Timothy Light, Professor Emeritus of Chinese Religion at Western Michigan University, passed away on 14 December 2025. We in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures (DEALL) at The Ohio State University express our deepest condolences, remembering him fondly as our former DEALL Chair from 1980 to 1986. 

Professor Timothy Light (黎天睦) contributed tremendously to our department in his six short years as DEALL Chair. His interest was in language pedagogy and in linguistics, the former from his participation in the Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA), first as a member of the Board of Directors (1978-1980) and then as its Journal Editor (1980-1982), and the latter from his graduate training at Cornell University and subsequent publications. In support of language pedagogy, he brought in Shigeru Miyagawa from University of Arizona to rebuild the Japanese language program, while his hiring of Galal Walker led to the creation of Individualized Instructions (I.I.). Wishing to do yet more for OSU, Professor Light sought to attract the state of Ohio to create a China Institute at OSU. Governor Richard F. Celeste, however, was more interested in creating a Japan Institute. Thus, Professor Light, together with his OSU colleagues, Shigeru Miyagawa and Bradley M. Richardson, worked on creating the Institute for Japanese Studies (IJS) as part of the East Asian Studies Center (EASC). The institute was successfully created in 1985 through Governor Celeste’s support and, as stated on the EASC website, the establishment of IJS was in “recognition of Ohio’s national status as the second greatest site of Japanese manufacturing investment.” Funding from the state also led to additional hires and other activities that supported teaching and research on East Asia. Ultimately, various credits for the individual grants notwithstanding, everything points back to Professor Timothy Light’s bold, initial overtures to Ohio’s governor.

Professor Light’s own research interest and publications are in Chinese language and linguistics, especially Cantonese linguistics, which stem largely from his marriage to Hongkonger, Joyce Cheng, in 1964, and from living and teaching English in Hong Kong, first in 1960-1962, and then in the five years from 1966 to 1970 when he "became fluent in both Cantonese and Mandarin" (obituary).

 In 1971, he pursued a doctoral degree at Cornell University, completing his dissertation on The Chinese Syllabic Final: Phonological Relativity and Constituent Analysis in 1974. It was advised by Professor John McCoy (Cantonese linguistics), with committee members Professors Nicholas C. Bodman (Southern Min linguistics) and Tsu-lin Mei (Chinese historical linguistics). He taught at the University of Arizona in 1974-1980, where he hosted the Eleventh International Conference on Sino‑Tibetan Languages and Linguistics in Autumn 1978. His next venue for that conference was Columbus, Ohio, for DEALL to host the Nineteenth International Conference on Sino‑Tibetan Languages and Linguistics in Autumn 1986! That event took place, with Professor Frank Hsueh as the de facto host, as Professor Light had just moved to newer pastures.

In coming to DEALL as Department Chair in 1980, Professor Light brought with him the Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association (JCLTA), having replaced John DeFrancis at a time when the journal covered both Chinese language and linguistic issues. He served as its Editor from 1980 to 1982, followed by DEALL Professors Frank F. S. Hsueh (1984-1988) and James H-Y. Tai (1988-1994) as JCLTA Editors. It should be noted that DEALL faculty members – as well as its many alumni – have had, over the decades, extensive involvement with CLTA, be it as its Editor, its President, its inaugural Webmaster, and/or as a member of its Board of Directors. In 1983, when Professor Light sojourned at the Beijing Language Institute, he introduced The Ohio State University to Patricia Sieber, then an aspiring undergraduate exchange student from Switzerland. Unbeknownst to either of them, she would many decades later follow in his footsteps as DEALL chair. Surely, a case of academic yuanfen! 

Professor Light was crucial in attracting applicants to our graduate program in Chinese Linguistics. During his six years in DEALL, he brought in many graduate students, including the following eleven students, who wrote an M.A. thesis and/or Ph.D. dissertation in DEALL: Zhanyi Zhang, Henry Dean, Brian King, Wallace Sargent, Scott McGinnis, Dana Scott Bourgerie, Charles Miracle, Baozhang He, Mien-Hwa Chiang, Lianqing Wang, and Matthew Christensen. Five of them completed their M.A. thesis under his advisorship before he departed: one focused on pedagogy concerning Individualized Instruction in 1983 (Zhanyi Zhang), while the rest dealt with Chinese linguistics (Henry Dean, Mien-Hwa Chiang, Baozhang He, and Dana S. Bourgerie). After he left, nine of his advisees completed their Ph.D. dissertation under his replacement, Professor James H-Y. Tai, between 1989-1994, while he himself served on the dissertation committee of two of them (W. Charles Miracle and Dana S. Bourgerie). In addition, while participating as DEALL adjunct professor, Professor Light gladly served as a committee member on yet one more Ph.D. dissertation, that of Roxana Suk-Yee Fung’s in 2000 on Cantonese linguistics. Thus, all in all, Professor Light’s participation in DEALL's graduate program in Chinese Linguistics spanned two decades, from 1980 to 2000.    

Professor Light also cared about DEALL’s undergraduate programs, as evidence by such activities as creating the Jin Lu (金鹿 ‘Golden Buck’) Award that was given annually to the best undergraduate student in Chinese in the department. (Note the wordplay of ‘buck’ with ‘buckeye.’) In fact, Professor Marjorie Chan, in establishing the Cantonese Gamluhk (金鹿 ‘Golden Buck’) Fund in April 2020 to support the offering of Cantonese language courses and other Cantonese-related academic programming at OSU, adopted Professor Light’s suggestion and encouragement to her to use “Gamluhk” in the fund’s name. 

A native son of Kalamazoo, Michigan, with strong academic ties to both Kalamazoo College and Western Michigan University, Professor Light is well known far beyond, not only as a linguist and influential educator, but also as a generous philanthropist whose donations have included those that are publicly known as well as many that were silently given without fanfare. This memoriam will end with Professor Timothy Light himself sharing his own fond memories of his years as our DEALL chair. His words, as he had written them, were collected in 2020 as part of DEALL’s 50th Anniversary Celebration.

Timothy Light
Your Years as DEALL Chair: 1980-1986 

Q1. Your fondest memory/memories of DEALL during your chairmanship?

My strongest memory of DEALL was exhaustion. But that was mitigated a bit by DIETER’s recognizing us in future rising budgets.

Q2. Your expectations for DEALL’s future?

DEALL is already recognized as a (=THE) premier American institution in language teaching of EA LGS. M my guess is today that must include a lot more and will continue to grow.

We may not ever be ranked with the older and more famous. But those who see the clearest will know!!

Q3. Other reminiscences, messages, or comments?

In looking back over the past 30 or 40 years, my time at OSU remains the most satisfying of my career, most of that willing to having wonderful colleagues!

R.I.P., Professor Light!