Dr. Marvin Lionel Bender '52
Outstanding Achievement in a Chosen Profession
Following graduation from MHS in 1952, Marv received degrees from Dartmouth College in mathematics, and took a position at Adisadel College in Ghana. Thus began his long and distinguished career in the world of academia. While in Africa, Marv traveled to Ethiopia and accepted a position at Haile Selassie I University where he became interested in Amharic and linguistics. He returned to attend graduate school at the University of Texas in Austin where he earned a Ph.D. in linguistics, his dissertation a generative study of Amharic verb morphology. Dr. Bender was recruited and served on the research team of the Language Survey of Ethiopia which was a Ford Foundation project. He was widely recognized as the only one with experience in Ethiopia and knowledge of Amharic on the team. When the survey was finished, Dr. Bender was appointed at Stanford University to finish the Ethiopia Survey report. From 1971-1996, Lionel, (the name he preferred), served in various positions in the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Foreign Languages at Southern Illinois University. He retired from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale in 1996.
Over the years, Dr. Bender wrote numerous scholarly articles and books based on his research about Ethiopian and Afroasiatic languages. Among those are "The Languages of Ethiopia," (1971), "New Afroasiatic Language Family," (1975), and "Omotic Lexicon and Phonology," (2003). Because of his linguistic expertise and knowledge, he was awarded two substantial National Science Foundation grants to study Ethiopian languages. In addition, Dr. Bender received a Fullbright-Hays lectureship at the University of Khartoum in Sudan from 1978-1979. He was a prominent figure in Afroasiatic and Ethiopian linguistics for fifty years whose works are among the authoritative sources on Omotic and Nilo Saharan linguistics. After retirement, he found time for his long interest in chess and continued to write and publish. Dr. Bender passed away in February, 2008.
It is for his exceptional achievements and scholarly work that he is being inducted posthumously into the MHS Hall of Fame.
Dr. Bender is survived by his wife, Almaz Teferi; his sons, Douglas in Redondo Beach, CA, and Gary in Tempe, AZ; a stepson, Yelias in San Francisco, CA, a stepdaughter, Lili of Carbondale, IL; several grandchildren, and two sisters, Elaine Bender Bahn, '58 and Winifred Bender, '53.
Over the years, Dr. Bender wrote numerous scholarly articles and books based on his research about Ethiopian and Afroasiatic languages. Among those are "The Languages of Ethiopia," (1971), "New Afroasiatic Language Family," (1975), and "Omotic Lexicon and Phonology," (2003). Because of his linguistic expertise and knowledge, he was awarded two substantial National Science Foundation grants to study Ethiopian languages. In addition, Dr. Bender received a Fullbright-Hays lectureship at the University of Khartoum in Sudan from 1978-1979. He was a prominent figure in Afroasiatic and Ethiopian linguistics for fifty years whose works are among the authoritative sources on Omotic and Nilo Saharan linguistics. After retirement, he found time for his long interest in chess and continued to write and publish. Dr. Bender passed away in February, 2008.
It is for his exceptional achievements and scholarly work that he is being inducted posthumously into the MHS Hall of Fame.
Dr. Bender is survived by his wife, Almaz Teferi; his sons, Douglas in Redondo Beach, CA, and Gary in Tempe, AZ; a stepson, Yelias in San Francisco, CA, a stepdaughter, Lili of Carbondale, IL; several grandchildren, and two sisters, Elaine Bender Bahn, '58 and Winifred Bender, '53.