Dr. David Alan Frick, 67, of Richmond, CA, died on December 10, 2022. Born in Dover, NJ, on October 28, 1955, he was the son of the late Dr. Ivan E. and Ruth Hudson Frick.

A 1973 graduate of York Community High School in Elmhurst, IL, Frick received his bachelor’s degree from Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, in 1977. He earned his PhD from Yale

University in 1983.

Dr. Frick lived a life fueled by passionate enthusiasms. As a boy, he loved rising in the pre- dawn hours to ride his green Pea-Picker Stingray bicycle through the neighborhoods of Findlay, OH, delivering The Republican-Courier newspaper, returning home to catch another hour of sleep before going to school. As a junior high school student, he built his own Heathkit ham radios and proudly displayed QSL cards he received confirming his conversations with amateur radio operators from all over the world. By high school, music became his greatest passion. The hours he spent practicing on his trumpet earned him a place in the music school at Indiana University, and it seemed that he was on the road to a degree and career in music. But then, through a class in linguistics and his beginning level German language course, he discovered his love of languages—and his life’s work. His German major soon expanded into a double-major with Russian and, when his dissertation advisor at Yale selected a topic that required him to learn Polish (which he did not yet speak or read), he traveled to Poland to take an intensive language course for a month, before setting out for a fall semester of living on his own and conducting research in Warsaw and Krakow.

In the fall of 1982, Frick was hired as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of California at Berkeley. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1988, Professor in 1994, and Distinguished Professor in 2012. In his nearly forty-year career at UCB, he served as advisor and mentor for more than twenty-five PhD students. But he also loved teaching his undergraduates, especially in the Freshman seminar program.

A highly respected scholar, Dr. Frick authored five books, was editor for another, translated into English the letters of composer Fredric Chopin and two novels by the Polish writer Jerzy Pilch. In addition, he wrote numerous articles in academic journals. Over the years, he won several Fulbright-Hays fellowships to support his work in Poland and Lithuania. The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation provided a grant for him to conduct research at the Universities of Bochum and Bonn. In addition, he also received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Most recently, in October 2021, the government of the Republic of Poland honored Dr. Frick with its prestigious Benedict of Poland award, bestowed on academics, researchers and explorers who contribute to the interpretation of Polish culture around the world. 

He is survived by his daughter, Lillie J. Frick; a brother, Daniel (Tamara Goeglein); a sister, Susan (Ronald Searl), as well as four nieces, Rachel Foster (Josh Buono), Sarah Foster, Eleanor Frick, and Evelyn Frick, a great-niece, Sidney Foster-Buono, aunts, uncles, numerous cousins, and his former wife, Ingrid Plajzer-Frick.

His family treasures the memory of his nimble, curious mind and his unique sense of humor, one that merged highly literate wordplay with the low-physical comedy of the Three Stooges. One of his proudest accomplishments was introducing his daughter Lillie to the classic BBC series Fawlty Towers. He was known to frequently recite his favorite two lines from that program: “I speak English well. I learn it from a book” and “I try, Mr. Fawlty.” We will miss his laugh.

A memorial service is being planned. Please check back for details.

In lieu of flowers, memorial gifts may be made to support the people of Ukraine through the charity of your choice. The family suggests three particularly effective organizations: United24

(https://u24.gov.ua), Voices of Children (https://voices.org.ua/en), and Razom (https://www.razomforukraine.org).