Caleb D. Hammond

Caleb D. Hammond, Jr., president of the map-making business C. S. Hammond & Company from 1948 to 1974, died at age ninety.

C. S. Hammond & Company was second only to Rand McNally in producing road maps and atlases pinpointing cities and towns, across the country and around the world. The 1955 edition of Hammond’s Ambassador World Atlas included 326 maps and a 242-page index with more than 100,000 location names.

Hammond made his mark on the family-owned company by selling its maps to book publishers, including Random House and Simon & Schuster. He also played a key role in helping the company as it made the transition to digital production.

In 1999, the company was sold to Langenscheidt Publishers, a German company that produces travel books and maps. Now known as the Hammond World Atlas Company, it is based in Springfield, New Jersey.

Hammond was born on June 24, 1915 and graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1937. He served in the Coast Guard during World War II.

In April 1948, Hammond was elected president of the company after serving as the company’s vice president and secretary. He retired in 1974, but remained active, working with the staff as it adjusted to using computers. The company produced the first digitally generated world atlas in 1992.

Caleb D. Hammond (Necrology). 2006. AAG Newsletter 41(7): 17.

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Christopher Exline

Christopher H. Exline, longtime Chair of the Department of Geography at the University of Nevada, died on April 11, 2006.

Exline, born on July 23, 1947, earned an associate’s in 1969 from College of Marin, a bachelor’s in 1971 from Sonoma State, a master’s in 1974 from San Francisco State University, and a doctorate in 1978 from the University of California, Berkeley.

Exline taught at College of Marin from 1973-77 and at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs from 1977-81 before coming to the University of Nevada in 1981. Exline served as Chair of the Geography Department there from 1981-97.

Over the years, Exline received many awards for his teaching and commitment to the university and community including the F. Donald Tibbitts Distinguished Teacher Award (1988), the Distinguished Alumni Award Sonoma State University Alumni Association (1991), the American Planning Association Nevada Chapter Meritorious Service Award (1995), the City of Sparks and Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Agency Meritorious Service Award (1995), and the Board of Regents Undergraduate Advisor Award (2000).

He also served on the City of Sparks Planning Commission (1987-95), the Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Agency (1989-95), and was involved in the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers for many years

Exline joined the AAG in 1971 and was a member until his death.

Christopher Exline (Necrology). 2006. AAG Newsletter 41(6): 16.

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David Weaver

David C. Weaver died in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on April 3, 2006, at the age of sixty-three. Born in Dudley, England, Weaver received his BA degree in geography from the University of Manchester in 1964. He pursued graduate work in geography at the University of Florida, receiving his MA in 1967 and his PhD in 1972. In 1980 he added a Masters in Community Planning from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Weaver taught at West Georgia College from 1970 through 1977, moving to the University of Alabama in 1977 as associate professor. He was promoted to professor in 1982, and became departmental chair in 1987, a position he held for thirteen years. After stepping down from the chair’s position, Weaver continued to be an active contributor to departmental operations and a mentor to undergraduates, graduate students and faculty alike. He made substantial contributions to the development of the department’s night program.

Weaver’s teaching interests and abilities included historical geography, the geography of National Parks, introductory physical geography, climatology, geography for teachers, a wide array of planning topics, and the geography of Europe, the Middle East, and the American South. As part of Weaver’s efforts on behalf of K-12 teachers, beginning in 1990, he provided annual teacher workshops to improve geographic and environmental education to teachers in conjunction with the Alabama Geographic Alliance, and Legacy Inc., Partners in Environmental Education.

Weaver first joined the AAG in 1964. In 1992 he received the Distinguished Teaching Achievement Award from the NCGE, and in 1997 he received the Outstanding Service Award from SEDAAG.

Weaver’s research was published in such publications as the Journal of Tropical Geography, the Tijdschrift voor Economishe en Sociale Geografie, the Southeastern Geographer, The Professional Geographer, and the Journal of Geography, among others, as well as several books and monographs, technical reports, and maps.

David C. Weaver (Necrology). 2006. AAG Newsletter 41(6): 16.

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Walter W. Ristow

Walter W. Ristow, former Chief of the Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, Washington, died on April 3, 2006. Ristow, born April 20, 1908, in La Crosse, Wisconsin, devoted his life to the study of cartography, the history of cartography, map librarianship, and map collecting.   He received his formal training in geography from the University of Wisconsin, Madison (BA 1931), a master’s in geography and geology from Oberlin College, Ohio (1933) and a PhD in geography from Clark University (1937).

Upon completion of his graduate work, Ristow began his long career in map librarianship as he served as head and later Chief of the Map Division of the New York Public Library (1937-46). He also served with the Military Intelligence Service as a wartime map analyst from 1941-44. He moved to Washington in 1946 to begin his thirty-two year career in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress (1946-78). He served as Assistant Chief from 1946-68 and Chief from 1968-78. After retirement he was named Honorary Consultant in the History of American Cartography at the Library of Congress (1978-87).

Ristow devoted substantial energies to the scholarly organizations in his field. He served as Secretary of the Association of American Geographers 1949-50 and also held positions as editor, consulting editor, and advisory editor for several scholarly journals, including the Canadian Cartographer, Imago Mundi, Acta Cartographica, and The Map Collector.  He was as member, vice chairman (1954-57), and chairman (1957-59) of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names.

Walter Ristow was a prolific writer with a long list of publications prepared between 1933 and the late 1980s. Among his most noteworthy contributions were The Emergence of Maps in Libraries (1980), the prized American Maps and Mapmakers; Commercial Cartography in the Nineteenth Century (1985), (with R.A. Skelton) Nautical Charts on Vellum in the Library of Congress (1977), the scholarly commentary to the facsimile of A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America in 1789 by Christopher Colles (1960),(editor of) A la Carte; Selected papers on maps and atlases (1972), Marketing Maps of the United States (1951, 1952, and 1958), and Aviation Cartography (1956, 1957, 1960).

During his direction of the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress, he oversaw the development of machine readable cataloging for cartographic objects (MARC maps). He was presented the Distinguished Service Award by the Library of Congress in 1978. During his career he received honors from the Special Libraries Association, the ACSM, and the AAG. Since 1994, the AAG Cartography Specialty Group has offered the Dr. Walter W. Ristow Prize in the History of Cartography, in recognition of academic achievement in the history of cartography or map librarianship

Following his retirement, additional honors were named in his honor, including the Walter W. Ristow Endowment Fund of the Library of Congress (for the advancement of understanding of the Geography and Map Division Collections and American Cartography) established in 1998, and the Ristow Prize of the Washington Map Society, presented annually to the most outstanding submission on the history of cartography.

Walter W. Ristow (Necrology). 2006. AAG Newsletter 41(6): 16.

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Henry Michael

Henry N. Michael died February 19, 2006 at age ninety-two. Michael was widely known for his study of ancient pine tree growth rings which helped resolve problems of radiocarbon dating. He was Chair of the Temple University Geography Department from 1965 to 1973.

Henry Michael was born in Pittsburgh and earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. He was named an assistant professor at Temple University in 1959, around the same time he began his tree-ring studies. Dr. Michael studied the tree rings of ancient bristlecone pine trees in the White Mountains of California. He drilled samples from bristlecone pine trees, which can live 4,500 years or more, and with colleagues Elizabeth Ralph of the University of Pennsylvania and C. Wesley Ferguson of the University of Arizona, subjected rings of known age to radiocarbon testing. The research, partly conducted at the University of California, San Diego, expanded the known record for radiocarbon testing by thousands of years, to create a reliable chronology for scientists. In the 1970’s and 80’s, Dr. Michael continued to hunt for even older samples of buried bristlecones and managed to match signature patterns from dead trees to living samples, eventually pushing back the limit of the radiocarbon record to 7,400 B.C. He successfully applied the dating method to timbers from Greece and to the cedars of Lebanon, and handed over his data to the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in the 1990’s.

While a professor of geography at Temple University, Dr. Michael studied Siberia and the cultures of the Eskimos and other Arctic people, and translated works from their Russian sources. He translated the legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia and from 1959 to 1974, helped edit a series of books Anthropology of the North, published by the University of Toronto Press. During the cold war, Michael maintained ties with Russian anthropologists and translated and helped publish their articles. He also edited an account of an early exploration of Alaska and the Yukon, “Lieutenant Zagoskin’s Travels in Russian America, 1842-1844.”

Dr. Henry Michael was chairman of Temple’s geography department from 1965 to 1973, and retired there in 1980. He was also a founder of the Delaware Valley Geographical Association (DVGA) and for decades the host of its twice-yearly council meetings, providing geographers from a dozen local, non-PhD institutions, a professional network.  In 19xx the DVGA presented Dr. Michael with its lifetime achievement award, and he continued an active role in that organization until very recently. And up until 2005 he continued his studies at Penn, working at its Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology, where he was a senior fellow.

 

Henry Michael (Necrology). 2006. AAG Newsletter 41(5): 12.

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Virgil Baker

Virgil Baker died January 13, 2006 in Port Angeles, Washington at the age of ninety-one. He was born April 24, 1914 in North Platte, Nebraska.

Baker earned his bachelor’s (1936) and master’s (1940) in geography from the University of Nebraska, and a PhD in geography (1954) from the University of Utah. Though he taught at Bowling Green, Westminster, and Fresno State College, Baker spent the bulk of his career teaching at Arizona State University (1954-61 and 1966-78).

He was trained as a physical geographer.

Virgil Baker (Necrology). 2006. AAG Newsletter 41(4): 11.

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William Withington

Longtime AAG member William A. Withington died January 5, 2006 at the age of eighty-one. He was born in Hawaii on February 17, 1924.

Withington obtained his PhD from Northwestern University in 1955. He accepted a faculty position at the University of Kentucky in 1955 where he spent thirty-four years, retiring in 1989. Withington’s research and teaching interests centered on urban and regional development in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia. Upon his retirement Bill and his wife Anne established the Withington Endowment in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky, the proceeds of which are utilized to underwrite graduate student travel to professional meetings and to conduct field research, especially in foreign locales.

Withington joined the Association of American Geographers in 1947.

William A. Withington (Necrology). 2007. AAG Newsletter 42(1): 27.

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Alan Voorhees

Alan Manners Voorhees died in December 2005 at age eighty-three. He was a scientist, educator, businessman, and philanthropist, and also a strong advocate for geography, having made significant intellectual and applied contributions to the field. Voorhees developed a mathematical model that could predict the ebb and flow of highway traffic. His model helped make feasible the design and construction of the Interstate system and greatly influenced urban planning in the last half of the twentieth century. He was also instrumental in re-designs of the downtowns of many cities, and major mass transit systems in Washington, DC; São Paulo, Brazil; Caracas, Venezuela; and Hong Kong.

Voorhees was dedicated to expanding opportunities for geographers to influence society. For the last thirty-five years of his life, he was involved in geography through research, teaching, and planning, and as the successful owner and president of several geographically-oriented companies including Alan M. Voorhees & Associates and Autometric, Inc. Voorhees founded these companies following almost ten years at the Automobile Safety Foundation. He entered academia in 1977 and served as the Dean of the College of Architecture, Art, and Urban Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle until 1979.

As an important donor and advisor to the Library of Congress, he led the effort to build a corporate support group for the Geography and Map Division that resulted in the largest freely accessible collection of scanned historical maps on the Internet. The Association of American Geographers also benefited from Mr. Voorhees’s generosity and his interest in using geography to improve the effectiveness of government. In 2003, he made a significant contribution that allowed the organization to hire its first Director of Public Policy, and took an active role in the effort to create a Geographer to Congress.

Alan Voorhees was born December 17, 1922. He earned a bachelor’s in civil engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1947, a master’s in city planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1949, and a certificate from the Yale University Bureau of Highway Traffic in 1952. He received the AAG Presidential Award in 2005. He was amember of National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners, and received an Honorary Doctorate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Alan Voorhees (Necrology). 2006. AAG Newsletter 41(2): 37.

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Hoyt Lemons

Fifty-year AAG member Hoyt Lemons of Barnesville, Maryland died this fall.

Lemons earned a bachelor’s degree from Southern Illinois University, a master of arts at Northwestern University, and a PhD at the University of Nebraska.

Hoyt Lemons (Necrology). 2005. AAG Newsletter 40(3): 17.

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Arthur William “Bill” Dakan

Bill Dakan died in Louisville, Kentucky on December 3, 2005. He was sixty-three years old. He received his BS degree from University of Southern California in 1965, his MA from UCLA in 1969, and his PhD from UCLA in1974. He was active in teaching, research, and service in the University of Louisville’s Department of Geography from the time he joined the faculty in 1975 until his death.

Arthur William Dakan (Necrology). 2006. AAG Newsletter 41(2): 37.

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