It is with great sadness that I write on the death of my colleague Lanin Gyurko, who taught Spanish at the University of Arizona from 1978 until his retirement in 2015. Lanin came to Arizona to be Head of the then Department of Romance Languages. He became, over the many decades of his career as a teacher scholar, a loyal advocate for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, an esteemed scholar active until his retirement, and a teacher and mentor who inspired the loyalty of generations of graduate and undergraduate students. He had wide ranging connections with scholars across the campus, the country, and the world including the acclaimed Mexican novelist, Carlos Fuentes.
Lanin honed his ideas of the profession and the role of a teacher scholar during his years of study at Yale and Harvard. He was active and knowledgeable, cautious of the trendy and a defender of the traditional values of a liberal education which he imparted to his students who went on to successful careers inside and out of the academy. He practiced his craft with intensity and a dry sense of humor. I was proud to have him as a colleague and a friend.
Dr. Malcolm Compitello
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GYURKO, Lanin Andrew
79, professor emeritus of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Arizona, died on June 6, 2021, in Tucson, Arizona.
The oldest child of Helen and Andrew Gyurko, he was born and raised in Torrington, Connecticut, and attended Torrington High School. He graduated from Yale University in 1964 and received his Ph.D. in Romance Languages from Harvard University in 1969. He returned to Yale in 1969 where he was associate professor of Spanish. In 1977-78 he served as chairman of the Department of Modern Languages at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, and in the fall of 1978 joined the University of Arizona as professor and head of the Department of Romance Languages.
An authority on Latin American literature, Professor Gyurko published extensively in the field. He authored eight books, including four on Mexican writer and diplomate Carlos Fuentes and one on Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar. His monographs, chapters in academic books, and articles in professional journals ranged from pre-Columbian mythology to Chicano literature, from linguistics to film.
An esteemed and dedicated teacher, he directed many doctoral dissertations and mentored many students. He developed and directed the Mexican and Mexican American Literature and Culture Studies Program in his department. In 2009 he was honored by the publication of an homage volume, Studies in Honor of Lanin A. Gyurko, a collection of essays written in the main by former Ph.D. students of his at the University of Arizona, now professors throughout the United States. He received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Arizona Student Union Advisory Board, celebrated by the ringing of the U.S.S. Arizona bell on campus. He was honored for his teaching by Sigma Delta Pi, the National Hispanic Honor Society, with the Orden de los Descubridores.
He collected Mexican folk art and especially enjoyed the annual celebrations of the Day of the Dead in his department. His pride and joy were his three young grandchildren.
He is preceded in death by his parents and his brother, Nelson Gyurko. Survivors include his wife, Dorothy Gyurko of Tucson; his son, daughter-in-law, three grandchildren, sister, two nieces, and many cousins.
Donations in his memory may be made to Pima Council on Aging in Tucson or to Dwight Hall Center for Public Service and Social Justice at Yale University. Arrangements by ADAIR FUNERAL HOMES, Dodge Chapel.