I have many memories of Sharon Gilbert, all of them pleasant ones. I taught her when she first came to graduate school here at North Carolina, and I directed her master's thesis on Laurence Sterne. When I knew her here, she lived her life with zest, enthusiasm, intelligence, and a cheerful heart. That may seem common enough for someone in her twenties, but it is rarer than we'd like to think. When I spoke to her again, many, many years later, it soon became evident that all these qualities were as strong as they'd ever been. The combination of great intelligence, a powerful sense of humor and a few decades of hard experience usually produces something wryly ironic at best and subacid at worst. In Sharon's case, almost miraculously, she was as fresh and open-hearted in her fifties as she had been in her twenties, and, if anything, even brighter. She was a rare person, and we cherish her memory.

Thomas A. Stumpf
Associate Professor (emeritus)
UNC-Chapel Hill