Robert Young, WCU history professor

Robert J. Young had promised not that long ago to pay nursing-school tuition for two girls in India.

One girl was so poor that "her father was going to sell her," his daughter Claire Young-Anderson said.

Knowing that he was likely to die soon, she said, Dr. Young paid their full tuition, "though they don't graduate till January of 2011."

That has meant enough that tomorrow, the day of Mr. Young's funeral here, the girls and their families will hold a memorial in Madurai in the state of Tamil Nadu.

Last Thursday, Dr. Young, 72, a member of the history faculty at West Chester University from 1965 until his retirement in 2002, died of multiple myeloma at his daughter's home in Drexel Hill.

Dr. Young had a decades-long attachment to India. But, his daughter said, he had never met the girls or their families.

Born in Philadelphia, Dr. Young graduated from Central High School in 1956. He earned a bachelor's degree in education from Temple University in 1959 and a master's in history at the University of Pennsylvania in 1960.

During his term in the Peace Corps, from 1962 to 1964, his interest in India blossomed while he taught English at Osmania University in Hyderabad.

In his first years of teaching at West Chester, he worked toward a doctorate in history at Penn. He earned the degree in 1970.

But in 1986, he immersed himself in India, as fully as possible for a family man.

Taking a year's leave from West Chester and with a Fulbright grant, he moved his wife and four children to Madras - now Chennai - to research the English East India Co. (1600-1708) and the Dutch East India Co., founded in 1602.

Books and journal articles resulted.

"We all had private tutors and transferred our grades back here" after the year in India, his daughter said.

"I turned 13 there," she said. Her brother Andrew was 17; her sister, Elizabeth (now Elizabeth Breece), was 15; and her brother James was 11.

Given the bloody strife between Hindus and Muslims there, one recollection stands out.

After the family attended Easter Mass at a Catholic church during the sabbatical, friends of her father's came to the Young house to show respect for the day.

"We celebrated Easter with Hindus and Muslims," she said. "They all came to our house and celebrated Catholic Easter with us.

"It's not the norm there."

At West Chester, Dr. Young not only taught courses on South Asian history, she said, but also "he was always taking groups back and forth to India" from the university.

Besides his children, Dr. Young is survived by a brother, 11 grandchildren, and his former wife, Catherine.

A life celebration was set from 7 to 9 p.m. today at the Spencer T. Videon Funeral Home, 400 Shadeland Ave., Drexel Hill. A Funeral Mass is to be said at 11 a.m. tomorrow at St. Andrew the Apostle Church, 3500 School Lane, Drexel Hill. Burial will be in Hillside Cemetery, Roslyn.