Sturgis Leavitt

"[3] Eventually, because of the efforts of Leavitt and scholars like him, the universities and colleges of the south were able to build modern language departments of stature.

In 1935 the young Spanish professor and Maine native helped found and became editor of The South Atlantic Bulletin, a publication addressed to the Southern Hemisphere of North America.

He later served as Director of Inter-America Institute, a school for large groups of teachers and students from Latin American countries.

[5] The bibliography that Leavitt maintained of Hispanic literature has been called one of his notable contributions to the field of Spanish language studies.

In 1972 he had been named one of the nation's top ten Spanish language scholars by the Madrid literary journal La Estafeta Literaria [es].

Leavitt and his wife, the former Alga Webber, long lived at 718 East Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where they built a New England–style white clapboard home.

Leavitt's teaching career at UNC spanned 43 years (1917–60), and until his death he worked each day at his desk in the university's Dey Hall, center of the language programs he helped nurture.