“Although I have done many things that I regret and not a few of which I am ashamed, I cannot say that I wish my life had been different.” Said Ronald Kerr Steven Macaulay, who died peacefully on Friday, September 26. He was 97 years old.

Born on November 3, 1927, in the small western coastal town of West Kilbride, Scotland, Ronald was a proud Scotsman to the end, who made Claremont his home. Arriving in 1965 to take a teaching position at the newly built Pitzer College, he helped establish a linguistics program that continues to thrive today at both Pitzer and Pomona Colleges.

He left West Kilbride in 1945 and enrolled at St. Andrews University, where he became friends with American GIs, who were allowed to attend while awaiting transport back to the U.S. following the war. He found them sophisticated and grown-up. Perhaps in part due to their influence, Ronald was expelled from St. Andrews after a year for poor grades and unruly behavior. After failing to join a friend in the Palestinian Police Force (he was rejected), he was drafted into the British Army, where he succumbed to pleurisy and was confined to bed rest for the remainder of his military service, about a year.

After being discharged, he settled for a stint working in a Glasgow office, before he suffered another bout of pleurisy and spent another year bedridden, this time in his childhood home, looking out the second-story window at the Isle of Arran, listening to the BBC and reading the many books that reignited his desire to pursue an education and eventually led to his academic career. He returned to St. Andrews in 1951 and met his future wife, Janet Grey, who was from London, forming an unlikely partnership of Scots and English. Following graduation, he moved to Lisbon in 1956 to teach English for the British Council. After they married on one of his visits home, Janet followed him to Lisbon, and their two children, Harvey and Anna, were born there. In 1960, they moved to Buenos Aires, traveling by ocean liner, for another teaching appointment with the British Council.

It was in Buenos Aires, in 1961, that the couple would meet New Yorkers Valerie and Jim Levy, who, on a second visit, returned to Buenos Aires in 1964, just when the family was packing up to move to Bangor, Wales, where he had enrolled in a graduate program. Jim had just completed his first year of teaching at Pomona College, and Valerie had been hired at the not yet opened Pitzer College. After hearing tales of their new life in California, he requested, as he was boarding the plane back to England (via Dakar and Paris), “Get me a job in California.” Six months later, he received a telegram from the founding president of Pitzer College, John Atherton, offering “two years as Assistant Professor at a salary of $9,000.”

The Levys were an integral part of the tight-knit group of friends who became extended family for the Macaulays in Claremont. Although they left California for Australia a few years after the Macaulays arrived in Claremont, the Levys remained great friends and the two families would meet in rural France in the summer for many years.

Beginning in 1965, he worked at Pitzer College as a professor and, for some years, dean of faculty, only retiring when he felt assured that his beloved linguistics program would be in safe hands. He was well respected in his field. A former colleague commented, “He was … an absolute pioneer in the field of language studies; I re-read some of his work on language and class in Scotland from the 1970s and was taken by how far ahead of the field it remains.”

He published 10 books about language studies, including “Generally Speaking: how children learn language” (Newbury House, 1977); “Locating Dialect in Discourse: The Language of Honest Men and Bonnie Lasses in Ayr” (Oxford University Press, 1991), “The Social  Art: language and its uses” (Oxford University Press, 1994); “Extremely common eloquence: some strong Scottish voices” (Oxford University Press, 2004); and “Seven ways of looking at language” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

He greatly appreciated the Claremont Colleges and the cosmopolitan world he found in Claremont. “Having grown up in a society in which, to put it mildly, intellectual conversation was rare, to say the least, living in Claremont has been a paradise on earth,” he said.

“Ronald was an exceptional father — patient, kind and non-judgmental. He was also devoted to our mother; they formed a wonderful partnership, enjoying their lives, their friends, their family and traveling together,” his children shared. “But Claremont was his true home — Ronald lived in the same house on Seventh Street since 1968, where you could stop by any day at around 5 p.m. for a gin and tonic or glass of wine, some salted nuts and scintillating conversation, as many did.” He rode his bicycle to work at Pitzer every day and enjoyed walking in the wash at Pomona College with his dogs.

He is survived by his wife of 70 years, Janet; his children, Harvey and Anna; grandchildren, Isaac and Hannah; son-in-law David; and daughter-in-law Domenic.

The family will be celebrating his life in a private memorial later this year.