Remembering Our Friend Marian



Marian 1

Marian 2

January 22, 2021

Time waits for none of us, and today we find ourselves remembering Marian Horowitz who left us one year ago. Her zest for life and mission to serve and teach could no longer hold out against cancer.

Marian loved teaching and she built that love into her mentoring relationships with hundreds of students. She also loved Africa and was passionate about being relevant in her life by being present in Kenya and Ghana as a wise, patient, and skilled teacher. Her university students loved her because she loved them.

Marian's relationship with AJFAND began in November 2008 when she helped me do editorial reviews for dozens of submitted manuscripts for a special issue that was dedicated to authors from Africa's Great Lakes Region. It was just hours into the task when she observed that many of the authors seemed to be writing for publication for the first time and in a second language. While their ideas were good, their ability to express themselves in professional English would prevent them from publishing and this would delay the exchange of ideas and discovery that Africa sorely needed.

Her solution was to divert her approach as a manuscript reviewer to take on the task of mentoring applicant authors and help them publish. For scores of authors who published in AJFAND between 2009 and 2019 Marian Horowitz, from our home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, anonymously offered editorial points, suggested changes, and sent encouraging notes back and forth through the AJFAND office. Sometimes she would review second, third, or even fourth editions of the same manuscript and help a new scholar convert a graduate school thesis into a scientific publication. These authors never knew her name, nor did she know theirs. Most critically they never knew how much she loved them and believed that they had a right to publish. Many of these writers would not have seen their work in print if it were not for her efforts on their behalf.

I was lucky to have Marian in my life as wife, colleague and friend. She also edited my writing and I often wish she was next to me now when words, format, or style get in the way of expressing my ideas. I miss her admonitions about prepositonal phrases and excess text. I miss her humor, I miss her patience with me, and I also celebrate her lasting legacy; imortalized throughout a decade of AJFAND's success as a vehicle of progress and good science for African scholars.

Richard L. Douglass, MPH, PhD
Emeritus Professor, Eastern Michigan University
Visiting Professor, Ashesi University







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