William Pulte
Department of Anthropology
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, TX

I met Durbin Feeling for the first time in April, 1972, while working for the Cherokee Bilingual Education Program at Tahlequah, OKlahoma. Durbin had been recommended to me as somehow who spoke, read, and wrote Cherokee proficiently, and who could help me with my work at the bilingual program.

Durbin began to work for the program part-time, and I was impressed at once by his ability to analyze and explain subtle aspects of Cherokee accurately and clearly. Later in 1972, Durbin was employed as coordinator of the Cherokee Nation dictionary project.

Durbin's work for the Cherokee Nation led to the publication of the Cherokee-English Dictionary in 1975 and to an accomnpanying volume, An Outline of Cherokee Grammar. These accomplishments can scarcely be exaggerrated: due to Durbin's efforts, in less than three years Cherokee had become, as Willard Walker wrote in Language, one of the best documented languages of Native North America.

Durbin did not rest on his laurels after the publication of the dictionary and grammar. He soon began to teach Cherokee at colleges and universities in Northeastern Oklahoma. Durbin also taught in another setting: he organized and taught classes in Cherokee literacy for adults who spoke, but could not read and write their language.

Durbin's research and his efforts as a teacher of literacy gave him an unprecedented knowledge of the Cherokee syllabary, the traditional Cherokee writing system developed by Sequoyah in the early nineteenth century. He has become the world's leading authority on the syllabary and on how to teach it to speakers of Cherokee.

Durbin's community involvement has been highly respected by other community members as well as by others, including the late Ken Hale. Ken told me on one occasion that he had great respect for Durbin's literacy work in Cherokee communities.

Durbin Feeling's professional career has been devoted to documenting Cherokee, to teaching it to others, to helping adult Cherokee speakers learn to read and write their language, and to other forms of community service unmentioned here. His accomplishments are unique and amazing, his dedication and commitment are unexcelled.