Dan Britz, or Daniel 'God is Judge' Britz, as we used to call him occasionally in deference to the Solomonic character of his views on various controversial issues, will be remembered in very individual ways by the many people whose lives he touched.

As for myself, I recall most clearly how he threw himself heart and soul into his job. In the days that I knew him best, ca. 1972-1980, he typically appeared in Africana around 7:00 a.m. and began the workday by pushing a cart around the ring collecting books from carrels and engaging any earlybirds he found studying. Fresh from the Gold Coin on Howard Street where he routinely breakfasted, he was often at his best at that early hour, offering insights into world affairs that could not be found in books. Dan was, in fact, worldwise in ways not often encountered in an academic environment. He was ahead of events during the Iranian hostage crisis when he suggested that the Ayatollah would move the hostages to disparate locations to complicate their rescue. And, he may not have been far off the mark in his view that to prove the threat to Amcits on Grenada, the US government would have to draft some captured documents, after the invasion. Politics was always one of his favorite topics, but Dan never shied away from even more sensitive areas. He was known to start singing Tammy Wynette's hit, "Stand By Your Man," whenever discussions turned to feminism, or, as they say nowadays, 'gender issues'. His habit of explaining a few centuries of southern Ghana's history by with the statement that "Fantes cook with butter" was to some no less astounding.

I will leave to others the task of honoring Dan for his professional contributions to Northwestern's Africana Library and the field of African studies. However, I respected his interest in balancing the acquisition of books with the collection of archival materials which also have valuable stories to tell. I enjoyed working with someone who was willing to push the envelope and do new things in this area. He certainly exhibited unusual calm the day a Cannonball freight truck arrived at the library loading dock with 30, 4-drawer file cabinets, the fruit of one of my manuscript collection letters. "What is this stuff?" he inquired, "and where did it come from?" My sheepish reply didn't entirely satisfy him and to this day I have no idea whatever happened to those files.

Above all, however, it seems to me that the essential Dan Britz was more to be appreciated off campus than on. Inconspicuously, out of the public view, Dan gave unselfishly of his time, treasure, and intelligence to so many students, over so long a time that his position in a better place can never be doubted. Surely he was the Bibliographer of Africana, but to many of us he was also something akin to a diplomat-in-residence for whatever problems a student might have--personal or professional--Dan could be relied upon to provide insightful advice. And often he provided a lot more than that--his car to help a student escape a mean landlord by moving out of an apartment in the dead of night; a room in his house to a student who had nowhere to stay; and even his services as a courier when a student's girlfriend in Philadelphia needed to send a frozen lasagna back with him on a flight to Evanston.

While Dan's professional achievements define a life well spent and will benefit generations of scholars to come, we mourn him here today most of all because of what he meant to us personally. The clergy are fond of reminding us that death is love's measure, that love freely given away lasts forever. For this we are deeply in Dan's debt.

Jim Sanders
Falls Church, Virginia
May 30, 2002