Monica Letzring, 80, Temple associate professor

Monica Letzring, 80, an associate professor and former chair of the undergraduate English department at Temple University, died Sunday, May 10, of Alzheimer's disease at an assisted-living facility in Cavalier, N.D.

A longtime resident of the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia, Dr. Letzring joined Temple's faculty in 1967 after earning her doctoral degree from the University of Maryland. Her field was 18th-century British literature.

She taught at Temple for 35 years. During that time, she was elected chair of the department and appointed dean and director of several Temple University programs abroad.

After teaching English for three years in Rome, she was asked to lead the campus there and did so from 1989 to 1991.

She then directed the university's London program and, shortly before her retirement in 2002, traveled to Japan to teach at Temple's campus in Tokyo.

While teaching in Philadelphia, she was an adviser to Jim MacNair, a doctoral student in sociology who was writing a dissertation on community gardens. A friend suggested that he contact Dr. Letzring because she was interested in gardens.

"I was grateful to Monica for guiding me in my research," he said. "She was a classy lady. I must say, I was impressed that she read every word of my dissertation, and she wasn't even on my committee."

He and Dr. Letzring were both asked by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to act as judges for the City Gardens Contest in Philadelphia.

Agnes Armao, who taught at Temple during the late 1970s and later became a friend of the department chair's, said Dr. Letzring was multitalented and the social glue that held the department together.

"Where do you find a person as literate and professionally accomplished as Monica, who also could bake the world's best lemon poppy seed cake and plum tart; starch linen tablecloths by hand the old-fashioned way, and then iron them on a specially designed wooden board? And she could hang wallpaper, too," Armao said.

For more than a decade, Dr. Letzring was a board member of Historic RittenhouseTown, an early industrial community in Germantown where a paper mill was built by William Rittenhouse.

She chaired the History Committee and edited the organization's Journal of History, Volumes 1-3.

An avid gardener, Dr Letzring was remembered by RittenhouseTown director Chris Owens as a "dedicated and energetic volunteer who loved working in the village gardens," and especially relished digging up the pesky weeds.

Her motto was: "It isn't worth the effort to weed if you don't get the root out," Owens said.

A half-dozen years after retiring, Dr. Letzring moved back to Cavalier, her birthplace, to be with her brother, Richard; sisters Geraldine Kaercher and Joyce Bliderman; and many nieces and nephews, all of whom who survive.

Services were May 18 in North Dakota.

Donations may be made to Historic RittenhouseTown, 208 Lincoln Dr., Philadelphia 19144.