Richard L. Forstall

Richard L. Forstall died on May 30, 2023, while in palliative care at Goodwin House for heart disease since March. His passing was sudden and peaceful with family present. He was born October 8, 1926, in Chicago, the son of James Jackson Forstall and Nellie Louise (Lothrop) Forstall. He lived in Alexandria for 48 years. He is preceded in death by his parents and also his siblings, Jackson L. Forstall, Philip L. Forstall, and Jean (Forstall) Peneff, and survived by nieces Marilyn J. Peneff, Anne (Peneff) Albert, nephew Nicholas J. Peneff, and many cousins.

Mr. Forstall’s achievements include the development of official standards for defining United States metropolitan areas for the U.S. Census Bureau from 1972 -1995 based on extended work for Rand McNally & Co. since 1951.

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Wakefield Dort

Wakefield Dort, Jr. was born on July 16, 1923, in Keene, NH, the son of Wakefield Dort, Sr. and Elizabeth (Edwards) Dort. He died peacefully in his home on Saturday, May 13, 2023 in Lawrence, KS.

He is survived by his son, Christopher Dort, his wife Missie, and two granddaughters, Brianne Dort and Erin Havrilak, her husband, Cody.

He was preceded in death by his wife, Doris Virginia Stage Dort.

Wake obtained his bachelor’s degree in geology from Harvard in 1944, went on to California Institute of Technology for a masters in 1948, and doctorate from Stanford 1955. Between his bachelors and masters, he served in the U.S. Marines as a second lieutenant in the Engineer Battalion of the First Marine Division and saw action on Peleliu (Palau Islands) in the South Pacific. His first teaching experience was as an Instructor in Mathematics in the Marine Corps schools in North Carolina.

After discharge from the Marines, he taught at Duke (1948-50) and Pennsylvania State (1952-57) universities prior to joining the faculty at University of Kansas (KU) as an associate professor and was promoted to professor in 1970. In addition to his teaching, he supervised nine doctoral students (including two in geography and two in special studies) and 24 masters in his time on the faculty.

Arriving at KU in the fall of 1957 as an associate professor, Dort took up teaching his specialty courses of geomorphology and Quaternary geology. In addition, for three and half decades he also taught a variety of courses including Physical Geology, History of the Earth, Geology for Engineers, and Environmental Geology. He was the geomorphologist at The University of Kansas and many, if not all, the geology majors were introduced to his subjects in their time at KU.

He worked in Idaho for a quarter of a century studying alpine glaciers in the Lemhi Mountains, northwest of Idaho Falls. He also was drawn to the Antarctica where he could study the modern glaciers. After retirement he researched the geomorphology of the Great Plains and the river systems, especially in the Kansas River. He has published extensively on Pleistocene geology and geomorphology of Kansas, described some of the archeological sites in the state, and published on the Pleistocene and recent environments of the central Great Plains with the effects of climate change. He has conducted field trips for various groups in Kansas and Nebraska. In addition to his studies in Idaho, Kansas, and Nebraska, another interest has been in the geomorphology of Antarctica.

Wake was active in several organizations and is a Fellow of the AAAS and the Geological Society of America and a member of the American Geographical Society, Association of American Geographers, Society of American Archeologists, and Sigma Xi. He was a member of the Executive Committee & Education for the Institute of Tertiary-Quaternary Studied, honorary lecturer for the Mid-American University Association, Research Associate at Idaho Museum of Natural History, member of the American Geological Institute’s Visual Education Committee and Earth science Curriculum Project, and a member of the U.S. Antarctic Expeditions in 1965, 1966, and 1969.

Wake retired with emeritus status in 1993, from teaching but continued his research. One of the results being an in-depth study of the changes in the course of the Kansas River through time. The results of his investigation were published as an American Geographical Society Special Publication in 2009.

The family would like to thank Ascend Hospice and Home Instead for their care and compassion. Without these loving professionals, Wakes wish to remain in his home until death could not have happened. A special thank you for Justine who cared for Wake for over 6 years and became a trusted friend and extended family member.

Originally published by Warren-McElwain Mortuary Lawrence Chapel and reprinted with permission.

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Charles Earl “Chuck” Bussing

Charles Earl “Chuck” Bussing passed away surrounded by his family at the age of 90 on April 19, 2023.

Chuck was born in Del Norte, Colorado, on October 30, 1932. He graduated high school in Fredrick Colorado in 1950, completed his B.A. in Geography from University of Northern Colorado in 1958, M.A. in Geography from University of Colorado in 1961, and his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Nebraska in 1964. He taught at the Kansas State University (KSU) from 1964 to 1998. He did a sabbatical at the University of Auckland in New Zealand in 1970.

During his career at KSU, he had many distinguished accomplishments including mentoring a great group of Ph.D. students who went on to have illustrious careers in their own right. Some of his more notable accomplishments were being on faculty senate for four terms, chair of the faculty salary and fringe benefit subcommittee, chair of the International Studies Committee, director of International Programs, and program associate for the International Title XII Strengthening Grant from 1979-1990.

Chuck was one who loved to get together and be a part of, and a leader of groups that talked about important topics. In service of that, he was the organizer for seven conferences sponsored by the American Association of Geographers, the Tri-University Center for Latin American Studies, International Studies, and the Farming Systems Research Group.

Chuck spent his life gathering experiences, stories, information, friends — I don’t say acquaintances, because acquaintances always became friends — and especially friends who have that twinkle of playfulness and inquisitiveness. Titles didn’t matter, money didn’t matter, what really mattered was his passion for learning and collaborating/conspiring to enjoy a good story and learn more.

Chuck is survived by his loving wife Sandy, his daughter Heather (John) and her boys Alex and Holden, and his son Greg (Tracy) and his sons Austin (Caroline), Anderson, and Avery (Sarah). He was pre-deceased by his parents, Warren and Mildred Bussing and his brother Dick Bussing.

Originally published by Yorgensen-Meloan-Londeen Funeral Home and reprinted with permission.

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William “Bill” Koelsch

William “Bill” Koelsch, 89, professor emeritus of geography, retired University historian, and a longtime activist for LBGTQ rights, died on Nov. 5, 2022.

Koelsch, who established the modern Clark Archives, was well known on campus as the author of the highly regarded “Clark University, 1887-1987: A Narrative History,” a chronicle of Clark’s first 100 years, researched and written over five years and published to coincide with the University’s centennial celebration in 1987. The volume graces bookshelves across campus and remains an invaluable repository of Clark’s early history.

In a 2012 story in Clark magazine, Koelsch recalled that he convinced then-President Mortimer Appley to grant him some time off from teaching to craft the book, which he insisted would be a robust, accurate, and honest accounting of Clark’s past.

“Non-Clark people are more interested in the University’s early years, and Clark people tend not to know about them,” he said. “I tried to get the record reasonably straight about those years. It wasn’t a public relations piece — I attempted to call the shots as I saw them.”

Photo of William Koelsch in the stacks of Goddard Library at Clark University — William Koelsch in the stacks of Goddard Library, Clark University

Koelsch scoured the academic landscape for sources. According to the story, in the 1970s, he’d crossed the country looking for original manuscripts related to early Clark, conducted interviews with former faculty and administrators, and culled from the unpublished memoirs of former presidents Howard Jefferson and Appley.

“By the time I wrote, I was in a secure position against anyone who might want to squawk about something,” he remembered. “I can defend every sentence using the backup material.”

He earned a bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University (1955), a master’s from Clark (1959), and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1966), and served several years in the U.S. Army Transportation Corps. He joined Clark as an assistant professor of geography in 1967 and later became a tenured professor known for his incisiveness, erudition, and wit.

“Bill was my first adviser when I entered Clark. He was a walking encyclopedia, but not in an intimidating manner,” recalled Jeremy Tasch, Ph.D. ’06, professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Planning at Towson University. “My classmates and I valued his long list of chronological reference lists he shared in his class on the history of geographic thought — he introduced all of us to Clarence Glacken. Because of Bill, I went into Cambridge to find ‘Traces on the Rhodian Shore’ — we weren’t using Amazon in those days. He was kind and gracious, quietly knowledgeable, and ready to give his time.”

Clark Geography Professor Rinku Roy Chowdhury told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette that when she was pursuing her doctorate at Clark, she took a course with Professor Koelsch, who created a “welcoming and fun space in a really, really intense Ph.D. program and department,” allowing the students to “establish rapport and camaraderie, not just with the professor, but with each other.”

Koelsch, who retired in 1998, moved to San Diego, where he wrote more than 20 scholarly articles and essays, including articles about G. Stanley Hall and about the influence that Jonas Clark’s strong abolitionist beliefs had on the formation of Clark University. His book “Geography and the Classical World: Unearthing Historical Geography’s Forgotten Past” was published in 2012.

He also crafted many longhand, meticulously worded letters to friends and Clark associates over the years, often alerting them to his latest work or to approaching Clark-related milestones.

Koelsch made a memorable return to Clark in 2019 to speak at the invitation of the late Professor Robert Tobin, who had organized an exhibition titled “Queering Clark.” The retired professor recounted his personal experience as a member of the “silent generation” of gay men who came out later in life, recalling that he wrote columns for Boston’s Gay Community News under the pseudonym “A. Nolder Gay.”

In 1975, Koelsch began teaching a course at Clark on the gay liberation movement. In 1982, when the HIV/AIDS crisis was dawning, he incorporated information on the disease into the syllabus of his course Health and Disease in the American Habitat and spoke about HIV/AIDS to church groups.

In his return visit, Koelsch cited reasons for optimism about the future of gay rights in the U.S., noting with satisfaction that same-sex couples can now marry and an openly gay soldier can serve in the U.S. military. “I never expected to see either of those things in my lifetime,” he marveled.

Koelsch’s papers regarding his activism are in the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries. An oral history of his Army service is online at the Library of Congress.

He is survived by his partner of over 50 years, William Dennison.

Provided by Jim Keogh, Clark University.

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Gerry A. Hale

Gerry Hale, a long-time, much-loved professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, died on October 14, 2022.

Born in 1933 in Los Angeles, Gerry (pronounced “Gary”) was raised in the neighboring city of Glendale. He attended UCLA as both an undergraduate and graduate student. In the early 1960s, while conducting fieldwork in Sudan, Gerry served as the Head Geography Master at Unity High School for Girls in Khartoum and as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Khartoum. Before and after his time in Sudan, he also taught at the University of Southern California. In 1966, working under the direction of Dr. Joseph Spencer, he completed his Ph.D. dissertation on agricultural terracing in Sudan’s Darfur region. Soon thereafter, he joined the UCLA Department of Geography as a tenure-track faculty member.

A political and cultural geographer, Gerry’s teaching and research focused on technology, nationalism, the state, cultural hegemony, capitalism, anti-colonialism and empire, and Marxist geography. His regional specializations were in North Africa, the Middle East, and California.

Photo of Sondra and Gerry Hale in their house in Hai el-Matar, Khartoum, Sudan, 1961.Photographer: unknown. — Sondra and Gerry Hale in their house in Hai el-Matar, Khartoum, Sudan, 1961. Photographer: unknown.

A combination of factors—ranging from witnessing pervasive racial injustice in Glendale and exposure to the early years of postcolonial life in Lebanon (where he studied as a M.A. student) and in Africa, to the horrors of the U.S. war in Vietnam—radicalized Gerry. By the late 1960s, he saw himself as Marxist—politically as well as intellectually.

Consistent with his politics—a combination of democratic socialism, feminism, and anti-racism—Gerry was involved in Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography from its initial days. As the journal’s structure became more formalized, he served on the editorial board from 1978 to 1985.

Gerry’s politics also underlay his intense dedication to students. He was the advisor to approximately a dozen Ph.D. students who went on to academic careers, and to scores of Master’s students—in Geography as well as in the African Studies M.A. Program, for which he served as director for some years, and in the Center for Near Eastern Studies. He was also the Department of Geography’s undergraduate and graduate advisor during the 1990s. In these roles Gerry was known to be a strong supporter of women faculty and students.

Because of his politics, life at UCLA in Gerry’s earlier years as a faculty member were often difficult given the strongly conservative ethos that permeated the institution. Changing times and, more importantly, Gerry’s generous spirit, ethical character, collegiality, and dedication as a teacher of undergraduate and graduates alike eventually won over most, if not all, of his detractors. By the time of his retirement circa 1997, Gerry was a highly valued and universally appreciated citizen of the Department and the University as a whole; he was a member of some of the most prestigious bodies on campus, such as the Committee on Privilege and Tenure.

A strong sense of justice motivated much of what Gerry Hale did as a geographer. Many of those who were fortunate enough to take an undergraduate course with him, for example, learned about what happened to the predominately working class and Mexican-descended community of Chavez Ravine. Beginning in 1951, the City of Los Angeles used eminent domain to expel the area’s residents and raze their homes—in the name of public housing which never arrived. Instead, years later, the city sold the land to the Los Angeles Dodgers to build a baseball stadium.

As one former student, now a historian, recalled in relation to Gerry’s telling of the story, “When I was growing up in Echo Park (a Los Angeles neighborhood), I didn’t know this history. I don’t think most people know it today. I learned it once I got to UCLA, in a geography class with Gerry Hale. He was not even a Chicano, but a white man who engaged in a one-man boycott of Dodger Stadium, having made a personal commitment to never go to ballgames because of what had happened on the land on which Dodger Stadium sits.”

Gerry Hale is survived by his longtime partner, Sondra Hale, professor emeritus of Anthropology and Gender Studies at UCLA, and their daughters, Alexa and Adrienne, as well as by countless others whose lives he touched.

Provided by Garth Myers (Trinity College) and Joseph Nevins (Vassar College).

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Stanley W. Toops

With heavy hearts we mourn our dear friend and colleague Stanley Toops, who passed away yesterday of a failing heart. We’re proud Stan called Miami home for 32 years, but he was a man of the world — a quintessential geographer — whose curiosity knew no bounds. He visited so many places and touched so many people through his teaching, research, mentorship, and friendship. We highlight some accomplishments and memories below.

Stan was a Midwesterner, born and bred, from Milton, Iowa. He attended Drake University, earning a B.A. in Geography and Political Science in 1979, and later an Advanced Chinese Certificate from Middlebury College in 1982. Stan went west for his graduate work in Geography at the University of Washington, earning an M.A. in 1983 and Ph.D. in 1990 (with a dissertation “The Tourism and Handicraft Industries of Xinjiang: Development and Ethnicity in a Minority Periphery”). Through his education and research, he became fluent in Chinese and knowledgeable of Uyghur, but could greet you in a variety of other languages.

Stan joined Miami that same year with a joint appointment in the Department of Geography and International Studies. For 32 years he shared his insights and experiences with thousands of students in classes on world regional geography, geography of East Asia, introductory and capstone international studies courses, and more. He enlivened the classroom with anecdotes from his travels, and sometimes with song (a capella renditions of national anthems). He supervised many graduate students, encouraging bold topics and field research across the globe. Former students attest to his depth of knowledge, infectious passion for learning, and encouraging them to critically engage with the world. Colleagues likewise appreciated his dedication to and impact on curricula in Geography and International Studies. Education at Miami will never be the same without him, but so many have been touched by his gifts as a teacher.

Stan was an innovative and productive researcher. He was a classic area studies geographer, focused on East and Central Asia, and particularly China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. His research in geography and international studies exploring the interplay of culture and development earned him diverse publications (and a travel ban by the Chinese government, a badge of honor if there ever was one). He remained an active researcher across his career, with scores of articles, chapters, and books to his credit. Notably, he was a key contributor to the Routledge Atlas of Central Eurasian Affairs (2012) and lead editor of the International Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Global Issues (now in its fifth edition, 2022). His geographical perspective lent important value to diverse conversations spanning borders and disciplinary boundaries. Stan left an important and lasting mark as a scholar.

All of these contributions earned him tenure and promotion in 1996 and the esteem of colleagues across campus, and a much celebrated and well-earned retirement in 2022. Stan moved back west to enjoy retirement at a new home in Federal Way, Washington (with Mt. Rainier on the horizon), but kept in touch with Oxford friends.

But we’ll remember Stan especially as a wonderful colleague and friend. He was incredibly smart, but also profoundly modest and personally warm. He was a regular presence around Shideler Hall, often found in his office surrounded by a towering mess of books and mementos. He spoke gently, but his tenor singing voice carried across the halls. Each day he sported a different, place-themed T-shirt or necktie, many of which he shared with us upon retirement. And in an increasingly busy and distracted campus, Stan took the time for careful and thoughtful conversation with undergraduates, graduate students, and his colleagues. They don’t make colleagues like Stan every day, and his loss leaves a big hole in Shideler Hall and our hearts.

We offer our sincerest condolences to his wife Simone Andrus, their much-loved dog Egg, and Stan’s extensive family and network of friends and collaborators in Iowa, Ohio, Washington, and across the globe. We feel his loss acutely but are thankful for his many years of collegiality and friendship, and proud of his deep contributions to Miami University, Geography (in Oxford and beyond), and everyone who knew him.

Stan’s life was cut far too short, but he lived it very fully. As a quintessential geographer would.

Provided by Marcia England and the Miami University geography department.

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Laurence Allan James

Laurence Allan James passed from this world in the loving arms of his sister and niece on the night of December 3, 2022.

Allan (AKA, A.J.) was born in Hollywood, California, on March 18, 1949, into a family of many geologists. His family moved to Sacramento in northern California in 1956. He was active in Little League baseball and later attended Mira Loma High School, where he was on the Honor Roll, elected Senior Class President, played basketball and ran on the cross-country track team. He also began to write songs and play guitar with his friends. The garage band at 4425 Glen Oak Court was infamous.

Photo of a young Laurence Allan James, Mira Loma High School yearbook, 1967

After high school, he interrupted his studies at University of California, Berkeley a number of times to pursue his singer-songwriter aspirations. Allan helped run a café on Bleeker Street in New York City and busked in Europe. He hitchhiked across the United States to greet his newborn niece.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in 1978 and moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where he pursued two Masters of Science degrees, in Water Resources Management and in Geography, with Jim Knox as his advisor. His Ph.D., also from the University of Wisconsin, was held jointly in Geography and Geology, with James C. Knox and David M. Mickelson as his dissertation advisors. While in Madison, he researched several family pioneers, including a Civil War hero who has a statue there.

Allan taught at the University of Wisconsin and in Atlanta, Georgia before moving to the University of South Carolina in 1988, where he was a professor in the Geography Department for three decades. He also served as Director of the BioGeomorphology Laboratory and Senior Associate in the Environment and Sustainability Program.

His teaching and research primarily focused on fluvial geomorphology with emphases on river sedimentation, floodplain and channel morphogenesis following human activities, interactions between alluvium and flooding, and the use of spatial analysis in geomorphology. Specific themes included investigations of hydraulic mining sediment in California, historical erosion by rills and gullies and floodplain sedimentation in the U.S. southeastern Piedmont, concepts of legacy (anthropogenic) sediment, Quaternary glaciations of the northwestern Sierra Nevada in California, geomorphometry and geomorphic change detection.

He was a member of national and international societies encompassing the field of geomorphology, including the Geological Society of America (GSA) and the American Association of Geographers (AAG) and received a number of Distinguished Career awards. The Southeastern Division and Water Resources Specialty Group of AAG honored him with Distinguished Career awards in 2018. The Geomorphology Specialty Group (GSG) of the AAG presented him with the Grove Karl Gilbert Award for Excellence in Research in 2015 and the Melvin G. Marcus Distinguished Career Award in 2023. (He was notified of the latter award by his friends prior to his death.)

Allan was predeceased by his parents, Laurence B. and Elizabeth M. James, and his brother Benjamin. He is survived by his sister Catherine (JJ) DeMauro, his brother Stephen, his niece Stacey Swatek Huie and her spouse Jeremy, their daughters Madeleine and Miriya, his ex-wife Myrna N. Skoda James, her sons Joseph Skoda, Jr. and Jesse Skoda, granddaughters Chloe and Kylie, and his beloved companion Dr. Marcia Ehinger.

According to his wishes, he will be cremated and interred in his parents’ plot at East Lawn Cemetery on Greenback Lane in Sacramento, California. Celebration of life events are planned at his sister’s home and at the AAG annual meeting in 2023.

Written by Dr. Marcia Ehinger

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Frederick John Simoons

Frederick John Simoons, Jr., a renowned cultural geographer, the latest-surviving of Carl Ortwin Sauer’s Ph.D. graduates, and an emeritus professor of Geography at the University of California, Davis, died on June 30, 2022, four months short of his one-hundredth birthday. He seems to have outlived most of his one-time graduate students.

Background and Education

Born on Nov. 2, 1922 in Philadelphia of World War I immigrant parents (Dutch and Flemish Belgian), Fred was raised in poverty in a single-parent home in a dangerous neighborhood of Newark, NJ. According to his one-time PhD student Daniel Wynne Gade (1936–2015; 1987b: 135), Fred’s parents’ European background and the neighborhood’s ethnic diversity contributed to the maturing child’s sense of culture in the anthropological sense.

Following stateside Army service during and just after World War II, he completed his AB in Sociology at Rutgers University but was impressed by courses taught there by the geographers Andrew Hill Clark (1911–1975) and William LeRoy Thomas, Jr. (1920–2002); accordingly, he declared a special interest in Geography. Simoons graduated in 1949, earning Highest Honors, and was named to The Phi Beta Kappa Society (Gade 1987b: 135).

He opted to take graduate work in Geography at the Berkeley-influenced University of Wisconsin-Madison. There, he met and married the librarianship student Elizabeth “Liz” Stadler (1925–2009), in April 1949. Still, sociology continued to appeal, and, supported by the GI Bill, Fred transferred to Harvard University’s Social Relations program—which included sociology, cultural anthropology, and psychology. There, impressed by a geography course taught by Derwent S. Whittlesey (1890–1956), Fred was stimulated to return to that field.

Obtaining a teaching assistantship at U.C. Berkeley, he removed to the famous Geography Department there, completing a 1952 master’s thesis under young James J. Parsons (1915–1997), “The Settlement of the Clear Lake Upland of California.” During his subsequent Ph.D. studies, he worked under the iconic pioneering cultural geographer Carl Ortwin Sauer (1889–1975), who had been fundamentally influenced by the writings of Romanticist German geographers, historians, and ethnologists and by his campus’s Germanic-American Franz Boas-trained anthropological colleagues Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876–1960) and Robert Harry Lowie (1883–1957; Williams, Lowenthal, and Denevan 2014). Fred absorbed Sauer’s Germanic historicist approach as well as the Old Man’s empiricism, very demanding work ethic, and surpassingly high academic standards.

Research

With Ford Foundation support, in 1953 Liz and Fred traveled to remote and risky northwestern Ethiopia to accomplish fieldwork for his dissertation, “The Peoples and Economy of Begemder and Semyen, Ethiopia” (1956), which emphasized horticulture. In 1960, the University of Wisconsin Press published the adaptation, Northwest Ethiopia: Peoples and Economy (reprinted by Greenwood Press in 1983).

Fred was fascinated by bovines and their religious roles. Office of Naval Research- and Guggenheim Foundation-fostered sabbatical fieldwork in southern Asia led to Fred and Liz’s learning of the mithan, a little-known bovine kept and used ritually by tribal peoples in India’s Assam hills. Subsequent library study resulted in UWP’s A Ceremonial Ox of India (Simoons with Simoons 1968).

Following their Abyssinian stint, for five months Fred and Liz had traveled widely across Subsaharan Africa. One result was that beyond domesticates and traditional farming, Fred had taken up an interest in food habits. His pioneering work on animal-food avoidances resulted in 1961 in the classic Eat Not This Flesh (Wisconsin; reprinted in 1981 by Greenwood). Thirty-three years later, in 1994, Wisconsin issued a revised and augmented edition. Numerous reviews and translations of Eat Not appeared.

Echoing the nineteenth-century German historian Eduard Hahn (1856–1928), Simoons stressed ritual and other non-economical motives for domestication and animal-keeping, contrary to the economic-adaptationist ideas of the cultural-ecological materialist anthropologist Marvin Harris and many others of the day (Simoons 1979).

Cattle, dairying, and milk are major themes in the Simoons oeuvre. At the end of the 1960s, Fred took note of the fact that adult lactose (milk-sugar) intolerance—the usual and genetically controlled human condition—did not pertain among select human groups, notably those having had a long history of dairying. Fred investigated further and, with three publications (Simoons 1969, 1970a, 1970b), first forwarded what came to be called the “geographic” or “culture-historical” hypothesis of the co-emergence of dairying and adult lactase-persistence, which affords the ability comfortably to digest lactose (milk sugar) past puberty (the chronologically lock-step nature of this has recently been questioned: Evershed et al. 2022). A flock of related studies followed, and Fred’s fame grew, including in medicine and in nutrition, and he collaborated with researchers in those fields. His final publication was on this topic (Simoons 2001). Simoons’s contributions in this area led to an above-step promotion and appointment as the UCD Academic Senate’s Faculty Research Lecturer for 1981, a top campus honor. In 1987, Fred’s old Wisconsin student Dan Gade edited a Simoons-Festschrift issue of the Journal of Cultural Geography (Gade 1987), including a bibliography (Simoons 1987)

Other food-habit and related topics also captured Fred’s attention over ensuing decades. Although knowing no Chinese, following extensive research, including field investigation with Liz, Fred produced Food in China: A Cultural and Historical Inquiry (Simoons 1991; translated into Chinese in 2003). In 1998, Wisconsin published his Plants of Life, Plants of Death, which dealt with plants culturally associated with ritual purity, fertility, prosperity and life, as opposed to those associated with ritual impurity, illness, ill fate, and death.

University Employment

Fred first taught as an instructor at The Ohio State University, staying but a year (1956–1957). The following nine years were passed at the Sauerian-flavored University of Wisconsin Department of Geography at Madison, which years saw rapid advancement to full-professorship, until the Louisiana State University Department of Geography and Anthropology recruited him (and Jonathan Sauer) in 1966; but, as in the case of OSU, he (like Sauer) left LSU after one academic year. There followed two academic years (1967–1969) in the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Geography. Finally, in 1968 Simoons moved on to UC Davis’s Department of Geography, where he spent the remainder of his distinguished career, mentoring many graduate students, serving an effective term as departmental chair, and—after two decades of UCD employment, retiring in 1989. He and Elizabeth—1981 retiree as Branch Manager and Assistant County Librarian in the Yolo County Public Library system—moved to Olympia and then on to Spokane, WA. Fred continued to publish through 2001. Following Liz’s death in 2009, he established a domestic partnership with former Geography graduate student Helen Issel (1926–2021) and resided outside of Sonoma, CA. They both died at the Sonoma Retirement Home, he from complications following a stroke.

References Cited

Evershed, Richard P., et al. 2022. Dairying, Diseases and the Evolution of Lactase Persistence in Europe. Nature: International Journal of Science 608(7922): 336–45.

Gade, Daniel W. 1987. Commentary: Frederick J. Simoons, Cultural Geographer. Journal of Cultural Geography 7(2): 135–41.

Simoons, Frederick J. 1952. “The Settlement of the Clear Lake Upland of California.” Unpublished master’s thesis in Geography, University of California, Berkeley.

––––––1956. “The Peoples and Economy of Begemder and Semyen, Ethiopia.” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation in Geography, University of California, Berkeley.

––––––1960. Northwest Ethiopia: Peoples and Economy. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press

––––––, with Elizabeth S. Simoons. 1968. A Ceremonial Ox of India: The Mithan in Nature, Culture, and History, with Notes on the Domestication of Common Cattle. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

––––––1961. Eat Not This Flesh: Food Avoidances in the Old World. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press; expanded 2nd ed. 1994.

––––––1969. Primary Adult Lactose Intolerance and the Milking Habit: A Problem in Biological and Cultural Interrelations. I. Review of the Medical Research. The American Journal of Digestive Diseases 14(12): 819–36.

––––––1970a. The Traditional Limits of Milking and Milk Use in Southern Asia. Anthropos 65(3/4): 547–93.

––––––1970b. Primary Adult Lactose Intolerance and the Milking Habit: A Problem in Biologic and Cultural Interrelationships. II. A Culture Historical Hypothesis. The American Journal of Digestive Diseases 15(8): 695–715.

______1979. Questions in the Sacred-Cow Controversy. Current Anthropology 20(3): 467–76. Williams, Michael, with David Lowenthal and William M. Denevan. 2014. To Pass on a Good Earth: The Life and Work of Carl O Sauer. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

––––––1987. Research Publications,” Journal of Cultural Geography 7(2): 143–7.

––––––1991. Food in China: A Cultural and Historical Inquiry. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

––––––1998. Plants of Life, Plants of Death. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

––––––2001. Persistence of Lactase Activity among Northern Europeans: A Weighing of Evidence in the Calcium Absorption Hypothesis. Ecology of Food and Nutrition 40(5): 397–469.

By Stephen C. Jett, University of California, Davis, scjett@hotmail.com

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Ashok Dutt

Dr. Ashok K. Dutt, Professor Emeritus at the University of Akron, Ohio and a long time AAG member passed away on November 4, 2022. He was 91 years old.

He studied geography at the master and doctoral levels at Patna University (India, 1955, 1961). Subsequently, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Social Studies at Hague (Netherlands, 1964) and studied physical planning under the supervision of Professor J.P. Thijsee. He then emigrated to the United States and began his academic career at St. Anselm’s College (New Hampshire, 1966-68), Asian Institute, East Carolina University (Summer, 1967) and spent the remainder of his career teaching and conducting research at the Department of Geography and Urban Studies, University of Akron (1968-2004).

He had a distinguished career in teaching and research in the areas of urban, social, medical, and development planning with regional interests in Europe, Asia and US. He published over a dozen co-edited books and more than 200 research papers, book chapters, and encyclopedic entries. A notable contribution of his research was the conceptualization of the models of urban city forms called the Colonial-based South Asian City and Bazaar-based South Asian City. His most recent co-edited book is titled Urban and Regional Planning and Development: 20^th Century Forms and 21^st Century Transformations (Springer, 2020). He was a Fulbright scholar in India (1988-89) and was recognized as the recipient of distinguished scholar award by the Asian Geography and Regional Development Planning Specialty groups at the Association of American Geographers (1991 and 1992).

He is survived by his wife Professor Emeritus Hiran Dutta, daughters Jhumku Kohtz and Rinku Dutt and grandchildren.

By Sudhir Thakur, Professor, California State University Sacramento

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Paul Edward Phillips

Paul Edward Phillips, 79, Hays, died Tuesday, November 22, 2022 at his home surrounded by family, after a long battle with pancreatic and liver illness.

He was born on January 25, 1943 in Peoria, Illinois to Dale and Frances (Icenogle) Phillips. In 1961, he graduated from Woodruff High School in Peoria and then earned his BS and MS degrees at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois in 1965 and 1967. He was united in marriage to Patricia Jean Purkey at Christ Lutheran Church in Normal, Illinois on May 29, 1965. Paul earned his Ph.D. at the University of Kansas in 1978, and he taught Cultural Geography at Fort Hays State University for 50 years, retiring in 2017.

While at FHSU, he taught a multitude of geography courses, led numerous geography field trips for students and teachers, was chairperson of the Department of Geosciences, initiated the teaching of geography for students across the globe courses at FHSU via distance learning, was instrumental in developing the Kansas Geography Alliance to educate K-12 teachers in effective methods to include geography in the state’s social studies curriculum, as well as serving on many university committees throughout his tenure.

Paul was also active in his church and in the community of Hays. At Messiah Lutheran Church, he served multiple times as congregational president and on the Board of Parish Life, more recently helping in the kitchen for the Wednesday Midweek evening education program and Vacation Bible School. His community activities included holding many offices in the Hays Lions Club, on the Board of Directors for the Farmer’s Credit Union, and many years of the Hays City Planning Commission, continuing to serve as chairperson until the time of his latest illness. His longtime interest in radio found an outlet as he served on the High Plains Public Radio (HPPR) board for many years.

Survivors include Pat, his wife of fifty-seven years of the home, his daughter Keri Lynn Applequist and husband Patrick, a granddaughter Jennifer Anne Applequist and a grandson Phillip James Applequist, all of Larned, Kansas, a sister Carol Anderson and husband Charles of Tucson, Arizona, as well as nieces and nephews in Illinois and Arizona.

He was preceded in death by his parents.

Paul loved traveling and enjoyed sharing stories and pictures from his many trips across the US and around the world. He strongly feels that first hand knowledge about the world is more important today than ever, so when he realized his time on earth was nearing its end, he and Pat established the Paul and Pat Phillips Abroad Award at FHSU to support students pursuing a BS degree and wishing to spend a semester abroad. This would help with student expenses not otherwise covered by the Study Abroad Exchange Program.

Originally published by Hays Memorial Chapel Funeral Home.

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