Curtis C. Roseman

Curtis C. Roseman, professor emeritus of geography at University of Southern California-Dornsife, died on December 13, 2020 at the age of 79. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois; a master’s degree from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale; and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. He was a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Southern California from 1985 to 2004, serving as Department Chair from 1985 to 1992. He also held appointments at the University of Nebraska Omaha, University of Kansas, University of Auckland, New Zealand, University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his academic career, he did research in population geography, human migration, geography of ethnic populations, and the upper Mississippi River. In addition to his membership in the Association of American Geographers, he belonged to the Population Association of America. Among the many honors and awards he received over the years were the USC Community Service Award, the USC Faculty Volunteer Good Neighbor Award, Distinguished Scholar Award from the Ethnic Geography Specialty Group of the American Association of American Geographers, and a 1989 Fulbright Fellowship to New Zealand. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth Mercer, and their two children Charles and Eric, and his daughter Suzanne, from his first marriage to Joanne Darras.

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Tyrel (Tink) Moore

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Dr. Tyrel (Tink) Moore, Professor Emeritus in Geography and Earth Sciences, on September 14, 2020. A scholar of the South, Tink arrived at University of North Carolina Charlotte in 1982. It is estimated that he taught more than 20,000 undergraduates as well as a significant portion of the Charlotte region’s urban planners.

Above all, Tink was a devoted educator who loved the classroom, but who also used his calm demeanor to shepherd many nervous Assistant Professors, Lecturers, Graduate Students, and Part-time Instructors through their first few years of teaching (and even helped some of them move!). Tink never failed to have time for those who needed his help, advice or perspective. Tink’s talent for teaching and mentoring was widely recognized: he received the UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2004 and the Bank of America Award for Teaching Excellence in 2003. Tink was also a great evangelist for geography and served as the President of the Southeastern Division of the American Association of Geographers in 2001 and received the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. It’s been said by many that Tink’s greatest strength was being good to people and his belief in intellectual and professional humility. Tink will be greatly missed.

There will be a celebration of his life when we can gather together safely. People can donate in his honor to benefit students to the “Dr. Tink Moore Memorial Fund” by notating a donation to the UNC Charlotte “Department of Geography & Earth Science Fund” at giving.uncc.edu.

– Faculty at UNC Charlotte Department of Geography and Earth Sciences

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Norman Thrower

Norman Joseph William Thrower died at the age of 100 on September 2, 2020. An avid traveler, Thrower started his career working for the Survey of India as a cartographer during WWII. Later, Thrower was a geography professor at UCLA from 1957 to 1990 where he specialized in cartography, remote sensing, and Europe.

Born in 1919 in Crowthorne, England, Thrower was attending art school at Reading University when WWII broke out. After joining the British army, his unit was stationed in India where he was able to use his art training to become a cartographer for the Survey of India. Following the war and his subsequent marriage to his wife Betty, Thrower moved to the U.S. where he received a B.A. in geography from University of Virginia. In 1958, he received his PhD in geography from University of Wisconsin and went on to teach at UCLA.

Thrower authored several books during his career including, Maps and Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society, which is currently in its 4th edition. He was also the first president of the California Map Society and was appointed by Governor Ronald Reagan to the Sir Frances Drake Commission which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe. The AAG awarded Thrower with Lifetime Achievement Honors in 1998.

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Marshall E. Bowen

Marshall E. Bowen, an emeritus professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Mary Washington, passed away at his home on August 19, 2020. Professor Bowen received an undergraduate degree from Plymouth Teachers College (NH), a masters from Kent State University (OH), and his doctorate from Boston University. He joined the faculty at Mary Washington in 1965 and retired in 2001.

Professor Bowen was known as a scholar of vacant lands in the American west, most notably Elko County, Nevada, and Park Valley, Utah, writing over 40 articles and a book. He authored Utah People in the Nevada Desert (Utah State University Press, 1994) and articles in the Western Historical Quarterly, Utah Historical Quarterly, Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, Agricultural History, Material Culture and the Journal of Cultural Geography. His article, “Crops, Critters, and Calamity: The Failure of Dry Farming in Utah’s Escalante Desert, 1913-1918,” received the Ray Allen Billington Award for the best journal article in western history in 1999 from the Western History Association. His article, “The Russian Molokans of Park Valley,” received the Nick Yengich Memorial Editor’s Choice Award for the best article appearing in the Utah Historical Quarterly in 2015 from the Utah State Historical Society. In 1999, the Pioneer America Society, of which he was a long-term member presented him with the Henry H. Douglas Award for outstanding achievement in research, teaching, and service.

He taught thousands of students over his 36 year career at Mary Washington, packing the basement lecture hall in Monroe Hall with well over 300 students each semester as he shared his passion for places across North America. He also taught seminars in Historical Geography, and early in his career taught the Geography of Asia as well courses in physical geography. Some of the most life-changing experiences for students were shared by those who had the opportunity to take his summer field course to the American West throughout the 1970s. Many of those students went on to pursue advanced degrees in Geography. In 1987, he received the Grellet C. Simpson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, followed by the Mortar Board Outstanding Professor Award in 1991.

An avid basketball player, Professor Bowen also served as the first men’s basketball coach at Mary Washington until 1976. Forty-five years later, many of those players remained a part of his life and hold frequent reunions to reminisce.

Professor Bowen is survived by his wife, Dawn, a Professor of Geography at UMW, a son and two daughters, and four grandchildren. A memorial service will be planned for a future date. The family requests that expressions of sympathy be in the form of contributions to the Geography Alumni Scholarship, University of Mary Washington Foundation, Jepson Alumni Executive Center, 1119 Hanover St., Fredericksburg, VA 22401-5412.

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Robert Smith

Robert (Bob) Wheeler Smith died on August 13, 2020 in Grantsville, MD. He was 70 years old.

Born in Glen Rock, NJ, Smith received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Bucknell University, in Political Science. It’s said that he was so taken with his political geography class textbook that he looked up its author, Louis Alexander at the University of Rhode Island, and subsequently went there to receive his Master’s degree in Geography. He earned his PhD in Geography from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Smith joined the State Department just before the UN Law of the Sea Convention was finalized in 1982, and devoted his career to maritime boundaries. His extensive international assignments included work on treaties with Mexico, Canada, the former USSR, and Kiribati. He authored many papers in the State Department series “Limits of the Seas.” He co-authored “Excessive Maritime Claims” and co-edited the multi volume International Maritime Boundaries.

During his career, he taught classes at Georgetown University, George Mason University, and the University of Virginia.  His favorite teaching experience was the Semester at Sea Program, which he taught after his retirement from the State Department.

Smith consulted for numerous countries on their own maritime boundaries, spending time at the Hague at the International Court of Justice and in Hamburg at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

Smith is survived by his wife Sandra, brother, Arthur Smith, daughters Laura and Tesia, and son-in-law Federico Guerrero. He is predeceased by his parents, Arthur and Carolyn Smith, and his brother, Frederick Smith.

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Marvin Creamer

Marvin Creamer, a geographer and skilled sailor who completed a two-year circumnavigation of the globe in 1984, without any instruments at all, died on August 12, 2020 in Raleigh, North Carolina, after a brief illness. He was 104 years old.

Creamer, born in 1916 in Salem County, New Jersey, was a graduate of Glassboro State College, now known as Rowan University. He stayed on as a professor, establishing the Geography Department as its first chair in 1970 and received numerous honors up until his retirement in 1977. He was awarded an honorary doctorate degree in the humanities in 1980. Creamer also had graduate degrees in education and geography from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Wisconsin.

An avid traveler by both land or sea, Creamer was best known for his extraordinary sailing feet aboard the 26-foot Globerstar, a voyage that he completed when he was nearly 70 years old. His life and adventure were covered by the New York Times, The Economist, and perhaps most importantly, Cruising World.

He was married to Blanche Layton Creamer in 1946 (deceased 2005) and is survived by his sister Evelyn Creamer Daniels; children Andra Creamer Hohler James (David), Lynn Creamer Borstelmann (Tim), and Kurt Creamer (Melissa); grandchildren and step-grandchildren Peggy James, Star Schreier Nixon (Matt), Evan Schreier, Vaughn Creamer, John Borstelmann, Kathryn Jeffery, Maggie Creamer, and Daniel Borstelmann; great-grandchildren Charlotte Nixon and Logan Nixon. He is survived also by his wife of 10 years, Elaine Gillam Creamer.

 

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Woody Gagliano

Sherwood M. “Woody” Gagliano, a geologist, geographer and archaeologist who documented Louisiana’s rapidly eroding coastline in the 1970s in a process that alerted the state to the problem, died on July 17, 2020 at the age of 84.

“History has shown that one person can make a difference, and that certainly applies to Woody Gagliano,” said Bren Haase, executive director of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. “Louisiana owes him a great debt for not only sounding the alarm in our coastal crisis, but for never giving up when few would listen.” Gagliano advocated tirelessly for a state comprehensive coastal protection program.

Dr. Gagliano;s work marked a turning point in coastal science and in the state’s decision to meet the challenge of coastal erosion at scale. “His vision allowed Louisiana to be years or decades ahead of where we would have been without Woody Gagliano,” said U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge, and former chairman of the CPRA board. “He will be missed, but thank God we can stand upon his shoulders.”

Gagliano received his bachelor’s degree in geography and master’s degree and Ph.D in physical geography from Louisiana State University. He also served a stint in the U.S. Army.

In 1967, Gagliano founded Coastal Environments Inc., the Baton Rouge-based archaeological and applied sciences firm, while still working as a researcher studying river delta processes for the LSU Coastal Studies Institute.

Beginning in 1969, Gagliano was instrumental in documenting and designing solutions for Louisiana’s coastal erosion–a problem unrecognized by state officials before 1970, on the basis of Gagliano’s work. Don Boesch, former director of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Studies and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, told a local paper that the work was forward-thinking: “Fifty years later, we are still trying to execute his exact concept.” Boesch said. Gagliano assisted state officials in developing Coast 2050 in 1998, the first comprehensive effort to outline steps towards restoring or saving coastal wetlands, and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the state’s creation of its first formal Coastal Master Plan in 2007.

Gagliano also produced groundbreaking research showing how some wetland loss was caused by slipping blocks of coastal soil along fault lines, and how the faulting could threaten levees, navigation routes, and coastal restoration projects. He and his company also developed new ways to create artificial oyster reefs – called Reef Blk – to assist in coastal restoration efforts.

Gagliano was the founding president of the Louisiana Archaeological Society and vice president of the Intracoastal Seaway Association. The Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana honored him with its Coastal Stewardship Award in 1996 and its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. He is survived by his wife, Betty Ann (Huxen) Gagliano, son Mark Huxen Gagliano, daughter-in-law Kristie Gagliano, and granddaughter Marguerite Lucy Gagliano.

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Leonard Kouba

Geographer Leonard Kouba died on July 15, 2020. A longtime  professor at Northern Illinois University until 1993, he was 82.

Kouba, who specialized in African geography, was an avid traveler, fisherman, and big-game hunter. He visited approximately 120 countries in his lifetime. He was a past recipient of NIU’s Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award. He established the Leonard J. Kouba Geography Graduate Student Fund to provide scholarships and other resources for graduate students in his home department at NIU.

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Brian Robson

Brian Robson–a geographer who helped to develop the British Index of Multiple Deprivatio and changed the way British governments dealt with socio-economic decline in towns, cities and regions–died on July 2, 2020 at the age of 81.

Robson’s research and design of the index provided an integrated, extensive and fine-grained understanding of poverty and financial mechanisms for relieving it in Great Britain, crafted around an area-based regeneration approach that Brian focused on the needs of towns and small cities, not only large urban areas. In the words of colleague Noel Castree, writing in The Guardian, Robson’s approach also “promoted a multi-agency approach, supporting integrated regeneration that was more attuned to local circumstances.”

Robson was born in Rothbury in Northumberland and attended Cambridge University, graduating in 1961. He completed a full-time PhD in urban social geography at Cambridge in 1964. In 1969 he published Urban Analysis, followed by Urban Social Areas in 1975. These two books led to his work on government policy.

Robson was a lecturer in geography at Aberystwyth University, leaving in 1967 to become a Harkness Fellow at the University of Chicago, working with planner Jack Meltzer at the interdisciplinary Center for Urban Studies. He returned to Cambridge in 1968 as a lecturer in human geography, staying for a decade until taking a post at Manchester University in 1977, where he established the Centre for Urban Policy Studies (CUPS) in 1983. His 1988 book Those Inner Cities identified the failings of British urban policy and shaped the design of the Single Regeneration Budget.

Robson’s career was built on a strong commitment to equality of opportunity. The Royal Geographical Society awarded him its Founders medal in 2000; he was honored with the Order of British Empire in 2010. He is survived by his wife, Glenna Ransom (nee Conway), and Glenna’s two sons from a previous marriage, Mark and Peter.

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Dwight Brown

Dwight Brown, retired professor of geography and former geography department chair at the University of Minnesota, died on June 19, 2020 of natural causes. He was 83.

Brown’s expertise during his career of more than fifty years spanned geographic information and analysis, physical geography, and cartography, with specific interest and expertise in biogeography, environmental systems, grasslands, global change, resource use, and landscape evolution. He initiated the first GIS course at UM.

For most of his career, Brown focused on the biogeography of the Midcontinent Plains. He was also a farmer, as well as director of the Water Resources Research Center at UM, and an associate fellow of the Center for Great Plains Study at the University of Nebraska.. His publications and accomplishments include the 1996 AAG publication, Living in the Biosphere: Production, Pattern, Population and Diversity;  the 2003 publication and CD Biogeography of the Global Garden; and Embedded Scales in Biogeography (Blackwell Press, 2004).

As reported in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Brown was an engaging and imaginative instructor, who encouraged questions from his students and never stopped learning, himself. “He loved learning and had a sense of curiosity and it was the driving factor in his career,” said his daughter Cindy Brown Polson.

“He always questioned and probed for deeper understanding,” recalled his colleague Richard Skaggs. “Dwight believed strongly in the value and importance of education and inspired the same qualities in his children and his many students.”

Brown was born to Dallas and Verna Brown on Aug. 15, 1936, in Aledo, Ill. He grew up in Galva, Ill. He earned his bachelor’s degree in geography from Western Illinois University and his master’s degree and Ph.D. in geography from the University of Kansas. In addition to his daughter Cindy, Brown is survived by daughter Lori Casey, son Kyle, eight grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his wife of 61 years, Helen Brown, who died in 2018.

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