbara Bush at Wellesley College in 1990. In 2009 and 2010, Garretson served as interpreter for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which was intended to reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear arms.

Garretson also directed Dartmouth's foreign study programs to Leningrad University and St. Petersburg University for many years. "Her diplomatic skills as a negotiator were a marvel," says Kopper. "Debby's attitude of cheerful persistence, the ability to convey 'I'm happy to be talking with you but I'm not going to leave until I get something for Dartmouth,' brought her many concessions—and the respect of Russian colleagues sitting across from her."

Many faculty in the Department of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Studies recall Garretson's passion for teaching and supporting fellow colleagues.

Department chair Lynn Patyk remembers co-teaching Russian 1 with Garretson. "She taught the 9 a.m. section while I taught at the 12 hour. I sat in on her class basically every day before I taught my own, because she had an amazing way of incorporating her linguist's knowledge of morphology, phonetics, and etymology, etc. into her class," Patyk says. "Linguistics can be very technical, but Debby had a big, warm personality as a teacher that totally animated these more technical aspects, too."

"When I was just starting out as a teacher, I sometimes felt nervous or even panicked in the classroom," says Associate Professor of Russian Mikhail Gronas, who co-taught Russian with Garretson for about 15 years. "I would confide in Debby, and she would smile and reassure me: 'You're doing great!' It's her smile that I remember now—friendly and open to the world."

Research Assistant Professor Alfia Rakova recalls Garretson's dedication to her students. "Debby was a very caring and dedicated language teacher who would spend hours either mentoring her students or grading their homework," she says. "She mastered her Russian to the highest level and students wanted to learn from her and follow her example."

Associate professor Victoria Somoff remembers how Garretson hosted her and her family for waffles soon after she arrived at Dartmouth as a new faculty member. "My three young children ran through the house, their syrup-sticky hands leaving traces everywhere as they played with her big, gentle dog. Debby didn't mind the mess or the chaos—she just smiled, made more waffles, and shared remarkable stories about her work as an interpreter for world leaders and diplomats at some major political events of the 1980s and 90s," Somoff says. "That afternoon, for the first time, I thought this new place might actually become home."

After a bout with serious illness in the 1990s, Garretson worked for over a decade as a hospice volunteer in the Upper Valley, and for several years traveled to South Africa to volunteer in orphanages. Beginning about two decades ago, she pursued serious study of Buddhist thought and took part in meditation retreats around the world. After retiring from Dartmouth in 2019, she undertook an intensive study of Pali, the ancient language in which the Buddhist canon is transcribed.

Garretson is survived by her brother Peter (Rufina) Garretson, sister-in-law Betty Maddox of Virginia; cousins, Susan Garretson Daniel, Martha Garretson Wright, Nancy Garretson, Amy Fraher, Patricia Harris, Jay Harris, Lynne Harris, and nieces and nephews: David Maddox, Karen Maddox Manukas, Michael Maddox, Tamara Maddox Otten, and Deborah Anne Wheeler; and a wealth of friends and colleagues.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, May 10 at the Friends Meeting House at 43 Lebanon Street in Hanover, N.H. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies to support its mission of cultivating wisdom, deepening practice, and building community.