Herbert E. Francis, Jr., award winning author and beloved teacher, passed away February 2,
2024. Herb was born a little more than a hundred years ago, on January 11, 1924 in Bristol,
Rhode Island to Herbert E. Francis and Evelyn E. (Verity) Francis. He graduated as valedictorian
of his class at Colt Memorial High School. He worked briefly in the accounting department at a
zipper factory, then enlisted in 1942 in the U.S. Army Air Corps (815th ), serving throughout
WWII in England, France and Italy. He was honorably discharged in 1945 with the rank of staff
sergeant.
Thanks to the G.I. Bill he was able to attend the University of Wisconsin, graduating in a record
two years with a B.A. in English and Spanish. Two professors, Antonio Sanchez-Barbudo and
Arturo Barea, ignited in him a lifelong love of Spanish literature. He received his M.A. from
Brown University. Throughout the 1950s Herb taught at Penn State, University of Tennessee and
Northern Illinois State. He taught English Literature at Emory University from 1958 until 1966.
Herb then accepted the challenge to help establish the humanities program at the University of
Alabama, Huntsville. In those early years, many of his UAH students were NASA and Arsenal
employees determined to earn a college degree by attending classes in the evening. But as the
demand for daytime classes increased, and Herb began his own fiction-writing career in
earnest, he asked his department if he could be assigned afternoon teaching only; he wanted to
safeguard his quiet mornings for writing time. Twenty years later, Herb retired to write fulltime.
The following year the university awarded him a DHL, Doctor of Humane Letters in recognition
of his inspirational influence on hundreds of students. This honor was preceded by three
Fulbright Fellowships—one to Pembroke College of Oxford University in 1953 and two to teach
at the Universidad National de Cuyo, in Mendoza, Argentina. While teaching in Mendoza, Herb
made a point of buying a newspaper each day from one particularly forlorn street kid. Concern
blossomed into friendship and ultimately into a powerful bond. Herb adopted Carlos Roberto
Francis as his son.
After the military coup in Argentina made travel unsafe for writers (Herb’s Argentinian editor
was murdered), Herb purchased an apartment in Madrid, Spain and for many decades he spent
summer months living as a local, writing each day in the Café Commercial. He volunteered to
translate the works of Argentinean authors living in exile in Spain. Thanks to Herb’s bilingual
artistry, the genius of such luminaries as Juan Carlos Onetti, Antonio Di Benedetto, Norberto
Luis Romero and Daniel Monyano reached English-speaking audiences.
As for his own fiction, Herb won numerous writing awards, among them an Iowa School of
Letters Award for short fiction, an O.Henry, a Pushcart and the G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize. Over
a hundred of his short stories were published in every literary journal of note in the nation. Many
were also published in collected form including The Itinerary of Beggars, Naming Things, A
Disturbance of Gulls, The Sudden Trees. His novel The Invisible Country won critical acclaim.
Herb was a founding member of the Huntsville Literary Association and POEM magazine.
Herb’s family and friends express their enduring gratitude for the loving care Herb received
throughout the past year and a half at Regency Retirement Village in Huntsville, Alabama. He
thrived in his new home.
He is survived by a cadre of dear friends in Madrid such as Norberto Luis Romero and Ramiro
Fernandez who have long been chosen family. He is survived as well by all the Argentinian
grandchildren and great grandchildren of Carlos R. Francis; by the children and grandchildren
of his brother Raymond, in Flagstaff, Arizona; and by his first cousin, Ward Verity, who still
lives near what was the Verity family farm on Long Island. It was there that Herb spent his
boyhood summers. It was there that his grandfather read aloud to him passages from
Paradise Lost and, through the power of John Milton’s artistry, won Herb’s soul and
inspired him to a near century-long devotion to literary endeavors.
Though Herb requested no memorial service, he will live on in the creativity of the
innumerable students to whom he imparted his love of the written and spoken word.
