Gretchen Walsh, 65; translator ran BU African Studies Library

Though comfortable conversing in French, Spanish, Italian, and two Nigerian languages, Gretchen Walsh knew the pitfalls of getting lost through a translation.

"I remember all too well arriving in Barcelona some 30 years ago, with a smattering of grade school Spanish, and asking directions," she wrote in an Internet posting while musing about translations in African movies. "I was told to go 'derecha derecha.' I knew that derecha was right, so I made two right turns -- which of course had me going in exactly the opposite direction of the instructions, which were to go 'straight ahead.' "

That miscue was a rare moment of uncertainty for Mrs. Walsh, who traveled paths that were intellectually and geographically diverse, from teaching in Nigeria and Spain to running the African Studies Library at Boston University for the past three decades. She died of an aortic aneurysm June 10 while camping in Rattlesnake Canyon along the Green River in Utah, where she was on a rafting trip with her husband and other traveling companions. Mrs. Walsh was 65 and had lived in Quincy.

"She was really a valued and spirited colleague here at BU," said Bob Hudson, director of Mugar Memorial Library at the university. "She had a way that allowed her to work with almost anybody. . . . She was one of those people who made everybody who worked with her a little bit better."

Her concern with the well- being of others extended to animals, as well. While living in Nigeria about 40 years ago, "she kept a menagerie," said her husband, Dan. "She kept jackal pups and lizards and snakes and birds. People in the village would bring wounded animals to her."

Ticks sometimes lodge between the toes of jackal puppies, causing their paws to swell up, he said, "and she would go out there with kitchen mitts on and tweezers and pull the ticks out from between the toes of the jackals while they were biting and howling, but she had to relieve their suffering. That's the kind of person she was."

Gretchen Kleppinger was born in Allentown, Pa., where, according to family lore, she spoke nary a word until she was 3, then began talking in full sentences.

Smitten as a teenager with Beat writers such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, she took a train some weekends to New York City. Upon arrival at the Port Authority bus terminal, she discarded the trappings of Allentown for more appropriate attire.

"She would change into her boatnecks and tights and ballet slippers and hang around in Greenwich Village," her husband said.

At Muhlenberg College in Pittsburgh and at the University of Pittsburgh, from which she graduated, she wrote poetry. Soon afterward, she moved to Nigeria for the first of two two-year teaching stints, in Ibadan and Katsina, where she learned the Hausa and Yoruba languages. She taught English and French in Nigeria and wrote a book, "Katsina," under what was then her married name, Gretchen Dihoff.

She also taught English as a second language in Barcelona and, back in the United States, graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a master's in library science as her marriage was ending. While in Wisconsin, she also met Dan Walsh, whom she married 30 years ago.

Mrs. Walsh worked at the University of California at Riverside library, then at Michigan State University, before Boston University recruited her in 1976 to run the African Studies Library, her husband said.

In Boston, her connections from Nigeria helped her build the library's collection of documents, which are not preserved anywhere elsewhere, Hudson said.

"She was thoughtful, articulate, strong-minded, always forward- looking," he said. "There was always the next project, the next horizon. Gretchen, for the last 25 or so years, really pulled this library forward."

"She had such an understanding of other people and other cultures, and not in the way that some people say, 'Isn't that fascinating?' " said her daughter Tanya Lord of Nashua. "Rather than being condescending, she embraced people."

And she did so with an unassuming manner and a sense of humor that could leave people scratching their heads.

"She had an incredibly quirky sense of humor -- dry doesn't explain it," Lord said. "Once she sent me a card with a dress on it, and she drew on dots and wrote a message: 'When in doubt, think like a giraffe.' The perception is that they make no sounds, but giraffes actually do make sounds when they need to. And that's something people said about Mom: She didn't speak unless she had something to say."

"She wouldn't stand out at all, but she had this quiet, almost sneaky way of making a big difference," said Mrs. Walsh's daughter, Ayo Dihoff of Columbus, Ohio. "She was very understated, but in the end I think she really affected a lot of people's lives. When I think about her, I kind of think about water: When there's a obstacle, water moves out of its way. She was like that. She moved out of the way, but got done what she needed to do."

Mrs. Walsh's husband said that during contentious times at the university, "she had always said: 'A gentle answer turns away wrath.' "

Since 1994, Mrs. Walsh and her husband had traveled extensively in the West. They hiked in national parks in Utah and the Sierra Nevada in California, and frequently went on rafting trips along the Green and Colorado rivers, four times through parts of the Grand Canyon.

"It was an aspect of herself that was undiscovered, but she just loved it," he said. "She was absolutely hooked. We couldn't be out there enough."

"She was so strong," Dihoff said. "Now it's so clear to me how strong she was. Now I feel how much she accomplished, a Grand Canyon's worth of stuff by her own method. She just gave all the time. And I know that she knew we loved her, and I know she loved us."

In addition to her husband and two daughters, Mrs. Walsh leaves a brother, Michael Kleppinger of Lake Zurich, Ill.; a sister, Stephanie Newhart of Dunedin, Fla.; two grandsons; a granddaughter; and a great-granddaughter.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday in the Boston University Chapel.