Dain Atwood Trafton, 84, died in Exeter, NH on August 25, 2023. He was born on September 22, 1938, in Lewiston, Maine, the son of Stephen D. and Eloise A. Trafton.
Dain grew up on Wood Street, just off the Bates College campus in Lewiston, ME, and attended Lewiston schools and then, Phillips Exeter Academy, where he was the president of the Class of 1956 and a member of the varsity football, hockey, and lacrosse teams. In 1961, Dain earned his A.B. magna cum laude, majoring in English, from Harvard College where he was a member of Eliot House and the Harvard Class of 1960. Dain received his M.A. in 1963 and his Ph.D. in 1968, both in English, from the University of California, Berkeley.
Dain had a long career as a college English professor, initially at Dartmouth College and then, for 24 years, at Rockford College, in Rockford, IL. He is remembered gratefully by countless students to whom he introduced Milton, Shakespeare, and other great writers. Dain also served in various administrative roles, including a year as the director of Dartmouth’s program in France, and four years as the academic dean of Regent’s College in London. He was the author of many scholarly articles and two books, and the co-editor of a book of essays. Dain was particularly interested in the 16th-century Italian poet Torquato Tasso, and made, with co-author Cordes Lord, the first English translations of a number of Tasso’s dialogues. Dain was awarded numerous academic honors, including a fellowship at Harvard’s Villa I Tatti center in Florence, Italy.
Dain spent most of the last 25 years of his life in Phillips, ME, close to trout fishing, hiking, and skiing, and where he worked on both scholarly writing and short stories and poetry. He dedicated a great portion of his retirement to conservation; he served on the Phillips planning board and was a key leader in a grassroots effort to protect the local “high peaks” and Appalachian Trail from large-scale energy development. Dain loved northern New England’s woods and mountains; some of his earliest and fondest memories were of skiing down David’s Mountain in Lewiston on winter evenings before dinner, and it was not a coincidence that he was skiing, eighty years later, when a fall brought his outdoor pursuits to an end.
Dain greatly loved, and was loved by, his family. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Vera (Hagemann) of Exeter, NH, daughter Mary of Montpelier, VT, son Stephen and daughter-in-law Melissa of Hopkinton, NH, grandchildren Mary, Frances, and Elizabeth, brother Thomas Trafton of Augusta, ME, sister Jennifer Nomura of Berkeley, CA, and three generations of extended family members.
Burial took place on September 30, 2023 at the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Auburn, Maine.
