James Mark Haule

James Mark Haule, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, author, editor, graphic designer, lifelong Detroit Tigers baseball fan, and loving husband, father, and grandfather passed away on June 7, 2025 in Humble, Texas at the age of 79. “Dr. Haule” to his students and colleagues and “Jim” to his family and friends, his academic career was dedicated to the study and analysis of several modern Irish and British authors, and he was passionate about sharing his insights with his students.

Jim was the lifelong companion of his wife of fifty-six years, Margaret Cyzeska Haule, also of Detroit, Michigan. He met Margaret through her cousins, who were classmates of his at Sacred Heart Seminary, and he fell in love the minute he saw her coming down the basement stairs of her aunt Mary’s house in Dearborn, Michigan. Thanks to Margaret, Jim taught all his university classes in pressed, stylish clothes, right down to an ironed handkerchief in his pocket. They saw each other through life’s joys and challenges and were only separated by Margaret’s death in April of this year. But they are, no doubt, reunited once more.

Jim earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and psychology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1968, and a PhD in English from Wayne State University in Detroit in 1974. He served as Academic Dean and Faculty Coordinator at Detroit College of Business from 1975 to 1978, where he turned a two-year campus into a four-year degree granting institution. Under his guidance, the university doubled its enrollment in eighteen months, adding an IT department and a free-standing college library.

In 1978, Jim and his family moved to Texas, and he began what would become a thirty-three-year teaching career at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg. While there, he received the Provost’s Award for Service Excellence and two Distinguished Faculty Awards. His students knew that he would not accept anything but their best effort and he had a gift for knowing how to meet students where they were and nurture their talents. Any style of writing was acceptable as long as it was sincere. His students left his classroom with a heightened appreciation for literature as art, for writing as craft, and for his sharp sense of humor.

Dr. Haule was a member of the editorial committee of the Shakespeare Head Press edition of Virginia Woolf and co-edited The Waves for that series in 1994. He was also co-editor of the nine-volume microfiche concordance to the novels of Virgina Woolf (1991-88) and the three-volume Garland union concordance (1991). Dr. Haule was General Editor of The Living Author Series (1986-87), and he co-edited a collection of pieces addressing the critical editing of Virgina Woolf’s writings, Editing Virginia Woolf: Interpreting the Modernist Text (2002). As editor of The Bloomsbury Group Memoir Club (2014), he wrote the introduction, afterword and an annotated list of memoirs. Dr. Haule published numerous articles on modern authors including Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Edna O’Brien, Angus Wilson, Rosamund Lehmann and Elizabeth Bowen. He also wrote poetry and self-published works of fiction including Angle of Inclination (2013), a collection of short stories modeled on James Joyce’s Dubliners, which tells the stories of individual Detroiters from 1955 through 2013, revealing connections between the characters and the city itself.

Jim and Margaret shared their lives with many dogs over the years, most recently Ned Hunter Haule, a rescue dog whom Jim credited as his publisher in Angle of Inclination. Jim and Ned were often spotted walking in their neighborhood, Jim wearing his ubiquitous Detroit Tigers baseball cap and Ned stopping to let children pet and admire him on every corner. Jim also had an artistic eye and a talent for desktop publishing and design. He founded IRP Design in 1985 and created commercial works for clients and the cover art for many of his publications.

Jim is survived by his two daughters, Patricia Donnelly of Houston, Texas and Katherine Graham of Humble, Texas, grandsons Patrick Jones, Ryan Jones, Benjamin Graham and James Graham, and granddaughter Lillian Jones. Although his brothers John and Robert Haule preceded him in death, his sisters-in-law Patricia Taggart and Mary Ellen Wampler and brother-in-law Frank Cyzeska considered him their brother and will miss him deeply, as will his many nieces and nephews. Jim’s legacy will continue through his family and the many lives he touched as a professor, author, mentor and friend. His memory will be celebrated at Saint  Mary Magdalene Catholic Church in Humble, Texas.

As we remember James Haule, we honor a brilliant mind, a quick wit, and a compassionate man whose life was spent loving his family, baseball and dogs, and creating and reflecting art through writing and the study of great literature.