Obituary of Dan Pogust Passell

Dan Passell, a long-time professor of philosophy at Portland State University, died Saturday, July 5th at the age of 85 after a brief illness. Daniel Pogust Passell was born Oct. 8, 1928, in Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up in the eastern suburb of Shaker Heights. His parents, Lillian Pogust and Solomon Passell, were first-generation Americans born of Jewish emigrants from Tsarist Russia. Dan attended Shaker Heights public schools and received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Chicago. He served two years in the U.S. Army during the Korean conflict, teaching radio theory to soldiers at Fort Gordon in Augusta, Ga. He then returned to graduate studies, at Stanford University, and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1964. He taught briefly at Fresno State University, then moved his family to Portland later in 1964, when he was offered a teaching position as an assistant professor at PSU. Dan was involved in some of the major issues of a turbulent era in Portland and American history. True to his professional and personal interest in ethics, he joined the chief liberal causes of the late 1960s and early 1970s: the Civil Rights movement and the antiwar movement. He and his first wife were active in The Society for New Action Politics, a cohort of academics, union workers and clergy representing the nonviolent faction of Portland’s Vietnam War opposition. He considered himself dispassionate, clear-headed and logical about most things, although as the years passed he sometimes looked back to acknowledge personal regrets and misjudgment. During his teaching career, Dan mentored Portland State undergraduate and graduate students, some of whom became lifelong friends. He published the occasional paper in professional journals; and participated in the PSU Philosophy Department’s Socratic Society, where papers were read and critiqued by colleagues and students. In his first decade at PSU, he risked his career to lead an ultimately successful campaign to overturn the department hierarchy in favor of a more democratic rotating chairmanship. He retired from PSU with the rank of associate professor in 2010, and taught his last class as an emeritus professor in 2011. Dan was the devoted father of 4 children, singer of bedtime songs and reader of bedtime stories when we were small. While struggling to rear his large family on a state university salary, he became a do-it-yourself man at home, tackling plumbing and carpentry projects both large and small. He was the former husband of two wives, maintaining an amicable relationship with both of them. Shortly after the 1968 publication of Kenneth Cooper’s groundbreaking book, Aerobics, Dan began a daily running practice that lasted for 30 years, until his knees gave out. He continued a regular fitness routine, adjusted to the limitations of advancing age, until he fell ill in May. Dan’s hobbies were sports and poetry. He took his children to PSU basketball games, gathered them to watch Mohammed Ali boxing matches, and hit pop-flies so his sons could practice their little league fielding skills. For as long as there was a Trailblazers basketball team, Dan was a Trailblazers fan. He sat in on PSU literature courses and scribbled many pages of his own verse. To judge by number of lines memorized, his favorite poets were Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare and Wallace Stevens. He took great pleasure in making substantial contributions towards his grandchildren’s educations, as well as generous financial gifts to his children and close friends. He is survived by three children: Sarah, of Danbury, Connecticut; Josh, of Watertown, Massachusetts; and Leah, of Portland; four grandchildren: Nicholas and Eliza Passell, and Hannah and Nora Laymon; and an older brother, Lawrence A. Passell, of Shoreham, N.Y. His oldest child, Seth, pre-deceased him in 2007. Cremation will be followed by the private scattering of his ashes. There are no calling hours.