Norman Cecil Lavers

Dr. Norman Lavers passed away on June 8th in Tucson, Arizona at the age of 91.

Norman was born in Albany and grew up in Berkeley California, the son of Cecil N. and Mary Lavers. April 21,1935 was Easter Sunday. His sisters Phyllis and Vivian were delighted with what the Easter bunny brought them. From an early age he was fascinated by the natural world and loved books and writing. In his life he made choices that allowed him to pursue these interests, to, as his hero Thoreau wrote, “live the life he had imagined”.

In 1956 he joined the Army and studied Mandarin Chinese at Army Language School in Monterey, California, spending the following year in a remote outpost on South Korea’s northern border. In 1959 he enrolled at San Francisco State University and gained an M.A. in English Literature. Norman then taught at Northern Illinois University for three years saving his money to travel for a year through Europe and Morocco. While in the United Kingdom he met Cheryl

Dicks, an art student who was able to show him his first European robin. Ten days later he proposed.

Norman returned to the United States in 1966 to begin his Ph.D. at the University of Iowa where he won a Fiction Fellowship in The Iowa Writers Workshop. In 1967 Cheryl joined him and they married on July 20th in Winnemucca, Nevada as they drove to see his family in California. In 1970 he joined the faculty of Western Washington State College. They lived on Samish Island, a birder’s paradise, where he began a Christmas Bird Count that drew participants from all over the country. Their son Gawain was born in 1974.

His next position was at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Arkansas had always appealed to him as a region of great biodiversity. While at ASU he published a novel, The Northwest Passage; books on Mark Harris, Jerzy Kosinski, and Manuel Puig, a memoir, Growing up in Berkeley with the Bomb, and numerous short stories. He was the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants, one of which allowed him time to write while living in Spain for a year. A Fulbright Teaching award took the family to Thailand. He received numerous awards for his writing including the Porter Prize, the William Peden Prize, O.Henry and Pushcart prizes and his stories were anthologized many times. He was a frequent contributor of essays to Bird Watcher’s Digest.

After his retirement in 2000 he turned his attention to insects: first butterflies, then robber flies, then to insects in general. This resulted in a book, 100 Insects of Arkansas and the Mid-South, which he hoped would bring the fascinating lives of these creatures, so vital to us all, to a wide audience

In 2018 he and Cheryl moved to Tucson, Arizona to be close to their son Gawain, his spouse, Kai Ellison and grandson Gareth. There, their yard yielded endless interesting sightings from rattlesnakes, tarantula hawks, and many bird species, to bobcats, coyotes, javelinas, robber flies, gila monsters and mule deer.

Norman’s quick wit and the knowledge he was eager to share will be greatly missed by all his family and his many friends.

Those who would like to make a donation in his memory might consider :

The Arkansas Audubon Society Ecology Camps P.O.Box 242088, Little Rock AR 72223

(camps for 4th, 5th and 6th graders to learn about the intricacies of nature)

The Xerces Society, P.O.Box 97387, Washington D.C. 20090-7387

(For Insect Conservation)

The Nature Conservancy Attn: Treasury, 4245 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 100, Arlington, VA 22203 USA