Great-grandfather, educator, author was 102

George Wickes, distinguished educator, author, scholar, and former intelligence officer during World War II, died peacefully on October 9 at the age of 102.

Born in Antwerp, Belgium on January 6, 1923, to a Belgian mother and American father, George grew up in upstate New York. His parents had decided the family language would be French, so that the children would become bilingual, learning English when they went to school. He graduated from Aquinas Institute in Rochester in 1940 and attended St. Michael’s College of the University of Toronto for three years.

He then served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946. After infantry basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, he was assigned to the Army Specialized Training Program at the University of California, Berkeley for Vietnamese language and Asian studies. He was then recruited by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, trained as a cryptographer in Washington, D.C., and sent overseas to southeast Asia. His first port was Calcutta, then Rangoon, then on a postwar OSS mission to Saigon and later to Hanoi to interview Ho Chi Minh and gather intelligence on the Vietnamese independence movement of 1945-46. He said of Ho that in spite of his appearance as “short and very slight … [with a] scraggly Mandarin mustache and a wispy beard,” he possessed a singular clarity of vision and humble strength, “quite above the ordinary run of mortals … I think Abraham Lincoln must have been such a man — calm, sane and humble.” In 2019 he was awarded the OSS Congressional gold medal and appeared in the first episode of Ken Burns’ acclaimed “The Vietnam War” series.

After his discharge from the Army, he resumed his studies, adding to his University of Toronto B.A., a “war degree” in 1944, a Columbia M.A. in 1949, and a UC Berkeley Ph.D. in English in 1954. He also worked in international exchanges, as an assistant secretary of the Belgian American Educational Foundation in New York from 1947 to 1949, and a director of the Fulbright program in Belgium and Luxembourg in Brussels from 1952 to 1954.

He began his teaching career as an instructor of English at Duke University in 1954. In 1957 he became one of the seven founding faculty members of Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, spending the next 12 years there and at Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University). In 1970, he became a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Oregon. He loved the academic life, and after officially retiring in 1993, continued teaching until 2015, for a total of 60 years.

He traveled widely during these years, teaching in foreign universities and programs: as a Fulbright lecturer in France in 1962-63, 1966, and 1978; a visiting professor at University of Rouen in 1970; at University of Tübingen in 1981; and University of Heidelberg in 1996. In the University of Oregon program for study abroad, he taught in Avignon, France; Siena, Italy; Bath, England and London. He went on lecture tours for the U.S. State Department’s Information Service in Europe in 1969 and Africa in 1978 and 1979.

He donated his papers, including his intelligence-era materials and his literary archives, to the University of Oregon Knight Library’s Special Collections.

“Beyond his professional life, George was beloved for his warmth, wry intelligence and humor, and his modesty,” his family shared. “He often said, ‘I loved teaching most of all.’  But he also enjoyed the natural beauty of Oregon — fly-fishing, canoeing, hiking, cross-country skiing — and cherished his family, friends, and former students.” When he was 83, he and his wife walked across northern England with a Sierra Club group, from the Irish Sea to the North Sea.

He is survived by his wife, Louise (Molly) Westling; sons Gregory, Geoff, and Jonathan; grandsons Tejah Mancilla and Geoffrey Coleman Wickes; great-grandsons Rory and Nova Mancilla; stepchildren Mike, Steve, and Laura Shelton; and daughters-in-law Margaret Mancilla, Marilyn Andrews, and Laurie Webber.

He was predeceased by his children Madeleine and Thomas, and his two former wives Foy and Linda Wickes.

A celebration of his life will be held at a later date in Eugene, Oregon. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions to the Knight Library Special Collection Fund at the University of Oregon at give.uofoundation.org/campaigns.

“George Wickes lived through more than a century of change — crossing continents, witnessing the beginnings of a nascent Cold War in Asia, shaping the minds of thousands of students, and leaving behind a legacy deep in literary and historical archives,” his family said. “He will be remembered for his intellect and wit, his gentle curiosity, his integrity, and for always finding joy in both the extraordinary and the everyday.”