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Merle Allshouse never gave up on learning, or his fellow man

 
Merle Frederick Allshouse, 80, died on April 19 after battling lung cancer for four years.
Merle Frederick Allshouse, 80, died on April 19 after battling lung cancer for four years.
Published May 5, 2016

When Merle Allshouse was in grade school, he had a teacher who was particularly cruel to a classmate.

Young Merle organized a peaceful student protest, and launched a lifetime of activism, learning and paving the way for others to learn. Mr. Allshouse, a former administrator at Eckerd College, died April 19, 2016, at Westminster Suncoast after a four-year battle with lung cancer. He was 80 years old.

Born April 26, 1935, in Pittsburgh, Mr. Allshouse was dedicated to his studies. He earned degrees in philosophy and history from DePauw University, and he attended Yale on a Rockefeller scholarship and a Kent fellowship. There, he earned a doctorate in philosophy and religion.

While at Yale, he was a member of Sigma Chi fraternity. After joining, he realized that the group had never admitted a Jewish person, or any other minority for that matter. When he became a pledge trainer, he rewrote the ritual, making it possible to admit two Jewish students.

USF St. Petersburg historian Ray Arsenault said Mr. Allshouse cared deeply about social justice issues.

"Merle never went for the simple solution," Arsenault said. "He knew the struggle was the thing, and I think that informed his understanding of social movements and the need to improve society."

In the summer of 1948, Mr. Allshouse was working as a dishwasher at a resort on Lake Erie. A smart, pretty server named Myrna caught his eye, and they were married when she finished college in 1956. Two children followed, Scott and Kim, and the couple remained married for 60 years, until Mr. Allshouse's death.

After finishing college in 1957, Mr. Allshouse began teaching philosophy, aesthetics and religion at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. On May 4, 1970, less than 300 miles away at Kent State University, Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on student protesters, killing four and injuring nine.

The shooting had a profound effect on Mr. Allshouse. In a 2004 oral history interview, he said: "It really changed American society, and certainly changed all of us who were part of an academic world then. Many of my colleagues moved a couple notches to the right, politically, and others moved to the left. All of us agreed that if you stayed where you were the day before Kent State, you were probably brain-dead and didn't appreciate the significance of what happened."

Allshouse came to believe that the structure of academia needed change, so he went into administration, accepting a post as an associate dean at Dickinson, then dean at Bloomfield College, where, in 1972, he was promoted to the college's presidency. He ran the college until 1986, when he became vice president of the foundation at the University of Colorado. Ten years later, he moved to Eckerd College, where he was director of the Academy of Senior Professionals until his 2002 retirement.

Soon after retiring, he began auditing courses at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. He took classes in geology, political theory and political geography before discovering the Florida Studies department. There, he dove into every history course offered — alongside students who could have been his grandchildren.

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"His age was irrelevant," Arsenault said. "You didn't think, 'There's the old guy!' He was young at heart and just as sharp as the day is long. … He was a gentleman scholar."

Allshouse was also an avid boater. He was on the sailing team at Yale and owned a boat, Fides, Latin for "faith." He often sailed with the sailing club at USF St. Petersburg. He also took flying lessons and leased his own plane for a while.

As a philosopher and lifelong learner, it became apparent to Mr. Allshouse that one who is always learning must be open to shifts within his own belief systems. He embraced this revelation, but in the oral history interview, he said that it was sometimes hard.

"I think the older you get," he said, "the harder it is to say, 'I'm going to learn something today that will so literally change my life that it's going to be different.' I think that's the ultimate kind of learning: to have a paradigm shift go on and to say, 'Now I need to reorganize not only my reading list, but I need to reorganize my life priorities.' That's really when learning is exciting."