Clinton E. Albertson, S.J.

Clinton (Clint) E. Albertson, S.J. was born in Los Angeles, California on November 11, 1918, which was Armistice Day of World War I. He attended Loyola High School in Los Angeles and in 1936 he entered the Jesuit Novitiate at Los Gatos. He pursued graduate studies in English Literature at UCLA, and taught Philosophy and English Literature at Loyola University in Los Angeles for three years before being ordained a priest in 1949. In 1951 he began graduate studies at Oxford University in the Honors Course in English Literature. He received the M.A. (Oxon) with honors in 1954. C.S. Lewis was one of the panel members for his oral examination.

Fr. Albertson took up a teaching position in the English Department at Loyola University starting in 1954 and retired as Professor Emeritus from LMU in 1988. He then taught medieval art in the Art Department at LMU for another three years, and regularly presented public lectures for an additional 12 years under the auspices of LMU's Continuing Education Department (LMU Extension.) During his 50-year academic career, he founded the LMU Honors Program, nurtured it, and gave it credibility.

Fr. Albertson built up a collection of some 20,000 slides over a forty-year period during his extensive travels in the British Isles, Europe and the Middle East. These served as the basis for his public lectures, especially the medieval castles, monasteries, and cathedrals of England and Wales, Ireland and France. Some of his slides remain available to the public on a website dedicated to his name: Clinton Albertson.

Fr. Albertson was known for his great sensitivity to the whole range of people he met — his faculty peers, students, service personnel, and his Jesuit confreres. It would be hard to find anyone who knew him who did not highly respect and like him, so gracious was he with people he met for the first time and those he knew for many years. Though his academic area of expertise was in Anglo Saxon and early English literature and their Continental influences, he was the essence of the socially just man. Clint was not one for marches and demonstrations, but in his dealings with students and colleagues, he encouraged the faint-hearted and marginalized to achieve great things.

Fr. Albertson died at Los Gatos, California, on May 3, 2007, at the age of 88, having been a Jesuit for 70 years, and a priest for 58 years.