Frances Trix

Frances L. Trix, 76, of Dilworth, Minnesota died February 8, 2025, at Lilac Homes. Arrangements are being handled by Wright Funeral Home, Moorhead, Mn. Following cremation, she’ll be interred in the Memorial Garden of St. James Church, Grosse Ile, Mi., May 17, 2025, joining her parents and three aunts.

Frances was born in State College, Pa. on August 17, 1948, (the day after Babe Ruth died), the daughter of Herbert Phelps Trix and Aileen Wilson Trix. She grew up with her sister and brother on Grosse Ile and was a member of the first graduating class in 1966 of the “new” high school.

She went on to study at Middlebury College in Vermont, and the University of Michigan where she earned her M.A. in Near Eastern Languages and Literature, and Ph.D. in linguistics in 1988.

Frances is survived by her son, Ramsay Trix, of Moorhead, Mn., sister Natalie Campbell (Brian) of Pleasant Ridge, Mi., and brother Herbert (Diane) of Moline, Il.

She first taught English as a Second Language in the Dearborn schools, then anthropology and linguistics at Wayne State University in Detroit and Indiana University in Bloomington.

While teaching at Wayne State, Frances lived in Ann Arbor, 1983-2005, raising her son in the city she loved.

She also spent many years visiting the Bektashi Tekke (Sufi Muslim monastery) in Taylor, Mi., and studied with Baba Rexheb, the subject of her Ph.D. thesis.

Fluent in French, Turkish, Albanian, and Arabic, Frances was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Istanbul, Turkey, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C., and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Albanian American National Association.

In addition to her academic studies on refugees and how western nations responded to them, she spent time helping new immigrants adjust to life in the U.S., and during the winter of 2015-16 handed out coats and food to refugee in transit camps in Macedonia.

Her other studies included: analyzing safety reports for NASA’s space shuttle program, gender differences in letters of recommendation, and women’s responses to the Hill-Thomas hearings.

Her final book - “Growing Up on Grosse Ile,” was published in 2020.

Frances had a strange sense of timing that made her family nervous - she returned home from teaching in a village in southern Lebanon, just before the Yom Kippur War broke out in 1973. Then in 1988 she studied at the University of Prishtina, and returned home to the U.S. just as the former Yugoslavia broke up and the long war in the Balkans began.

Her generous spirit will be missed by her family and friends, and the others she helped over the years.

She called herself a “linguistic anthropologist” - “All interesting things in life come back to language.”