Necrology

Lasse Dyrdal '48

Mar. 21, 1923-Jun. 13, 2023

Lasse Dyrdal '52 died on June 13, 2023, in Oslo, Norway. Born on March 21, 1923, in the village of Granvin, near the country’s Atlantic coast, he attended high school in the neighboring town of Voss and then completed an additional year of study at Volda Commercial College during 1944. 

Following the defeat of the Germans, Lasse attended the University of Oslo to study philology, an interest he likely developed due to his family’s deep fascination with various languages. After the Nazis closed it in 1943, the school reopened on Sept. 1, 1945, and Lasse joined several thousand others seeking to attend what was then the nation’s only university.

During his first semester, Lasse learned of a program initiated by the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Education that enabled Norwegian students to study in the United States. The ministry had formed an “American Committee,” which reviewed students’ applications and assigned each successful applicant to a college or university in the U.S. Though still taking his entrance examinations for the University of Oslo, Lasse applied and was accepted. He decided to wait a year and, because Hamilton had agreed to admit him, he came to the Hill on July 1, 1946. As he later put it: “Hamilton chose me. I did not choose Hamilton.” The College granted him credit for the equivalent of two years of undergraduate study in Norway, and thus he began as a junior.

He had never been to America before he boarded the steamship Stavangerfjord to begin an eight-day, 4,000-mile voyage to New York City. Years later, he observed that prior to his arrival in Clinton, the closest he had come to Central New York was reading James Fenimore Cooper’s Pathfinder and The Last of the Mohicans.

His arrival on the Hill landed him in the middle of Hamilton’s summer session, and he found he had to play catch-up to keep pace with other students. The College’s academic calendar consisted of four, 12-week sessions so war veterans could complete their degrees quickly and get on with their lives. Lasse’s mastery of English did not include the military slang spoken by the veterans, and his dictionary proved utterly inadequate to the task. Life in South Dorm with three roommates was also a new experience, as were the generous helpings at meals in Commons. He quickly adjusted to both.

At Hamilton, Lasse majored in both English literature and history and was a member of Squires fraternity. He was on the track team and elected its captain for his senior year. He went out for javelin, an event he had not tried before. He also sang bass in the College Choir and in barbershop quartets in various fraternities on Saturday evenings. While a junior, he was in the International Relations Club and served on the staff of The Continental in his final year.

To earn spending money, Lasse washed dishes in Commons and occasionally babysat for the children of veterans living in the North Village. When word got around that he was a man who could both babysit and wash dishes, business picked up. 

Looking back in 1996 as his class’s 50th reunion was approaching, he recalled with pleasure taking courses in English and American literature as well as in history. Thomas Johnston, Robert “Bobo” Rudd, Edgar Graves, and David Ellis were four faculty members whose teaching had a profound impact upon him. He also remembered satisfying the foreign language requirement in French by an examination that consisted of “a pleasant conversation with Professor [Theodore] Bowie.” Lasse took his studies seriously, and his academic distinction was acknowledged when he was admitted to Phi Beta Kappa in his final year.

From the time he arrived on campus through graduation, he indicated that his plans were to return to Norway and teach English in a high school; however, when he returned to the University in Oslo he continued his philological studies. On June 19, 1949, he began what he believed would be just a summer job at Norsk Rikskringkasting (NRK), the Norwegian Broadcasting Corp. His plans were to continue his philological studies in the fall, and so he did. They culminated in 1954 when he received the equivalent of a Master of Arts degree in that subject. Concurrently, his NRK summer job turned into the first of a series of positions in the department for program planning and presentation. In time he was promoted to department head.

In the meantime, by 1950, Lasse had become engaged to Nora Moe, a pharmacology student at the University of Oslo. They had first met in Volda while in high school, and prior to his departure for Hamilton they reunited on several occasions in Oslo. Nora was from Ørsta, about 200 miles north of Granvin. 

It was in Ørsta that they were married on July 22, 1950. By then Nora had graduated and was conducting research for Nyco AS, a pharmaceutical company. They had two daughters and a son. Sadly, she died on March 17, 1986, after just 35 years of marriage.

Lasse enjoyed an extraordinarily long career at NRK. After stepping down in 1991 at age 68, he accepted a new assignment in 2001 when it set about to digitize recordings of programs that the corporation had archived for decades. Lasse could identify the voices heard on programs beginning in the 1950s, bringing to the task a formidable institutional memory. He stepped away for the second and final time in 2012. He was then 89 years old and had worked for NRK for a total of 53 years. 

In the 10-year period between his first “retirement” and his second, Lasse returned to the University of Oslo to pursue his interest in linguistics. In that period, he prepared “New Norwegian” translations of English texts. New Norwegian was then a recently established written language combining elements of various spoken Norwegian dialects including that spoken in the vicinity of his birthplace. It became the second “official” language of Norway. Not surprisingly, he was also an active member of the Norwegian Association of Literary Translators as well as The Norwegian Non-Fiction Writers and Translators Association.

Throughout his adult life, Lasse maintained close ties with several of his classmates as well as the College itself. He regularly communicated news that appeared in the Alumni Review. He attended many reunions, beginning with his 25th in 1973. In addition to his class’s reunions, he also attended at least one reunion of the Class of 1950 as well as the bicentennial reunion in 2012. His final visit to the Hill was in 2015 when he was accompanied by his grandson. On other occasions, one or more of his children joined him. 

He also corresponded regularly with a succession of College presidents as well as with staff members in the Development Office. He made many donations to the Hamilton Fund even when the currencies of Norway and the United States were not easily exchanged. Just a few months before he died, on the occasion of his 100 birthday, Lasse was photographed wearing the cap created for Hamilton’s bicentennial.

Reflecting on his time on the Hill, Lasse wrote in his 50th reunion yearbook that his “two years at Hamilton gave me — beside a fair command of American English — an excellent academic training which broadened my mind and led to a better understanding of the world, especially the United States. Hamilton for me was a liberal college in the best meaning of the word.”

Lasse Dyrdal is survived by two daughters, a son, and four grandchildren.

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