Tribute to Larry Eldredge, 1931 - 2026

Larry Eldredge was born in Melrose Massachusetts in 1931, to Laurence M. Eldredge Sr. and Sarah Bonney Eldredge. A child of the Depression, he was fortunate to enjoy a comfortable childhood. He attended Colgate University, working in the White Mountains in the summers, and afterwards served in the Korean War. In Japan, he met Mary Elizabeth (Betty) Bond from Falls Church, VA, and they married in 1956. Larry then returned to college, earning a Masters and PhD from Columbia University in New York City with a specialty in Medieval English. After five years teaching at Antioch College in Ohio, he moved with his wife Betty and two children to Ottawa Ontario, Canada, joining the English department at the University of Ottawa.  

Larry’s academic work focused first on Chaucer and other authors but eventually he went on to explore medieval medicine, especially ophthalmology. His final work, started during Covid lock-down and published in 2025, was a translation of a medieval Latin poem, A Critical Edition of a Fourteenth-Century Latin Dialogue Poem. 
 
In 1989, recently divorced, Larry married Karin Sherrington, retired and moved to Oxford, England. He continued his research in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, editing and publishing articles and an earlier book based on Middle English translations: The Wonderful Art of the Eye (Benvenutus Grassus). Larry is remembered by friends and family alike for his warmth and joie de vivre. He is survived by his wife Karin, children Alison (David Moonan) and Kristy Eldredge, Matthew (Catherine Smith) Tom (Deborah) and Emma Sherrington, grandchildren Katherine Peña Moonan (Carlos) and Lee Moonan, and Eleanor, Ruby, Daisy and Sam Sherrington,and great-granddaughter Marley Rose Kiskeya Peña Moonan.