Hilary Masters, a literary beacon, teacher and mentor, died Sunday at his home in the North Side’s Mexican War Streets from complications after surgery. He was 87.
The Kansas City, Mo., native, whose memoir “Last Stands: Notes from Memory” is regarded by many critics as a model of the genre, was a professor of English and creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University for 32 years.
His wife, Kathleen George, a novelist who teaches theater and writing at the University of Pittsburgh, said Mr. Masters portrayed his mother as the strong heroine in his memoir, “even though he could have been angry. She had chosen everything but taking care of him. But he wasn’t like that. The best man I have ever met: kind and generous to a fault. He never went to a reading where he didn’t buy the book of the writer.”
Chuck Kinder, a novelist and professor emeritus of writing at the University of Pittsburgh, has enjoyed a longtime friendship with Mr. Masters and Ms. George.
“They were such dear companions,” Mr. Kinder said. “There’s a side to Hilary of reserve and mystery, part of his charm. He was an elegant man, a true man of letters.
“He knew architecture, food, he knew wine, and he was one of the greatest storytellers I was ever around.”
Both a social and a shy man, he had twinkling eyes and deep dimples. At parties, even when he was the oldest man in the room, he was usually considered the most magnetic.
Mr. Masters won awards from the Independent Publishers Association and the American Academy of Arts and Letters; he also won the Balch Prize for Fiction and the Monroe Spears Award for essays. He was published in the Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays and Pushcart Prize anthologies.
He was similarly revered by students.
Jonathan Barnes paid tribute on Facebook. “Here’s to the Brown Knight, He Who Wears Yellow Socks ... Any of you who were lucky to know him as a colleague or a student or a friend know what a class act we all just lost.”
Another former student, John Reoli, wrote: “Every time I sit down to write, I think of something he taught me.”
Mr. Masters’ father, Edgar Lee Masters, was a poet and dramatist best known for the classic collection of poems “Spoon River Anthology.”
In the 1950s, Mr. Masters started a weekly paper, the Hyde Park Record in Hyde Park, N.Y., and was a guest at the homes of Eleanor Roosevelt and writer Gore Vidal.
“He knew every kind of person, from the working class to Eleanor Roosevelt,” said Bob Hoover, the Post-Gazette’s former book editor. “He was a charming, worldly fellow,” with a love of American history, gourmet cooking and the Pittsburgh Pirates.
“The shyness was a natural reticence to not call attention to himself. Even his memoir was not so much about him as the world around him. He came out of a generation that cared more about the work.”
Sharon Dilworth, director of creative writing at CMU, said Mr. Masters was “an incredible colleague and mentor, a man of grace and wit. No one looked better drinking a martini than Hilary.
“Every fall, he would ask, ‘Did you write anything good over the summer?’ He always asked what I was reading.”
The yellow socks were an antidote to aging, his wife said.
“He said, ‘Fred Astaire used to dance in white socks. I’m going to do something about the age thing and wear yellow socks.’ ”
Before Carnegie Mellon, he taught at several universities and won a Fulbright Fellowship to Finland.
Mr. Masters graduated from Brown University in 1952 after serving as a correspondent in the Navy.
Besides his wife, he is survived by three children from a previous marriage — Joellen Masters of Lexington, Mass., Catherine Masters of Deer Isle, Maine, and John Masters of Paros, Greece.
There will be no visitation. CMU’s English department will hold a memorial service in the fall.
Diana Nelson Jones: djones@post-gazette.com
First Published: June 15, 2015, 1:10 p.m.
