The MSU community lost a former professor and associate director to cancer Tuesday.

Photography, jazz and traveling enthusiast Dale Brickner came to MSU in 1973 as a professor of labor and industrial relations. He retired from his position as associate director of the School of Labor and Industrial Relations in 1997.

Brickner, 73, died at the Hospice House in Lansing.

“He was the mentor,” said Carol Brickner, his wife of 51 years. “It seemed to be that students were always calling him and e-mailing and asking questions - and he always answered them.”

Brickner and his wife moved to California for a year in 1998 where their daughter Deborah, age 47, is a lawyer. They returned to East Lansing in 1999.

Brickner earned his bachelor’s degree in economics at Antioch College and did graduate work at the University of California, Los Angeles and Cornell University.

John Revitte, a professor of labor and industrial relations, said Brickner was very committed to MSU. But he was also well-known throughout the state and had a reputation nationwide for his knowledge of labor-related issues, Revitte said.

“He was a very good administrator and a thoughtful teacher,” he said. “He was a very intelligent man with a very unique sense of humor - a dry sense of humor.”

Carol Bricker said she misses her husband, and their friends and family, who live all over the world, are also greatly saddened.

But she agrees he will be remembered for his humor.

“He always saw the funny side of everything,” she said. “He could keep you laughing, it was like taking antidepressants all the time.”

She said their family is thinking of spreading some of his ashes at the Grand Canyon - one of the places his travels never took him.

“I tended to fly off the handle easily, where he was tolerant and patient,” she said. “He got along with people from all walks of life.

“He was so unpretentious.”

Staff writer Jamie Gumbrecht contributed to this report.