Tributes to Alan C. Purves

In the mid- 1960s, Jim Squire had written me about Alan's early research on response to literature, research that led to the publication in 1968 of The Elements of Writing about a Literary Work. [...]l knew that Alan had worked from 1965 to 1968 as examiner in the humanities for Educational Testing Service, a position which enabled him to learn sophisticated statistical analyses and to mediate between humanists and statisticians at a time when neither group comprehended the other's methodologies. [...]Alan had been a member of one of the panels that had contributed to my doctoral dissertation, Deciding the Future (he was later to write the introduction to its publication by NCTE in 1971.) When Anita was in the hospital in the last stages of cancer, Alan tenderly shared with her the journal they had kept of their honeymoon in England; he was later instrumental in inaugurating a nature center in Urbana that continues to bear her name. [...]his widowed mother, Mary, died, he regularly paid visits to her home in Washington, D.C. He took great pride in the accomplishments of his sons, William ("Willie") and Theodore ("Ted"), and in those of his second wife, Anne, an accomplished horsewoman, businesswoman, social worker, and actress. [...]as a graduate adviser and as a mentor, he was one of the bestloved and most respected.