Wiebe, Dallas Eugene (1930-2008)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2008 May 12 p. 9

Birth date: 1930 Jan 9

text of obituary:

DALLAS E. WIEBE

Dallas Eugene Wiebe, 78, of Cincinnati, Ohio, died May 1, 2008, of congestive heart failure. He was born Jan. 9, 1930, to John Phillip and Otillie Marie (Becker) Wiebe in Newton, Kan.

He graduated from Newton High School in June 1948. He was baptized on confession of faith June 9, 1946, at First Mennonite Church of Newton.

In 1948 he began study at Bethel College in North Newton. While there he met Virginia Margaret Schroeder of Halstead. They were married on June 24, 1951, at First Mennonite Church in Newton.

After two years in the U.S. Medical Corps, he returned to Bethel and graduated in 1954. They moved to Ann Arbor, Mich., where he began graduate studies at the University of Michigan. He received his master’s degree in 1955 and doctorate in 1960. He taught at the University of Wisconsin in Madison for three years and then moved to the English department at the University of Cincinnati. He taught there for 31 years, retiring in 1995.

He taught composition, American literature, modern British and American poetry, 20th-century fiction, stylistics, literary criticism and creative writing. His publications include two novels, Skyblue the Badass and Our Asian Journey. He published four books of short stories, other short stories and poems, essays, scholarly articles and translations of German poetry.

His honors include a Major Hopwood Award in Poetry in 1956, the Aga Khan Fiction Award from Paris Review in 1978, a Pushcart Prize in 1979, the Post-Corbett Award for Literature, 1984, a Rieveschl Award for Creative and Scholarly Activity, 1985, the Ohio Arts Council’s Governor’s Award for the Arts in Ohio, 1998, and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council, 1999. He was a founder and editor of Cincinnati Poetry Review. He was a founder of the Cincinnati Writers’ Project.

Survivors include a daughter, Ericka Kirstin Wiebe and her husband, Jeffrey Glover; a son, Garth Dylan Wiebe and his wife, BonnieJean (Phipps) Wiebe; six grandsons; three sisters and a brother.

He was preceded in death by his wife of 50 years, Virginia, on April 19, 2002; two sisters and a brother.