Dr. Robert O’Neil, professor emeritus of English, passed away Oct. 22. He was 93.

A specialist in English education, O’Neil played a key role in the contemporary development of the English Department’s teaching credential program for secondary school teachers, supervising student teachers at area middle schools and high schools. He also taught courses in literature and composition from 1957-92.

According to Dr. John R. Hales, professor of English, O’Neil assembled a roster of master teachers, particularly within Fresno Unified School District, that was ahead of its time.

“They were not just progressive educators, but they were politically and socially active,” Hales said. “Bob ran a student-centered classroom, and he believed in the importance of student empowerment. He saw education as democratization. He didn't come from a heady university background himself, but he had this real belief in education for everybody.”

Hales shared an office with O’Neil for a while, when the English Department was located in the old San Ramon buildings. They bonded over commuting to campus by bicycle. A junior faculty member at the time, Hales said he immediately trusted O’Neil’s good sense and quiet, strong character.

Hales remembers struggling while teaching one of his first literature classes on campus. He told O’Neil, “I keep pitching the ball to them, easy pitches, but they're not hitting them.” He never forgot O’Neil’s response.

“Bob said, ‘Maybe you should have them throw the ball to each other,’” Hales said. “I kind of knew that, but I needed to be reminded. He was a generation ahead of me, but he was so much more progressive as a teacher.”

In a tribute published in The Fresno Bee, Fresno State alumna Pauline Sahakian remembered taking O’Neil’s undergraduate course in rhetoric. She recalled feeling lost and confused about a writing assignment — a description of a place that conveyed an underlying significance, which should be clear to the reader — until O’Neil met with her in a one-on-one conference.

Sahakian remembered him asking: “Why do you think that?” “Why is it important?” “What does this scene represent?”

“Ultimately, through his questioning and my responding, I found the words to describe the significance of a seemingly normal activity — a walk through a neighborhood — but one that revealed so much more to my young mind,” Sahakian wrote. “... I came to understand this neighborhood as a material world beyond my current grasp.”

Years later, O’Neil found Sahakian teaching at Clovis High, and for the next decade she felt honored to serve as one of his master teachers.

“It was the highest compliment Dr. O’Neil could have paid me,” Sahakian wrote, “looking at me to share my knowledge of teaching writing, and to inspire teachers in the making.”

According to an obituary published on Legacy.com and printed in The Fresno Bee, O’Neil’s first wife, Karin, passed away in 1994, two years after his retirement. Soon after, he returned to Montana to live out his retirement in Lakeside, south of Kalispell, on the shore of Flathead Lake. In retirement, O’Neil volunteered at the Northwest Montana History Museum, sponsored and judged the Ted Crail and Della Ve Carr Poetry Contest for high school students, and taught classes in memoir writing for residents of the Buffalo Hill Terrace retirement community.

O’Neil is survived by his second wife, Bobbie; daughter, Anita O’Neil; son, Sean O’Neil; and granddaughter, Maeve Kaufman. No public services were held.