Colette Dubois Brichant

Colette Dubois Brichant (née Dubois) was born on the outskirts of Paris on July 9th 1926, died July 4, 2013 in Atlanta, Georgia.  Educated during her youth in youth in both the United Kingdom (Exeter in Cornwall) and France, she pursued her university studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she completed her Masters degrees in both English and French, and her doctorate in History.  It was her love of history, and in particular her fascination with the American 19th century transcendental movement (Emerson), that brought her to the United States in 1952, as a 26 year old Fulbright Scholar.  Greeting her and her fellow young European “Fulbrighters” upon their arrival in New York, was none other than Eleanor Roosevelt.  She spent the first few years of her 40 year academic career, teaching at Middlebury College in Vermont, where during the summer of 1956, she became well acquainted with the poet Robert Frost, who spent part of his summers teaching at Middlebury’s Bread Loaf Writers School. It was during her tenure at Middlebury that she met her husband André Albert Brichant (also from Europe) who was completing his own studies at McGill University in Montréal. In 1958 she was offered and accepted a teaching position at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), where she remained as a professor until her retirement just over 20 years ago. She was an extremely successful university author, having written and published more than a dozen primarily college textbooks. She received generous support from the University of California throughout her academic career, allowing her to travel worldwide and continue her love of historical research. Upon her retirement from UCLA, she moved to Atlanta Georgia where her son was living and working as a commercial pilot for Delta Airlines.  Until very recently, Mrs Brichant was able to maintain both an active physical and intellectual life, spending part of her retirement years at her family apartment in Paris, the Winter and Spring months in Atlanta, and the rest traveling the world in search of the not yet seen, and not yet experienced. During her latter years, her intellectual pursuits focused on Asia, and the cross-fertilization of ideas between East and West.  Colette Brichant is survived by her son Stephen, her daughter-in-law Dr. Kathie Brichant, and two grown grandchildren, Michael and Margaret, who both live out of state.