| The late Dr Phillip D’Alton receives his 25-year staff service ... The late Dr Phillip D’Alton receives his 25-year staff service award from the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Gerard Sutton, in 2003 |
Vale Dr Phillip D'Alton
10 Sep 2007 | Bernie Goldie
Dr Phil D'Alton, a long-term staff member from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Wollongong, died recently after battling cancer. He is remembered here by his colleague, Dr Mike Donaldson:
Phil D’Alton started working in the Faculty of Arts the year the University of Wollongong and its Sociology Department came into existence.
Phil was a man with great prescience, and only now have we caught up with him. Decades before concern about them became commonsense, he taught and wrote novels about global warming and planetary eco-catastrophe.
He co-wrote a famous first-year Sociology textbook which sold thousands, and unusually for that genre, had more than one edition. In it, and uniquely for that time, he placed nature at the centre of social analysis.
Phil had studied and written about women in the military almost before there were any, and his thinking on masculinity, drugs and sport was succinct and pungent.
He and I chuckled about our Faculty's recent 'turn to China'. Nearly two decades ago, Phil had spent a study leave at the Shaolin Temple in that country, much to the tut-tutting of almost everyone, even though he was the first westerner to be invited to study there.
'De Chaun' he is called in the Da Xiang Guo tradition in which he is a senior patron. It means 'passer on of knowledge'.
At Phil's funeral after the intense struggle with cancer, his colleagues and students, and Buddhist monks from the Sunnataram Forest Monastery, spoke of his rare ability to move from east to west, from one world to another, with grace and modesty while always remaining who and what he was.
Phil had a singular nature, no post-modern multiple identities for him, and at its centre was generosity, genuine and self-disregarding.
For almost every session for more than 30 years, Phil taught 60 per cent of Sociology's student load -- two (sometimes three) very large first year subjects as well as his own specialties.
Students loved his teaching because he stimulated them, cared about them, was there for them and was passionate about what he taught them. He had time for us, too, encouraging our endeavours, open to and sharing new ideas. He was always willing to do more than his portion of the graft without whingeing, working amicably and companionably for the common good.
Phil was a great colleague and a lovely friend. We will miss him very much.
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