SHELBURNE, Vt. (AP) – More than 400 mourners gathered to pay tribute to University of Vermont Professor James Petersen, who was shot during a robbery in Brazil.

Petersen was remembered Monday as a devoted teacher, loyal friend and passionate family man.

“He was a light in our family,” brother Eric Petersen told the crowd at Shelburne Museum, “a man who carried the finest attributes of our family.”

The 51-year-old anthropology department chairman was killed during a robbery Aug. 13 in Iranduba, Brazil, while on a research trip.

“The circumstances of his death will never make sense, never, but he lived his life fully,” brother Mark Petersen said.

Petersen founded the Archaeology Research Center at the University of Maine at Farmington, where he taught from 1983 to 1997. He served as a graduate school professor at the university’s flagship campus in Orono, and worked as chairman of UMF’s department of anthropology before returning to the University of Vermont, where he had earned a bachelor’s degree in 1979.

Mourners praised Petersen for his anthropological contributions: instilling a love of learning the field, acting as a champion of Vermont’s Abenaki tribe, tramping the world to study other cultures, having a voracious appetite for journals and articles.

They also honored his personal life, calling him a man who enjoyed having fun and drinking Irish whiskey, a friend who thrilled at bestowing gifts, a dedicated partner to his wife of nearly nine years.

“I struggle with the thought that I will wake each day without him beside me, that I will not talk to him throughout the day, and especially that I will not go to bed with him at night,” Petersen’s widow, Jennifer Brennan, said in a eulogy read by her sister. “I keep asking myself, What will I do without him?”

The Rev. Mari Clark of the North Ferrisburgh United Methodist Church urged the crowd to celebrate Petersen’s life as well as mourn his loss. But that is difficult, she acknowledged, especially because of the way in which Petersen died.

“To celebrate it doesn’t seem right when deep down inside what you’re really feeling is anger,” Clark said. She added that Petersen and the example he set is worth cheering. “We can affect and change the chaos in this world. We can make a difference.”

UVM has set up a memorial fund to accept donations in honor of Petersen.

Fred Wiseman, chairman of humanities at Johnson State College, praised Petersen for his work to help the Abenaki tribe gain official state recognition. Petersen, Wiseman said, moved beyond intellectual impartiality and learned that history has sides, a discovery that allowed him to move from working on American Indians to working with them and finally for them.

“This work will endure,” said Wiseman, who also is a tribal historian for the St. Francis/Sokoki band of Abenaki in Swanton.