H. Gardiner Barnum

H. Gardiner Barnum, Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of Vermont, passed away on June 11, 2014, aged 80, after an extended illness.

“Gar,” as he was known to friends and colleagues, was born in 1934 in New London, Connecticut. He received a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Middlebury College, then a master’s degree (1961) and doctorate (1965) both in Geography from the University of Chicago.

His academic career was spent at the University of Vermont. He was a faculty member of the Department of Geography for 37 years from 1965 until retiring as Professor Emeritus in 2002. He was among a core group of people in the mid-60s who worked to establish geography as both a program and department at the university.

Barnum taught courses on regional geography to hundreds of students and was the department’s specialist on the geography and historical geography of Europe, drawing on his experiences living and traveling the continent.

His research interests focused on the interpretation of place names and he was a master of the importance of names in tracing the history, development, and culture of a given region, street, or town. One of his last projects was a book on place names on Vermont’s Long Trail.

Barnum became a member of the Association of American Geographers in 1961 and received his commendation for 50 years of continuous membership in 2011. He was also a member of the American Geographical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Name Society, the Canadian Society for the Study of Names, and Sigma Xi.

Gar will be missed by his former students and colleagues alike. He was dedicated to his students and generous with his colleagues. Although he was a quiet man, he had a wonderful sense of humor. He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Erika, their children Susan, Sarah and Samuel, and six grandchildren.

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Carolyn J. Merry

Carolyn, a world renowned scholar in remote sensing and geographic information systems, passed away on June 3, 2014. She will be remembered by many at The Ohio State University (Columbus, OH), where she had served as a professor and chair of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering. She retired in May 2013 after 25 years at the school. She will also be missed by many for her several leadership positions, including past presidencies at the Imaging and Geospatial Information Society (ASPRS), the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, the Central Ohio Section of the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE), the Coalition of Geospatial Organizations (COGO), as well as chair of the ASCE Civil Engineering Department Heads Coordinating Council. Carolyn was also a member of the National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC) and the National Academy of Science’s Mapping Science Committee. She is survived by her husband, Robert (Bob) Redfield, as well as her sister, Patricia Merry, brothers James (Kim) and Donald (Amber) Merry, as well as her nephews, nieces, and grand-nieces.

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Peter J. Lamb

The “Climate Revolution” (Lamb 2002), occupying the last quarter of the 20th century, lost its standard-bearer in Dr. Pete Lamb, who unexpectedly passed away at his home in Norman, Oklahoma, on May 28th, 2014. For the most recent two decades, Pete was George Lynn Cross Research Professor of Meteorology, and also Director of the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies (CIMMS) in the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, where he played a pivotal role integrating climate science and operational meteorology. Pete Lamb’s Ph.D. was in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin- Madison (UWM), and his B.A. and M.A. degrees were both in Geography from the University of Canterbury (UC) in Christchurch, New Zealand. Pete exemplified the tradition of world-class geographer-climatologists out of New Zealand who migrated to American academia in the 1970s and 1980s. Throughout his almost 40 year career—first as a lecturer in Geography at the University of Adelaide (AU, South Australia), then as visiting research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS) in Miami, followed by long-term positions at the Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS, Champaign-Urbana) and CIMMS—Pete mentored and worked with many geographers; not just in climatology but in economic geography and nature-society studies, He combined the meteorologist’s understanding of the physics and mathematics of fluid flow in the atmosphere with the geographer’s perspective on climate as the result of atmospheric interactions with Earth’s surface properties and human activities. Pete’s research interests recently had broadened even further to include sustainability and climate policy, but always with the same goal in mind: to advance scientific knowledge about climate for the betterment of society—whether in Morocco, Brazil, China, West Africa, Illinois, or Oklahoma.

I became Pete Lamb’s first Masters degree student, upon his arrival at AU’s Department of Geography in austral spring 1976. It has always seemed to me far more than my good luck in this synchrony of Pete’s tenure at AU and my Masters program: it was somehow cosmically ordained! In public addresses given by Pete in recent years, he would emphasize that luck “is where preparation meets opportunity”. However, where Pete Lamb was my uncommon opportunity to engage in climatological research, there was still much preparation to be accomplished over the 2 years that I was his student! In that role, I wanted for nothing; he was a thesis advisor and so much more, teaching me lessons in life as well as preparing me for my career as a scientist and academic. It was Pete Lamb who first taught me—and many others over the years—how to write scientifically and be published. We can recount receiving back the successive multiple drafts of our written documents, each one richly decorated with a hierarchy of annotations in red and blue ink! However, Pete’s criticism of our work was always constructive and well-intentioned; he wanted, above all else, for us to succeed and to be our best.

Pete Lamb did not just mentor junior scientists like myself; he championed us, and usually for long after we graduated. Speaking personally again, he was always a better promoter of my work than I, and continually looked for ways to focus my talents on an emerging area of climatological research. The development of the first satellite-based spatial climatology of jet contrails (for determining their potential impacts on climate), was actually initiated by Pete in 1984, while at ISWS. Our resulting joint publications are part of the record of what scientists now know to be the quite significant impact of aviation cirrus on the climate, and an example of Pete Lamb’s prescient vision for research.

Pete Lamb’s passion for rugby was well known: he played it as an undergraduate, and was an avid supporter of the New Zealand All-Blacks team. For Pete, rugby was also a metaphor for pursuing one’s life and career—with full-on enthusiasm and dedication, strength of purpose, and an overarching strategy. It was evident, for example, in his fearlessness in advocating for those in whom he felt a moral obligation to see succeed, and in showing his advisees and those he mentored how to successfully engage the rough-and-tumble that can sometimes be the Academy. As such, Pete Lamb embodied the ideal that the scientific enterprise is stronger when it is not the preserve of a self-selecting few, but when it is tackled by scholars from multiple disciplines possessing diverse perspectives. For climate science this means meteorologists and atmospheric scientists, yes, but also geographers (both human and physical), economists, social scientists, and even those from the humanities. Much of this breadth derives from Pete’s undergraduate training in Geography. His published Masters thesis research on the role of the New Zealand Alps’ föhn winds in the surface heat budget of the Canterbury Plain (under David Greenland’s direction), combined the spatial and integrative emphases of our discipline with physical meteorology, in the then-quite new sub-discipline of process-based “geographical climatology”. Geographical climatology became an important part of the larger Climate Revolution, which Pete Lamb both epitomized and helped inaugurate. His published doctoral research on the roles of tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures and atmospheric circulation in sub-Saharan rainfall variations and trends (under Stefan Hastenrath), is pure geographical climatology even as it fulfilled part of a meteorology degree! High-resolution atlases of the tropical ocean-atmosphere heat budget were products of Pete’s post-doctoral research at UWM (co-authored with Hastenrath), and are still widely cited by both climate scientists and oceanographers. Not unexpectedly, given his Geography training, Pete Lamb had his heroes in geographical climatology: the late Hubert Lamb (no relation), the late Ken Hare, and Roger Barry, who became my Ph.D. advisor… no coincidence there! The fact that these icons’ work emphasizes larger spatial scales showed Pete’s innate recognition of the importance of atmospheric circulation systems and scale interactions in climatic processes and patterns.

Pete Lamb’s major and sustained contributions to climate variability and contemporary climate change studies involved particularly the following areas: (1) Precipitation variability in Northern Hemisphere Africa since 1940; (2) Surface climate and oceanic heat budgets of the eastern Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans; (3) Seasonal-to-interannual precipitation variability in North America east of the Rocky Mountains; and (4) The use and value of climate information—especially seasonal predictions—for U.S. agriculture. In much of this research, Pete worked with a number of geographers and “honorary geographers”, including Randy Peppler, Mike Richman, Mary Petersen, Diane Portis, Ken Kunkel, Steven Sonka, Neville Nichols, and Martin Williams. Peer-reviewed journals in which his research appeared—often more than once—included Nature, Progress in Physical Geography, Journal of Physical Oceanography, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Journal of Climate, Climatic Change, Atmosphere-Ocean, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), Monthly Weather Review, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Systems, and many others. The importance of Pete’s published research in improving our understanding of regional climate variability, predictability, and applications, was formally recognized in 2002 when he was awarded a Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) degree from UC.

Over the years, Pete Lamb was active in a range of national and international science organizations and committees. It was largely due to his efforts that the AMS launched its highly successful Journal of Climate in 1988; he was the “essentially founding” Chief Editor, a position he held through mid-1995. Many geographer-climatologists have brought their research to the wider climate science community through publication in J. Climate. While an elected member of AMS Council, Pete helped bring the landmark 2012 AMS Statement on Climate Change to completion and final approval. As he related to me this past April, barely five weeks before his untimely passing, this achievement required all his persistence and gentle persuasion to reach common ground! Shortly before his death, Pete had been made Vice Chair (and effectively Chair Elect) of the Council of Institutions of the Universities Space Research Association. At that time also, he was a member of the AMS Publications Committee, comprising geographers as well as meteorologists; itself another testament to Pete’s critical role in the Climate Revolution.

Of Pete Lamb’s auspicious career, I would summarize it thus: A consummate scientist who also worked for global society’s betterment by researching critical questions in climate dynamics, and who helped many others fulfill their academic and professional goals by emphasizing their strengths and making irrelevant their weaknesses. In all this, Pete maintained an uncommon modesty. The last sentence of his D.Sc. thesis is telling: “To have had the good fortune to participate in the early stages of the climate revolution has been a privilege and a pleasure. Indeed, it has been a lot of fun.” With Pete’s untimely passing, I have lost my strongest cheer-leader, contemporary geographical-climatology has lost a trailblazer, and climate science has lost a leading light. Notwithstanding, Pete Lamb’s many legacies will endure.

Reference:

Lamb, P.J. 2002. The climate revolution: a perspective. An editorial essay. Climatic Change 54:1-9.

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Catherine Ball Carlston

Catherine Ball Carlston Catherine Ball Carlston celebrated her 99th birthday on January 25, 2014; she died peacefully on April 24, 2014, in Springfield, Virginia, after a short illness. The daughter of Hilda Fischer Ball and Emery F. Ball, of Parkersburg, West Virginia, Catherine Ball Carlston was educated in the Parkersburg public school system, and, in 1936, earned a B.A. degree in geography and mathematics at Denison University, Ohio. At Denison, she became a member of Alpha Phi sorority and was elected to the honorary academic society Phi Beta Kappa.

Following graduation, she returned to her hometown to teach mathematics and physical geography at Parkersburg High School. From 1936 to 1938, she attended Columbia University with a Graduate Resident Scholarship from the Committee for Advanced Instruction in Science to study physiography with emphasis in geomorphology. From 1938 to 1940 she taught physiography in the Wood County public school system in Parkersburg.

She met fellow graduate student Charles W. Carlston at Columbia University. They married in the summer of 1940.

In 1940, Mr. Carlston was appointed to the Water Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey, at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He examined whether Alabama’s ground water resources met requirements for military and industrial purposes. The couple spent the war years in Alabama; during that time Mrs. Carlston taught physiography in the Army Specialized Training Program at the University of Alabama.

In 1945, Mr. Carlston accepted an appointment at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY, where their daughter, Sarah Elizabeth, was born. In 1946, he was awarded a Ph.D. in geology, and, in 1947, he accepted a faculty position in the Department of Geology at Oberlin College, Ohio. In 1951, Charles was recruited by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, to study and report on the potential of Pakistani ground water resources. The family primarily lived in Lahore and Quetta, Pakistan. Upon returning to Oberlin, Mrs. Carlston wrote a treatise on the status of women in Pakistan and India, which she presented to the Oberlin branch of the American Association of University Women.

Returning to the Geological Survey in 1953, Mr. Carlston moved his family to Morgantown, West Virginia. In 1957, he transferred to the Survey offices in Arlington, Virginia. Mr. Carlston died in 1985.

During their years at Oberlin, Mrs. Carlston was a member of the Oberlin branch of the American Association of University Women and served as president of the chapter from 1945 to 1946. In Morgantown, she led a successful campaign to move the city’s library out of its basement home in the city building and into a proper purpose-built home with a dedicated Children’s Room. As part of that campaign Mrs. Carlston organized a month-long festival of recreational reading for children and hosted a local radio program focusing on reading to children. The Carlstons joined with six other families to form the city’s Unitarian Fellowship, which continues to flourish today. During their association with the Fellowship, Mrs. Carlston recruited teachers, installed the Council of Liberal Churches curriculum, and oversaw the church school. In 1955, she participated in a summer religious education week at Star Island, Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire.

In Arlington, Virginia, Mrs. Carlston worked part-time in the Arlington County Libraries. In the early 1960s, she joined the staff of the Geography and Map Division of the U.S. Library of Congress as a cataloger of atlases. Her next fulltime employment was at the National Academy of Sciences, where she worked for three years as an editor of the Proceedings of the Academy, and for two years with the National Cooperative Highway Research Program, a division of the Highway Research Board. From 1972 until her retirement in 1985, she edited several editions of the Handbook of Physiology for the American Physiological Society in Bethesda, Maryland. She also co-edited the Physicians Guide to Diving Medicine, published by Plenum in 1984, for the Undersea Medical Society, now the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society.

Mrs. Carlston enjoyed retirement by traveling and taking travel-oriented Smithsonian Courses, with an emphasis in English architecture. Her travels including several Queen Elizabeth II crossings to and from England, two trips to Australia and New Zealand, and two Concorde flights. She attended two one-week programs with her daughter and son-in-law at Christ Church College in Oxford, England, for course work in cathedrals and the Great Houses of Britain. She traveled eight times on the legendary Delta Queen steam ship on the Mississippi and its tributaries.

Mrs. Carlston was active in organizing and teaching in the Lifelong Learning Institute for Seniors in Northern Virginia.

She moved to Greenspring Village in Springfield, Virginia in 1999, where she renewed her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, and joined the Early American Glass Society. She founded the Greenspring Play Reading Group, which continues to function today. She also served on the Greenspring Archive Committee.

Catherine had been a member of Rock Spring Congregational Church in Arlington, Virginia, since 1961, and she served the Church on the Religious Education committee and the church library book selection committee.

She was a Life Member of the Association of American Geographers, being elected to that organization in 1962.

She is survived by Sarah Elizabeth Carlston Ulis and Robert M. Ulis.

—Sara Elizabeth Carlston Ulis

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Larry Alan Brown

Larry was born in 1935 and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania to immigrant parents. His life and work reflects in many ways the classic American immigrant story of success. His father and other relatives fled the pogroms in Ukraine; and the family name was changed from Browarnik to Brown when they immigrated to the U.S. via Ellis Island. His parents instilled in him deep values about the importance of education and achievement.

A self-described “dead-end kid,” Larry initially aspired to be an auto mechanic which may explain his affinity for late-model BMWs. Instead of technical school, Larry went to college after high school because it meant something to his immigrant parents. He received his undergraduate degree in 1958 from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, with a B.S. degree in Economics/Business . He first worked as an accountant in Philadelphia and then tried law school before discovering his true passion for geography, enrolling in the graduate program at Northwestern University in Chicago in the early 1960s.

The roots of Larry’s interest in geography were set much earlier, however, when he and his brother Ed travelled through Latin America, driving down the Pan American Highway in the late-1950s. There he encountered an international development worker who shared Preston James’ book – Latin America (1950) with him—an event that Larry often recounted in stories of his early discovery of geography. His formal training began at Northwestern where he earned an MA in geography in 1963 and PhD in 1966. The renowned Swedish geographer, Torsten Hägerstrand, supervised his dissertation fieldwork on innovation and diffusion processes.

Larry’s seminal book, Innovation Diffusion: A New Perspective (1981, Methuen), provided the definitive account of the ongoing adoption and spread of new products and techniques. Earlier research had emphasized the adopters themselves, but Larry refocused attention to the social and geographic processes that supported transformative technologies, products, and behaviors. Later, his research on mobility and migration offered new insights into why and where people move. His pioneering theory of intra-urban migration (with Eric Moore) in 1970 separated residential mobility process into two stages: dissatisfaction with the current home and the search for a new one. This influential work inspired several generations of demographers and urban geographers who went on to clarify the mobility behavior of young adults just leaving the family home, the role of residential change in the upward mobility of new immigrants, and the way local housing markets affect homeownership—all compelling and socially significant issues today. More recently, up to and following the publication of another important book, Place, Migration and Development in the Third World (1990, Routledge), Larry’s research sought to show how context shapes the relations among urbanization, economic growth, and population change in Latin America, Third World development, and in US metropolitan areas.

In addition to these groundbreaking intellectual achievements, Larry’s legacy to OSU and the field of geography lies in his generous, strategic, and unstinting mentorship of graduate students. As a faculty member at OSU, he advised thirty PhD students in all, many of whom are intellectual leaders themselves today. He made a lifetime commitment to those who chose to work with him: following their careers, offering advice when asked, writing hundreds of timely, and pointed letters of recommendation; taking an interest in their personal lives, and being the go-to person in times of need. He had a special relationship with a large cluster of doctoral graduates from Korea, and the story goes that his sociable participation in karaoke sessions won him lasting admiration and gratitude. His hallmark departmental “pointer” was a very simple yet effective item to have people remember their visits, and of course, also came in handy in the classroom.

In a lifetime of professional effort he deservedly earned high honors himself. He was President of the Association of American Geographers, Department Chair (at the same time!), a Guggenheim Fellow, President of the North America Regional Science Council (NARSC) , and a Distinguished University Professor at Ohio State. In recognition of his extraordinary vision and leadership in the field of geography, the AAG presented its Lifetime Achievement Honors Award to Larry in 2008. Larry also worked assiduously to advance the many causes he championed. As department chair, he nominated countless colleagues for teaching, service, and research honors, as well as honorary doctorates. He nominated former students for similar positions at their home universities.

There were also sides to him of which few were aware. Larry had been a consummate golfer in earlier years. He was a very good tennis player and an excellent swimmer. He had an extensive collection of blues and American roots music. He was widely read outside the social sciences.. He felt things deeply and cared for people. And yet, those of you who know Larry will not be surprised that he spent the final days at his place of work: a corner office in Derby Hall with a window facing Bricker Hall where his light often burned late into the night. The hallways and hearts of OSU geography faculty, staff, and students are filled with reminders of Larry’s devotion to the discipline, to his friends, colleagues, and students. His style and dedication to service has shaped the way we are today, and this lives on in the Lawrence A. Brown Faculty Fellowship.

“Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.” The first floor of Derby Hall and the discipline of geography will be different without Larry. He will be forever missed.

–OSU Geography Dept.

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Harm Jan de Blij

Harm de Blij of Sarasota, Florida and Chatham, Massachusetts died on March 25, 2014, at The Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida.

Born in the Netherlands, de Blij received his early schooling in Europe, his undergraduate education in Africa from the University of the Witwatersrand and his graduate degrees in the United States from Northwestern University. Dr. de Blij taught at Michigan State University as a Professor from 1960 to 1969 and then moved to the University of Miami where he served as Chairperson of the Department of Geography. He served on the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration for more than 20 years, was founding editor of its journal National Geographic Research and was awarded National Geographic’s Distinguished Geography Educator Award and lifetime membership for his advocacy of geography. He received the highest recognitions from the Association of American Geographers, the American Geographical Society and the National Council for Geographic Education. Dr. de Blij has also held the George Landegger Chair in Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and the John Deaver Drinko Chair of Geography at Marshall University and was Presidential Scholar at the Colorado School of Mines. Dr. de Blij returned to MSU in 2000 as a Distinguished Professor and was subsequently named the John A. Hannah Professor of Geography. His scholarly work has been recognized through honorary degrees awarded by Marshall University, Rhode Island College, Grand Valley State University, North Carolina State University and Michigan State University.

Dr. de Blij specialized in geopolitical and environmental issues and has published more than 30 books including scientific, educational, and trade titles, and over 100 articles. His textbook Geography: Realms, Regions and Concepts (Wiley) has exceeded 1.3 million copies in 15 editions since 1970. Another book, Wine: a Geographic Appreciation (Rowman & Allanheld) was awarded a medal by the French wine organization, OIV, in Paris. His books have been translated into several foreign languages. Over the past 40 years, de Blij was also one of the few academic geographers of his generation to make a major and lasting impact in the public arena. He was the popular Geography Editor on ABC’s “Good Morning America” from 1989 to 1996. In 1996, he joined NBC News as Geography Analyst, appearing mostly on MSNBC. He was writer of and commentator for the original PBS Series “The Power of Place”. Dr. de Blij was much in demand on the lecture circuit and his extraordinary communication skills were widely recognized. He gave over 400 presentations since 2001 with lecture titles such as; Confronting Militant Islam: the changing Geography of Terrorism, Why Geography Matters: the Cost of Geographic Illiteracy, and Climate Change Forever: Truth and Consequences.

Harm de Blij ‘s parents were both distinguished musicians and he remained a violinist and chamber-music participant through the end of his life. He was an avid wine collector, lifelong soccer (Holland) and baseball (Cubs) fan. His second love after geography was animals, all animals but a special place in his heart was always kept for his own.

Harm is survived by his wife of 37 years, Bonnie of Chatham and his only son Hugh James of Maryland and beloved sister in law Patti Mc Culley of North Chatham. He was predeceased by his Mother Nelly and Father Hendrik and his daughter Tanya Powers de Blij.

Memorial contributions may be made to The de Blij Geography Scholars, Department of Geography, Michigan State University, 673 Auditorium Road, Room 116, East Lansing, MI 48824 or to The Wildlife Center of Venice, Inc. 3252 Border Road, Venice, FL 34292

—Bonnie de Blij

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Philip Wagner

Phil Wagner, pre-eminent cultural geographer and professor emeritus at Simon Frazer University passed away on March 5, 2014, aged 92, after a period of illness.

Philip Laurence Wagner was born on October 7, 1921, in California and raised in Los Gatos near San Francisco. He was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, where he took all three degrees.

His bachelor’s degree was a double major in Russian language and Russian and Eastern European history (1947), an interest he continued in his master’s in geography with a thesis on “Russian Exploration in North America” (1950).

He then changed geographical area for his doctorate. He was one of the first generation of graduate students in the Berkeley School of Latin Americanist Geography under the supervision of Carl Sauer. His fieldwork in Costa Rica resulted in a thesis on “Nicoya: Historical Geography of a Central American Lowland Community” (1953).

Between 1953 and 1954, while serving as 1^st Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, he taught courses to military personnel in the Far Eastern Program of the University of California Extension. It was here that he met Robert K. Hall, a famous linguist, who taught him Japanese and how to write Kanji characters.

After discharge from the military, Wagner gained an appointment as a research associate in the Slavic Languages and Literatures Program at the University of Chicago. In 1955, when Chauncy Harris became the Dean of Social Sciences, he elevated Wagner to a regular appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography.

Based on a course he taught on economic geography, he wrote The Human Use of the Earth (1960) in which he broke with convention and emphasized ecological, technological and even sociological factors rather than the economic order as such.

Working with Marvin Mikesell, they jointly introduced cultural geography as a new course in the Department of Geography. The shared venture led to the publication of Readings in Cultural Geography (1962), which became a staple textbook for the next four decades.

While a faculty member in the Department of Geography, he was also involved with the Anthropology Department’s Chiapas Project in Mexico. It was in connection with the Chiapas Project that he got the late David Hill interested in doing his doctoral dissertation on the changing landscape of Villa Las Rosas, a Mexican municipality in the Chiapas.

In 1961, Wagner moved to the University of California, Davis, where he was Associate Professor in both the Departments of Anthropology and Geography. He also spent some of his time teaching cultural geography at University of California, Berkeley.

The next move was in the fall of 1967 when he was appointed Professor of Geography in the new fledgling Simon Fraser University in Canada. His arrival immediately raised the visibility of the university and added stature to the geography department. Given his Berkeley, Chicago and Davis experiences, Wagner was asked to set up the Geography Graduate Studies program. He was also instrumental in helping the university to establish the Latin American Studies (LAS) program and participated actively in the LAS Field School including teaching on fieldtrips to Guatemala and Cuba.

In addition to these new programs, Wagner found time to promote interdisciplinary dialogue among faculty members and graduate students. Together with Dr Wyn Roberts, a professor of linguistics, they formed a weekly study group called the Pi-Digamma Seminar. It was a forum where interested colleagues, grad students and friends would meet to discuss any topic of interdisciplinary interest to the university community. Many who participated remember these exchanges as being some of the best dialogues they ever had during the early years at Simon Fraser University.

During this period, Wagner was also Editor of the Prentice-Hall Foundations of Cultural Geography Series. Under his editorship, six volumes were published including his own Environments and Peoples (1972), as well as Sopher’s Geography of Religion (1967), Rapoport’s House Form and Culture (1969), Isaac’s Geography of Domestication (1970), Zelinsky’s Cultural Geography of the United States (1973) and Hart’s Rural Landscapes of the Western World (1975).

Wagner became a member of the Association of American Geographers in 1953. As an active cultural geographer, he was much sought after by AAG Committees, serving as a Councilor of the Steering Committee of the High School Project, as well as a member of the College Commission of Geography. He was also a member of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers and served as their Vice President and President (1972-4).

In 1987, Wagner was presented with the AAG’s highest honors award for distinguished contributions to the geographic profession. The citation recognized “his unwavering dedication to scholarship, his distinguished career in cultural geography, and his numerous contributions to knowledge and to the geographic profession.”

Retirement as professor emeritus in 1987 did not bring an end to Wagner’s scholarly activities. His lifetime travels and observations in human communication motivated him to write his seminal work Showing Off: the Geltung Hypothesis which was published in 1996. The book is an exploration into human communities, and the desire for recognition and status in human behaviour. It is such behavioral expressions and feedback that affect the spatial organization of human performance and provide the artificial environment for geltung, i.e., the feeling of importance and worth in being recognized. It was his hope that geltung would attract cultural geographers and social scientists to seek and to explore their understanding of communicative behaviour in the human-environment interaction continuum.

Wagner should not only be remembered as an innovative and creative scholar but also a competent linguist. He could speak, read and write half a dozen languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Polish and Russian) and could read at least another half a dozen languages (Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Japanese and Farsi).

He was also a talented artist. He drew and sketched on fieldtrips around the world which included all the pilgrim tombs, temples and stone mosques that he visited when he wrote his article on “Pilgrimage: Culture and Geography” in Sacred Places, Sacred Spaces (1997). Some of his sketches can be seen on his website.

The death of Phil is a great loss to geography. He will be dearly missed by all those who knew him as well as those who were influenced by his writings. He leaves behind his beloved wife, Margaret, son, Tomas, and granddaughter, Bianca.

For a more detailed treatment of Philip Wagner’s career, personality and academic contributions, see Wong, S. T. (1992) “Philip L. Wagner: An Appreciation” in Shue Tuck Wong (ed.) Person, Place and Thing: Interpretative and Empirical Essays in Cultural Geography Baton Rouge, LA: Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, pp15-30.

With thanks to Shue Tuck Wong, Professor Emeritus, Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University for preparing this obituary.

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Maynard Malcolm Miller

Maynard Malcolm Miller, explorer, committed educator and noted scientist whose glaciological research was among the first to identify hard evidence of global climate change as a result of human industrial activity, died on January 26 at his home in Moscow, Idaho. He was 93.

Dr. Miller was Emeritus Professor at the University of Idaho where he previously served as Dean of the College of Mines and Earth Resources, and Director of the Glaciological and Arctic Sciences Institute. The Institute, along with the Juneau Icefield Research Program, founded in 1946 and developed in partnership with his late wife Joan Walsh Miller, inspired more than 4,000 students through hands on involvement in scientific research in remote mountain environments in Alaska and around the world (www.juneauicefield.com). In recognition of this sustained impact in mountain science education, Maynard and Joan Miller were presented 1996 AAG Distinguished Teaching Honors.

As a scientist and climber on America’s first Mt. Everest Expedition in 1963, Miller conducted research on atmospheric pollution and other contributors to climate change. On that historic expedition, as the West Ridge climbers returned from the summit, Miller sacrificed his precious scientific water samples, laboriously collected from the Khumbu Icefall, in order to rehydrate the exhausted climbers.

Although a deeply spiritual person, Maynard Miller did not believe in any God of organized religion; instead, he found inspiration in the magnificence and wonder of nature. He also believed that through the challenge of rugged mountain expeditions, where teamwork is essential to achieve a common goal, the best in each individual may be revealed. His great joy was to share and provide these experiences for others.

A native of the Northwest, Miller graduated from Stadium High School in Tacoma, Washington. He studied geology and glaciology, receiving degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University, and his Ph.D. in Geography from Cambridge University.

During WWII Miller served on a Navy destroyer, seeing active duty in 11 major Pacific campaigns and sustaining injuries during an aircraft attack at sea. Late in life, Miller served three terms in the Idaho State House of Representatives where he advocated for expanding educational opportunities.

He will be remembered for his enthusiasm, unrelenting optimism and phrases such as, “stress helps you grow” and his closing on mountain radio transmissions, “mighty fine, mighty fine.”

Miller is survived by his sons and their spouses, Ross Miller (Denise), and Lance Miller (Jana). Miller also leaves behind his beloved grandchildren, Logan, Anna, Zachary and Eva, extended family in the Puget Sound area as well as scores of grateful students, scientific collaborators and co-adventurers.Celebrations of the life of Maynard Malcolm Miller will be announced at a future date. See more at: https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/juneauempire/obituary.aspx?n=maynard-malcolm-miller&pid=169627246#sthash.8dkvaCTJ.dpuf

Obituary originally published in the Juneau Empire, Feb. 11, 2014, with additional contributions by Richard A. Marston

Correction: We incorrectly reported that Maynard Miller worked towards his Ph.D. under the supervision of Richard Chorley.

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Dave Hill

Dave Hill, longtime member of the geography faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder, passed away in Louisville, Colorado on Sunday, January 19, 2014.

They say at 50 you end up with the face you deserve. From the moment I first saw Dave Hill’s sparkling eyes and Cheshire Cat smile, I knew that I made the right decision to study with him in the PhD program at CU Boulder.

The venue was a session on geography education at the 1996 AAG Annual Meeting in Charlotte. Dave and a few of his students were on hand to discuss a new project, Geographic Inquiry into Global Issues. GIGI, as it was known, was a collection of modules for secondary schools that supported the recently published national geography standards. To my young eyes GIGI captured everything I thought geography education should be: fresh, exciting, relevant, and unafraid of controversial issues.

Dave was a giant and always encouraging, even when being critical of my work. He was the most generous, kind, and compassionate advisor and mentor one could ever hope for.

On occasion Dave would make a star turn at playing the role of absent-minded professor. Once we spent an entire hot Saturday walking the Boulder Creek trail to take photos and gather data for making a virtual field study of flood hazards. At the conclusion of our journey Dave opened his camera and realized he had forgot to load it with film. No big deal. We just went back the next day and I got to hear more stories about Dave playing football during the “leather-helmet” era at CU.

Dave was close to retirement when I started my PhD. I promised him that I would study hard and finish on schedule. At least once a week I would provide him with progress reports over lunch at some restaurant on “The Hill” in Boulder. Those lunches usually ended with Dave footing the bill and me meekly offering him a stick of Juicy Fruit as a token of gratitude. The last time Dave took me to lunch – I think about a week or so before my graduation – he presented me with a gift-wrapped box of Juicy Fruit. I smiled and told him I wish I could’ve afforded to buy him a gold watch. He got a big chuckle out of that.

I’ll never forget that frigid graduation day at CU Boulder in December 1999. A few minutes before the start of the ceremony, an usher instructed me and my fellow graduates to line up by the entrance to the auditorium. Dave stood by my side and never budged. When the usher asked him to join the faculty assembled in a different seating area, Dave put his hand on my shoulder, shook his head, and with a big grin said, “I’m sitting with him.”

(Incidentally, if I look alarmed in that photo, it’s because I had to receive emergency root canal treatment on my front tooth a few hours after the ceremony. I guess dentist appointments were one of the sacrifices I made to graduate on time).

It’s no exaggeration to say that I owe everything I have professionally to Dave. He introduced me to a world of thought that affirmed the power of geography in education. One of my most cherished experiences as a CU graduate student was being introduced to Gilbert White in one of Dave’s seminars. Dave recalled being in a similar setting back when he was attending CU. Professor White engaged Dave and his fellow graduate students in a discussion of the role of geography in liberal education and what they thought it should be. Dave remarked, “Gilbert White was not only interested in our views. He also wanted to convey the idea that, as future stewards of our discipline, we should be fully vested in these fundamental questions.” The torch is passed.

Sometimes I open my old CU files and pull out a reading list that Dave prepared for my doctoral orals. At the top is a hand-scribbled note from Dave that says, “Of enduring interest to geography education.” The list is replete with entries by John Dewey, Francis Slater, Jerome Bruner and so many other wonderful educational philosophers inside and outside of geography. I’d like to think that something I’ve written someday could make the cut.

Ask any of the hundreds of geography teachers who benefited from Dave’s professional development institutes through the Colorado Geographic Alliance, and to a person they will remark on the qualities that endeared him to so many: his loyalty to students, friends and family, his refusal to compromise quality, and his indefatigable devotion to geography education. The man could also make one hell of a martini.

The last time I saw Dave Hill was in June of 2009. He invited me to his condo in Boulder for a lamb chop dinner with Myhra, his wife of 50+ years. Afterwards he walked me down to the Pearl Street mall and we found a bench to sit on and enjoy the buskers.

At this point in his life Dave’s once sturdy voice was beginning to sound a bit frail and frayed. “Michael,” he said, “I’ll always appreciate the fact that you kept in touch.” And with that he hugged me goodbye and wandered back up the hill, a golden sun setting over the Flatirons.

Rest in Peace, Dave, and thanks for everything.

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Dave Hill