Dean, Bradley P. 1954–2006

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born February 4, 1954, at Clark Air Force Base, the Philippines; died of a heart attack, January 14, 2006, in Bloomington, IN. Educator and author. Dean was best known for his research and editorial work on previously unpublished manuscripts by Henry David Thoreau. Born in the Philippines while his father served in the military, he joined the U.S. Navy himself as a construction mechanic in the mid-1970s. He then was an executive assistant manager for Thunderbird-Red Lion Motor Inns on the West Coast before going back to school and earning his A.A. from Spokane Community College. Dean then attended Eastern Washington University, where he finished a B.A. in 1982 and an M.A. in 1984. For his doctorate work, he attended the University of Connecticut, graduating in 1993. While attending graduate school, Dean began teaching English at Eastern Washington University and the University of Connecticut. From 1988 to 1998 he had joint occupations: the first was as the owner and consultant of Transpacific Communications in Ayden, North Carolina, and as international business communications coordinator for Sunstar, Inc.; the second was to continue his academic career. Briefly teaching at Rhode Island College and the University of Montana, he moved on to be an assistant and then adjunct professor at East Carolina University through much of the 1990s. A member of the Thoreau Society and the Thoreau Country Conservation Alliance, Dean was director of the media center at the Thoreau Institute in Lincoln, Massachusetts, from 1998 to 2005. Having edited the manuscript of Thoreau's Faith in Seed: The Dispersion of Seeds and Other Late Natural History Writings in 1993, he was most highly praised for editing the philosopher's Wild Fruits: Thoreau's Rediscovered Last Manuscript (2000). Dean next edited Letters to a Spiritual Seeker (2004), also by Thoreau. The scholarly community was very appreciative of Dean's work, which turned Thoreau's supremely difficult to read handwriting into valuable published documents that helped academics appreciate Thoreau's contributions to science. At the time of Dean's death, he was working on yet another such manuscript, Indian Notebooks.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, February 3, 2006, p. B9.

Washington Post, February 2, 2006, p. B6.