Stott's second wedding

Here we are, 26 April 2005, a day chosen randomly by the Chilean bureaucracy, just married at the Vitacura Municipalidad, right to left: Bill Stott, class of '58, and Irene Rostagno, who in 1958 was in second grade. Irene is Professor of American Studies and English (and teaches those things and British and American literature, and British Studies and English conversation) at Chile's oldest, largest, and most famous (Neruda went there) teachers college, formerly called the Pedagogico, now with the humongous title, in English translation, of the Metropolitan University of Educational Sciences (UMCE). Irene studied with Bill at the University of Texas at Austin in the early 1980s. There was nothing romantic between them then (despite Bill's hoping); indeed, Bill and his first wife attended Irene's 1984 wedding (three people attended both of her weddings: Irene, her mother, and Bill).

How come Irene and Bill stayed in touch after she returned to Chile in 1985? No romance here either: Bill was trying to get her dissertation published. This proved difficult because, though first rate, the manuscript went against the left-wing bias of the U.S.'s Latin Americanists and said, for example, that Fidel Castro was brutal tyrant. The book--Searching for Recognition: The Promotion of Latin American Literature in the United States--was finally published in 1997, in which year Bill, a last-minute substitute for a more reputable scholar, did a six-week exchange in Santiago. He was taken in by Irene and her family, and, several years later, all unexpectedly, romance ensued.