Meera Schoen

Professor emeritus, Department of Geography, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana died on November 18,2003 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Born in West Bengal, India Meera received her Ph.D in 1951 from the London School of Economics and joined Ball State University in 1970. Before her arrival to Ball State, Meera worked at Western Washington State University, Calcutta University, and the Indian Institute of Management and Social Welfare in Calcutta. Schoen retired from Ball State in 1988.

Meera Schoen (Necrology). 2004. AAG Newsletter 39(2): 17.

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David Watts

David Watts, who died of a stroke on 13 November 2003, was among a talented group of geographers appointed at the University of Hull, UK, in the 1960s. David came to the Hull Geography Department in 1963 and was promoted to Reader. He served as Dean of the School of Geography and Earth Resources 1988-1991. He retired in 2002.

Born in 1935 in Derbyshire, David Watts held degrees from University College, London, the University of California at Berkeley, and McGill University, Montreal. His doctorate on the introduction of plants and landscape change in Barbados began a love affair with the Caribbean, which culminated in 1987 the remarkable study The West Indies; patterns of development, culture and environmental change since 1492. It was later translated into Spanish.

David was a pioneer in the promotion of biogeography, and his Principles of Biogeography (1971) became a standard text. A significant achievement was the establishment of the Journal of Biogeography, for which David was the founder-editor. In the 1990s David’s interests in island ecosystems and the Caribbean were extended to China, Korea and the Middle East.

David Watts was a scholar of genuine international repute and a congenial colleague, a courteous and sensitive man with a wide circle of friends. He leaves a widow, Nancy, and a son, Chris, from his first marriage.

David Watts (Necrology). 2004. AAG Newsletter 39(1): 15.

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Louis C. Peltier

Louis C. Peltier of Bethesda, Maryland died on 28 October 2003 at the age of eighty-seven. Born in Leominster, Massachusetts and a scholar of military geography, Peltier earned his B.A. at Clark University in 1937, his master’s at Columbia University 1939, and his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1948. Peltier co-wrote the text Military Geography in 1966 with George E. Pearcy. He held various positions throughout this career including Senior Economist and Head of the Regional Economics Section at the Midwest Research Institute; Analyst at Research Analysis Corporation in McLean, Virginia; Professor at University of Pittsburgh; and Environmental Planner for Montgomery County, Maryland.

Louis C. Peltier (Necrology). 2003. AAG Newsletter 38(11): 26.

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Terry Jordan

Past president of the Association of American Geographers, died at his home in Austin, Texas, on 16 October 2003, from pancreatic cancer. (In recognition of his 1997 marriage, he began using the name Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov as his professional nom de plume, while retaining his birth name for other purposes). Born in Dallas in 1938 as a sixth generation Texan, Terry earned his master’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin (where he met Walter Prescott Webb) and a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. His dissertation was later published as German Seed in Texas Soil: Immigrant Farmers in Nineteenth-Century Texas (1966). This was to be the first of fifteen authored or co-authored books and textbooks published during his lifetime. These include The Upland South: The Making of an American Folk Region and Landscape (2003); The American Backwoods Frontier: an Ethnic and Ecological Interpretation (with M. Kaups, 1989), one of a handful of books that offer a truly original interpretation of the American identity; and The Human Mosaic: A Thematic Introduction to Cultural Geography (nine editions 1976-2003, with Mona Domosh and Lester Rowntree), a classic textbook. At the time of his death he had completed field research in sixty-five countries, reflected in books and journal articles focused on Australia, Siberia, and the European source regions of Texas folk culture. A book expressing his view of the discipline, My Kind of Geography, is forthcoming. Terry was elected President of the Association of American Geographers (1987-88) and also received the AAG Honors Award in 1982 and Distinguished Scholar Award from the AAG American Ethnic Geography Specialty Group. For many years he chaired the geography department at the University of North Texas before joining the Department of Geography at the University of Texas at Austin in 1982 as the Walter Prescott Webb Professor of History and Ideas. He received awards for his work from the Pioneer America Society, National Cowboy Hall of Fame, Texas State Historical Association, Texas Heritage Council, American Association for State and Local History, and the Agricultural History Society. He was elected a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, and a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association. Sessions in Terry’s honor have been organized by his students for the 2004 AAG Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. In accordance with his family’s wishes, donations in Terry’s name may be may be made to the UT Department of Geography and sent to the Department of Geography, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712.

Terry Gilbert Jordan (Necrology). 2003. AAG Newsletter 38(11): 26.

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Carvile Earle

Carville Earle, former editor of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers and Carl O. Sauer Professor of Geography Emeritus at Louisiana State University, passed away 9 October 2003 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1942, Earle earned his B.S. from Townson State College in 1966, his M.A. from the University of Missouri in 1967, and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1973. He began his academic career near his home, teaching at Cantonsville Community College before taking an assistant professor position with the University of Maryland Baltimore County (1973-1977). He took a visiting position at the University of Wisconsin in 1977, before returning to Baltimore, where he remained until 1984. At that time, he accepted the post of Chair at Miami University in Ohio where he served until he took the same position at Louisiana State University in 1988. He was Chair until 1994 and remained as a professor at LSU until his retirement in 2003. A noted scholar, Earle had a prodigious publication record. His work appeared in numerous journal articles, book chapters, and other works. His landmark scholarly titles include Evolution of A Tidewater Settlement: All Hallow’s Parish Maryland, 1650-1783 (University of Chicago, Department of Geography, 1975), Geographical Inquiry and American Historical Problems (Stanford, 1992) and The American Way: A Geographical History of Crisis and Recovery (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). He was also an accomplished editor, serving as the editor of Ohio Geographers and Historical Geography. Most notably, he edited the, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, flagship journal of the Association, from 1993 until 1996. His early work focused on the settlement of the American South and this provided an excellent fit at LSU. Throughout his career, his scholarship challenged standard historical interpretations and earned him recognition far beyond his peers in geography. Earle was a stalwart member in the Association of American Geographers, and from 1987 to 1990 he chaired the Historical Geography Specialty Group. During his tenure the specialty group brought in several world-class scholars from related disciplines and an editorial team under Carville’s leadership prepared the historical geography chapter for Geography in America (1989).

Carvile Earle (Necrology). 2003 AAG Newsletter 38(10): 19.

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Ruby Miller

Longtime AAG member Ruby Miller, of State College, PA died 7 October 2003. She was born in Templeton, PA, 16 August 1911. Miller attended Chatham College in Pittsburgh and earned her elementary teaching certification at Clarion University. She pursued graduate work at the University of Pittsburgh and later spent

eight years teaching school in western Pennsylvania. In 1941 she married geographer E. Willard “Will” Miller, who was married to her for 61 years. At the end of World War II the Millers moved to Penn State where Will started the Geography Department and Ruby became the map librarian. Ruby established and developed the library’s map collection and was instructor for courses on the use of maps. She retired in 1977, but remained active, co-authoring more than twenty books with her husband and traveling in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. For those wishing to make memorial contributions, please contact the Miller Geography Lectureships, Office of University Development, The Pennsylvania State University, One Old Main, University Park, PA 16802.

Ruby Miller (Necrology). 2003 AAG Newsletter 38(10): 19.

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Clark Cross

Clark I. Cross, professor emeritus in the Department of Geography at the University of Florida, died on 3 October 2003, at the age of ninety. Dr. Cross who received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1951, began teaching at the University of Florida in 1949 and retired in 1980. He joined the AAG in 1949.

Clark I. Cross (Necrology). 2003. AAG Newsletter 38(11): 26.

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Louis Seig

Louis “Lou” Seig, former editor of the Journal of Cultural Geography, passed away on 1 October 2003 at his home in Stillwater, Oklahoma. He was born 4 May 1931 in New York City.

Seig attended Louisiana State University where he earned his B.A. in 1954. Following graduation he entered the Air Force as an officer and served on active duty for two decades. He later returned to Louisiana State University for graduate study, earning his M.A. in 1961. During the 1960s he was assigned as a geography instructor to the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado. His performance at the Academy was such that in 1966 he was selected by the Air Force for graduate study. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1968.

A veteran of the Vietnam War, Seig retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1974 and became chair of the Department of Geography at the University of Louisville. In 1978 that department named its Outstanding Undergraduate Geography Student Award in his honor. Following a series of career changes in the late 1970s and early 1980s he moved to New Mexico where he administered the research and development program in the state’s Energy and Minerals Department. In 1986 he joined the faculty of Oklahoma State University. Upon retirement in 1996 he assumed editorship of the Journal of Cultural Geography.

A longtime member of the AAG and staunch supporter of geography, he will be remembered for his service to the discipline. For those wishing to make memorial donations, please contact theDepartment of Geography, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078-4073.

Louis Seig (Necrology). 2004. AAG Newsletter 39(1): 15.

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Eugene Perle

Associate professor of geography and urban planning at Wayne State University Eugene D. Perle, died of cancer at his West Bloomfield home in September. Dr. Perle, began his studies at Dartmouth College where he earned a bachelors degree, and later earned a masters from Syracuse University, and a doctorate from the University of Chicago. Before accepting a position at Wayne State in 1969, Perle taught at Indiana University, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Pittsburgh. In 1968 he worked as a senior staff scientist at the Ford Motor Company‘s transportation research and planning office in Detroit. He was honored with a senior Fullbright-Hays lectureship in 1973, an appointment he fulfilled at Tel Aviv University. Eugene Perle is known for his projects on urban social ecology in Detroit from 1960 to 1990, the book “The Demand for Transportation: Regional and Commodity Studies in the United States,” and his consulting work for the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments and the U.S. Department of Transportation. In 2001, Dr. Perle retired. He is survived by his wife Sylvia, a daughter and son, and two grandchildren.

Eugene Perle (Necrology). 2003 AAG Newsletter 38(10): 19.

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Rabindranath Gunasekara

Rabindranath “Raba” B. Gunasekara, died of a heart attack 3 August 2003, during a visit to his hometown of Colombo, Sri Lanka. A geography doctoral student and campus opportunities development officer at University of California, Davis, he was forty-three.

Raba earned his bachelor’s in international relations and master’s in history from UC-Davis. From 1995 until 2001 he worked as program coordinator at the Center for South Asia Studies at University of California, Berkeley before returning to UC-Davis. At Davis, he was studied geography as a doctoral student under the supervision of Janet Momsen and also worked full-time for the office of Outreach and International Programs. He was travelling in Asia working on his dissertation at the time of his death.

He is survived by his wife Niromi, daughters Natasha and Alexandra, parents Valentine and Ranee, and seven siblings.

Rabindranath Gunasekara (Necrology). 2004. AAG Newsletter 39(2): 17.

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