Whiting, Harvard professor, dies at 90

BELFAST — Bartlett Jere Whiting, a professor emeritus at Harvard University who meticulously cataloged such adages as “offense is the best defense,” has died at the age of 90.

Whiting had lived in his childhood home in Northport, where his mother taught at a one-room schoolhouse. He died of heart failure Aug. 24 at Waldo County Hospital in Belfast.

A scholar of Middle English, Whiting taught at Harvard for 39 years, but his most enduring legacy may be his writings and dictionaries on proverbs and proverbial phrases.

In Whiting’s book, “Early American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases” (1977), the professor traced the old adage “offense is the best defense” as far back as the 18th century.

Whiting graduated high school in Belfast in 1921 and from Harvard four years later. He joined the Harvard University staff in 1926 and stayed there until his retirement in 1975.

On his 90th birthday, representatives of Harvard including Joseph Harris, who helped edit Whiting’s last work, traveled from Cambridge to celebrate with Whiting, who was mostly bedridden by that time, said Jere Whiting, his son.

Whiting’s first book, with Archer Taylor, was “A Dictionary of American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, 1820-1880” in 1958. With his wife, Helen Wescott Whiting, he published, “Proverb Sentences and Proverbial Phrases From English Writings Mainly Before 1500,” 10 years later.

Whiting was blind when he completed his last work in 1989, “Modern Proverbs and Proverbial Sayings,” which was based on his lifetime reading of newspapers and books, his son said.

At the time of his death, Whiting had a swallowing problem that resulted in his admittance to the Waldo County Hospital for malnutrition. He died on the morning he was to be released, Jere Whiting said.

Whiting’s wife died in 1977. Besides Jere and his wife, Janet, in Northport, Whiting is survived by six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.