Richard
L. Merritt, 72, Emeritus Research Professor in Communications and Professor
of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
died on Saturday, November 19, 2005, at Carle Foundation Hospital. He
had suffered from Parkinson’s for several years and fell at his
home a week before his death. In lieu of a memorial service, the family
invites friends and former colleagues to join them on Saturday, January
14, 2006, from 3:00 to 5:00 in the foyer of the Tryon Festival Theater
at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts to enjoy a glass of wine
and a piece of chocolate in his memory. Memorials may be made
to the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts;
WILL AM-FM-TV; or the National
Parkinson Foundation.
Mr.
Merritt was born on August 8, 1933, in Portland, Oregon, the
son of Raymond and Sarah Cook Merritt. His family
moved to Los Angeles when he was just two years old and he always considered
LA his hometown. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1955 with a Bachelor’s
degree in International Relations from the University of Southern California,
he studied at the University of Virginia, the Free University of Berlin,
and then Yale University, where he studied and worked with
Karl Deutsch and
received his doctorate in 1962.
Professor
Merritt taught at Yale University for several years and came to the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1967, where he had a joint appointment
in the Department of Political Science and the Institute of Communications
Research and served as head of the Department of Political Science from
1978 to 1984. In 1976 he was visiting professor at the Free University
of Berlin, where he had earlier (1966-67) been Fulbright research
professor. He was a visiting scholar at the International Institute for
Comparative Social Research, Science Center Berlin in 1979-81; visiting
professor at Rhodes University, South Africa in 1991, and in 1992-93 Fulbright
research professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He lectured (in
English and German) at major universities and government institutions
on five continents.
Professor
Merritt served as vice-president both of the International Studies Association
(1979-80) and the International
Political Science Association (1979-82), and chaired the
Conference Group on German Politics (1986-88). He organized the
annual meetings of the American Political Science Association (1970)
and International Studies Association (1973) as well as the triennial
world congress in Moscow of the International Political Science Association
(1979). He served on a dozen editorial boards of professional
journals and consulted for the United Nations and government agencies
and educational institutions in the United States and West Germany.
He
authored, co-authored, or edited over two dozen books including Symbols
of American Community (1966), Public Opinion in Occupied Germany
(1970), Berlin Between Two Worlds (1986), and Communication
and Interaction in Global Politics (1987). In 1995 Yale University
Press published his Democracy
Imposed: U.S. Occupation Policy and the German Public, 1945-1949.
He also contributed more than 100 articles and 50 reviews to scholarly
journals and books.
Richard
(Dick) Merritt loved movies and was a co-founder in the early
seventies of the local Film Society. He was also a passionate bicyclist,
helped organize the Prairie
Cycle Club in the mid-seventies, and participated in numerous “century
rides.” He enjoyed classical music, good food, dark chocolate, and
never met a cat with whom he couldn’t communicate.
Dick
is survived by his wife, Anna Johanna Gode-von Aesch Merritt, whom he
met when both were in Berlin as Fulbright students and with whom he co-authored
and co-edited a number of books and articles; they were married on August
9, 1958, in Croton-on-Hudson,
NY. Survivors also include three children, Christopher (San Diego,
CA), Geoffrey (Urbana, IL), and Theodore (Urbana, IL),
as well as a granddaughter, Annaliesa (born in June 2005), grandson
Carter Huff, and two brothers, Col. Raymond James Merritt, USAF/ret. (Marysville,
CA), and John Merritt (Berkeley, CA).
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