Our good friend and retired colleague, Inge Stites, passed away on Friday, December 26, 2008. Inge taught French and German in this department for almost thirty years until she retired in 1999. She also was a long-term, efficient and respected University College advisor. Her husband Ken was a French professor in our department, until his untimely death in 1985. Gracious, modest, always positive, and invariably supportive, Inge had an irresistible sense of humor. Her dedication to her students, her willingness to serve and help in any way, made her the “Good Fairy” of our department. A polyglot and history aficionada, Inge loved to read and was extremely knowledgeable about medieval to 18th-century French history and current novels. She was also a lover of cats and nature, and a gardener with a fondness for azaleas and yellow roses. She did volunteer work in our community for many years at the Cameron Museum of Art and most notably, at Vintage Values for the last ten years. She is also the other half of the Lapaire-Stites French Studies Scholarship, which was created in part to honor her and Ken’s decades of work with UNCW and our students. She has made arrangements for this scholarship to be funded for a good while into the future. Some of the current FLL faculty has known Inge for more than 30 years. She was a delightful, loving, and lively colleague and friend. We will miss her gentleness, her grace, her strength and her humor.

 Inge, we will miss you dearly.

 It is her and her family’s wish that donations be made in her name to the UNCW Lapaire-Stites French Studies Scholarship by way of UNCW's Advancement Office*. Acknowledgements will be forwarded to her sister, Elisabet, in Denmark.[*Instructions from the Advancement Office: All donors need to do to make memorial gifts is to make the check out to UNCW and indicate "Lapaire-Stites Scholarship" in the memo line to ensure that it gets to the right place.

Donors should indicate that the gift has been made in Inge's memory. Gifts can be sent to UNCW - Advancement Services, 601 South College Road, Wilmington, NC 28403-5905. Donors can also go online at www.uncw.edu/uniadv/gift.htm with the same indication as to where the gift should be directed.]