Robert Raymond “Bob” Findlay

Memorial services for Robert Raymond “Bob” Findlay, 75, Lawrence, will be in Lawrence in March and will be announced at a later date. Inurnment will be on Washington Island in Wisconsin this summer.Mr. Findlay died Friday, Feb. 8, 2008, at Brandon Woods Retirement Community.He was born Aug. 16, 1932, in Joliet, Ill., the son of Raymond Goss and Helen Amalie Sorensen Findlay. He graduated from Illinois State University in 1957. He received a Master of Fine Arts from Ohio University in 1959 and a Ph.D. in theater and drama from the University of Iowa in 1964. Mr. Findlay was a professional musician and vocalist. He traveled nationally with the Leo Pieper Orchestra and Dance Band and also performed with the Junkyard Jazz band in Lawrence after he retired. He was an instructor in theater and drama at Allegheny College from 1959 to 1960, an assistant professor at Bowling Green University from 1963 to 1967 and then joined the faculty at Kansas University in 1967. He was a full professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at KU, where he taught for 33 years. He was a member of the Fulbright Advisory Evaluation Committee in theater and dance. He was a leading international scholar in theater history, particularly Polish and Russian contemporary theater and drama. He published on the work of Jerzy Grotowski and the Teatr Laboratorium. He was also a teaching fellow for the National Endowment for the Humanities at the University of New York Graduate Center.He married Lenore Renner. They had two children, Laura and Paul. He married Carol von Tersch on Sept. 29, 1996. She survives, of the home.Other survivors include a daughter, Laura Findlay Hagen and husband Jeffrey, Washington Island, Wis.; three stepdaughters, Robin Hayes and husband Pat, Sacramento, Calif., Trish (von Tersch Kearns) and husband Tim Votaw, Lawrence, and Dorinda von Tersch and husband Malloy Pohrer, Chicago; a stepson, Joseph Kearns, Mission; two brothers, the Rev. William and wife Pat, Ann Arbor, Mich., and James and wife Kathleen, Washington Island, Wis.; three grandchildren, Leif, Sophia and Finn Hagen; five nieces and nephews; 10 stepgrandchildren; and three stepgreat-grandchildren.Mr. Findlay was preceded in death by his parents and a son, Paul Robert.The family suggests memorials to the Kansas University Endowment Association, Theater Development Fund, sent in care of Warren-McElwain Mortuary. Online condolences may be sent at www.warrenmcelwain.com, subject: Findlay.