Akinbiyi Akinlabi

Snippets of my memories, with Doug

I have known Doug for more than forty years. Therefore, I decided not to write about a single incident, because there are just too many. Some are funny, others are quite serious.

Chronologically, Doug and I were both undergraduates at the University of Ibadan, in 1976. He was in his final year while I was in my first year. He graduated in 1977 with a first-class honors degree, the first in the history of the Linguistics program at the University of Ibadan. I graduated in 1979, also with a first class, the second in history of Ibadan. Doug is known for being the only graduate who ever submitted a hand-written long essay (B.A. dissertation)! Rumor had it he did not have money to get it typed.

After a short stint at the University of Ilorin as an Assistant Lecturer, Doug proceeded to MIT for his PhD. Here is where our paths crossed again. In 1982, the University of Ibadan sponsored me to the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) as an exchange student. During this time, we started corresponding by postage. Doug had started working on his PhD dissertation. He found way to invite me to MIT with a train ticket from Philadelphia, in the Winter of 1983. He created space for me in his small apartment in Cambridge, where he lived with his family. We would walk to the Department in the mornings and returned in the evening. Doug will spend the day working on his dissertation while I sat on classes and had discussion appointments with the Professors. In the evenings, Doug will give me his drafts to read, and we would discuss it the on our way to the Department the following morning. He later told me that his children were especially well behaved because I was around!

After his PhD, he got a job at the University of Southern California (USC). In 1987 I had a chance to visit him in Los Angeles. One morning, we were getting ready to go to the Department when the house started shaking left and right. Doug said, “get under the table”! There was an earthquake going on. Quite surprisingly, we still went to the Department. I had the shock of my life because when the building we were in started shaking, an aftershock! I was so terrified I could not get anything done that day. Imagine the ground that you stand on moving!

After he moved to the University of British Columbia, I had the opportunity to visit him to work on a paper. During the time, Anne-Marie suggested we go hiking. While hiking in the forest, we walked into a female Bear (with cubs?)! Anne-Marie started shouting “start making loud noise”. Fortunately, after some time the bear walked away.

At another time, Doug was visiting me in New Brunswick. I picked him up from the airport. On our way back home, my car broke down. Fortunately, it was not far from a toll booth, so we decided to walk to the toll booth and call a tow truck. (We had no cell phones.) Just a short distance from where we parked the car, we started noticing lots of coins, Pennies, Dimes and Nickels. But no quarters. After some time, we decided to start picking up the coins. Before we reached the toll booth, our hands were full. We asked ourselves, why were so many coins on the roadside close to a toll booth? And it occurred to us that since the toll booth accepted only notes and quarters, people threw out the other coins in anger while searching for quarters to pay the toll. But imagine two adult professors picking up pennies at the roadside!

I’ll make this the last one. I invited Doug to teach at our African Linguistics School 3 (ALS), in Ibadan, in 2013. He came all right. But after the School he decided to stay behind for the West African Languages Congress. I was surprised. But what prompted this was that Prof. Bamgbose would ask for him since he was at ALS. And low and behold, the first time Prof. Bamgbose saw me at the conference, his question was “where is Pulleyblank?” Can you imagine if Doug had not stayed behind?

Akinbiyi Akinlabi