Wes Dow

Maynard Weston Dow, professor emeritus at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, died on August 5, 2011.

Dow was born in 1929, close to Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. He took a BS degree from the U.S. Naval Academy (1952) and an MA degree from Rutgers University (1960). After earning a PhD from Syracuse University in 1965, Dow took a teaching post at the Air Force Academy, where he taught 1960-1962 and 1964-1972, before moving to Plymouth State University. He served 22 years in the U.S. Air Force, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1972.

At the peak of the Vietnam War in 1966, Dow was recruited by the Department of Defense to travel to South Vietnam to conduct research, which resulted in the publication of his book, Nation Building in Southeast Asia. It was in the late 1960s, while developing a course on geographic thought at the Air Force Academy that Dow began to conceive of the project that would later become known as “Geographers on Film” – his signature contribution to the discipline. At that time, filming an interview with synchronous sound was a cumbersome process, necessitating the use of a heavy 16 mm camera and burdensome sound and lighting equipment as well as a great deal of technical expertise. Dow’s wife, Nancy, became an integral part of the filmmaking process, learning to help set-up and then handle the shoot while Wes conducted the interview.

Working together closely over a period of four decades, Wes and Nancy Dow created one of the richest oral history collections in any academic discipline. Comprised of over 300 interviews, the Dows produced and administered the series largely on their own for 45 years, distributing episodes of the series for use in geographic thought and history classes for the cost of shipping. “Geographers on Film” is currently held at the Library of Congress through the auspices of the AAG, which took stewardship of the collection in 2009 upon Dow’s donation of the material. The Library of Congress is in the process of converting and making the series available in high quality digital formats.

At the 2008 AAG Annual Meeting in Boston, the association recognized the Dows (Nancy was honored posthumously) for their unique contributions to the discipline by organizing several special sessions featuring the “Geographers on Film” series, and presenting them with the inaugural AAG American Geographical History Award. The following year, Plymouth State University recognized Wes Dow’s career contributions to geography and the university by naming the Geographic Information System Laboratory after him.

Dow died at his home in Camden, Maine. A 39-year resident of New Hampshire, he returned to his home state in 2010. His wife, Nancy Freeman Dow, died in 2005.

Wes Dow’s family has requested that contributions in memory of Wes Dow be made to the AAG Endowment Fund. Please indicate “M. W. Dow memorial contribution” on your donation.

Wes Dow (Necrology). 2011. AAG Newsletter 46(8): 44.

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Dennis Ehrhardt

Dennis Ehrhardt, who spent 38 years teaching geography and urban planning at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, passed away on July 24, 2011, at the age of 69, after a long and courageous battle with cancer.

Dennis Karl Ehrhardt was born on December 16, 1942 in Waterloo, Iowa. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Iowa, as well as his doctorate. His PhD thesis, completed in 1972, was entitled “An ecological analysis of the zoning variance requests and approvals: a case study of Cedar Rapids, Iowa 1959-68.”

Although he was destined for an academic career, Ehrhardt’s first publications were about improving geography teaching at lower levels and co-authored with his wife, Shirley, who was an elementary school teacher. Together they wrote “Teaching World Geography Concepts: A Kindergarten Approach” (The Missouri Geographer, Fall 1972) and “Let’s Learn Our States: A Gaming Strategy” (Journal of Geography, April 1973).

Ehrhardt’s first teaching positions were at the University of Wisconsin-Oskosh and then Saint Louis University before moving to the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now University of Louisiana at Lafayette) where he stayed for almost four decades. He began as an Associate Professor and the Coordinator of City and Regional Planning, working his way up to head of the Department of Geography when the department was created. He remained the Coordinator of Geography when the department merged with the History Department.

Over the years Ehrhardt taught numerous undergraduate and graduate geography classes related to planning including city and regional planning, environmental and recreation planning, preservation planning, and housing and community development. But his expertise stretched across the breadth of human geography; at various points in his career he taught general courses on political geography, economic geography, urban geography, and social geography, as well as regional geography courses – the geography of the United States and Canada, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, and the Soviet Union. Ehrhardt contributed to the intellectual development of generations of students. He truly loved teaching and mentoring the students, with many keeping in touch with him even during his final days.

In addition to his university responsibilities, Ehrhardt worked as a private consultant, including as the Planning Consultant for Iberia Parish Government, providingexpertise and consulting services for a variety of projects, such as preparing the Iberia Parish Infrastructure Master Plan, revising the subdivision regulations, and implementing a comprehensive zoning plan.

He was also an expert witness on numerous court cases concerning matters of urban planning in Louisiana and Mississippi. One of the court cases for which he testified, James Hernandez v. City Council of Lafayette 3-15, was eventually heard by the Supreme Court.

Ehrhardt was involved in several professional organizations, serving on boards and committees and presenting papers at annual conferences. He was a member of the Association of American Geographers, particularly involved in the Southwest Division, serving one year as Chair in 1981. He was also a member of the American Institute of Planners and the Southwestern Social Science Association.

Ehrhardt loved sports. He was a life-long fan of the University of Iowa’s football and basketball teams, and at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette he was actively involved in athletics.

In his spare time, he loved to fish with friends, travel around the world, and visit his family. He is survived by his two daughters and four grandchildren.

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Clyde Woods

Clyde Woods, Associate Professor of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), died this past summer.

Woods received his PhD in Urban Planning from UCLA where he studied with Ed Soja. Since his graduate student days, he had been an active member of the geographic community. He research was centered at the nexus of regional planning, African American studies, and social justice. As a longtime member of the AAG, Woods not only sought to focus attention on the plight of poor communities of color, but he also actively encouraged and mentored black geographers in order to diversify the discipline.

Woods was also Director of the Center for Black Studies Research at UCSB. His work demonstrated his overarching belief that the purpose of public social science is to explore and strengthen the links between knowledge embedded in communities and the knowledge disseminated by universities. “Clyde Woods was an admired colleague, professor, and student mentor, and he will be deeply missed by all the members of our UCSB family,” said Chancellor Henry T. Yang. “Dr. Woods was engaged in two long-term research projects within our Department of Black Studies, one focusing on rebuilding efforts in New Orleans and the other on creating a network of community members and scholars studying race and policy issues in the Los Angeles area. He was also actively involved in Haiti relief efforts; the recent earthquake in Haiti touched him deeply, and he was passionate about helping the people of Haiti.” He joined the UCSB faculty in 2005 following appointments at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Maryland.

Woods was the author of two important books, Development Arrested: Race, Power and the Blues in the Mississippi Delta (Verso, 1998), an interdisciplinary work that reframed the history of the Mississippi Delta by unearthing and interpreting the blues epistemology of its poor black residents, and Black Geographies and the Politics of Place, co-edited with Katherine McKittrick (South End Press, 2007). In addition, he edited a special issue of the American Quarterly focused on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, “In the Wake of Hurricane Katrina: New Paradigms and Social Visions” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).

At the time of his death Woods had also completed a manuscript entitled, “Development Drowned and Reborn,” a study of post- Katrina New Orleans that his colleague and friend, Laura Pulido, will see through the publication process. Finally, Woods was also working on a book on the history of Black Los Angeles, which Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Laura Pulido hope to complete as a collaborative process. If people are interested in working on this project they should contact Ruth or Laura.

Clyde Woods (Necrology). 2012. AAG Newsletter 47(3): 36.

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William Ainsley

William Frank Ainsley, Distinguished Professor of Geography, Department of Geography and Geology, University of North Carolina-Wilmington, has died. During a distinguished 36-year career at the University of North Carolina- Wilmington, Ainsley taught hundreds of students, both undergraduate and graduate, who benefitted from his outstanding abilities as a teacher and mentor. His considerable contributions were recognized with three significant awards: Ainsley was named North Carolina Geography Educator of the Year in 2003, received the University of North Carolina Board of Governors Award for Teaching Excellence in 2004, and was awarded a University of North Carolina- Wilmington Distinguished Teaching Professorship in 2005. He was an active officer for the Pioneer America Society, receiving the society’s Henry H. Douglas Distinguished Service Award in 2003. Ainsley’s research and teaching interests were wide-ranging. His substantial scholarship and teaching experience allowed him to author geography textbooks that have become the standard in public school systems across North Carolina. Among his many interests were immigrant farm colonies and preservation of historical buildings and sites. Friends, colleagues and former students will remember him as a huge Buddy Holly fan who gave his annual “Buddy Holly lecture” to geography classes each February 3, the day of Holly’s death. Ainsley held numerous degrees, including an A.B. degree in Biblical Studies, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 1966; a Masters of Divinity, Southeastern Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, NC, 1969; a Masters in Geography, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 1972; and a PhD in Geography, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 1977.

William Ainsley (Necrology). 2011. AAG Newsletter 46(1): 46.

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Arthur H. Doerr

Arthur H. “Art” Doerr, born on August 28, 1924, has died.

Doerr grew up in the small Midwestern town of Johnston City, Illinois, just southeast of St. Louis. He received his undergraduate degree from Southern Illinois University. His college education was interrupted, as with so many other geographers of his generation, by military service during the Second World War. Doerr was commissioned as a second lieutenant and served as a navigator-radar operator in the 2nd B-25 combat Weather Squadron in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations. After receiving an honorable discharge in 1946, he returned to the United States and earned a Ph.D. from Northwestern University.

Doerr served on the faculties of Northwestern University and the University of Oklahoma before joining the University of West Florida (UWF) as Professor and Vice President of Academic Affairs in 1970, where he hired a succession of Oklahoma geographers to anchor a program, leading to the establishment of a new department. He had previously served as Chair of the Geography Department and Dean of the Graduate College at the University of Oklahoma.

Doerr retired from UWF in 1992. During his career he also served in a number of roles outside the university setting, including as an intelligence expert for the U.S. Army, as a geologist for the Oklahoma Geological Survey, and as Cartographer and Field Team Chief for the Rural Land Classification Program of Puerto Rico. Doerr also served as Fulbright Professor at the University of the Philippines. Doerr retired from UWF as Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the Anna Boland Professor of Geography. Those wishing to memorialize his passing may make contributions to the Arthur H. Doerr Faculty Scholarship Fund at the University of West Florida Foundation.

Arthur H. Doerr (Necrology). 2011. AAG Newsletter 46(11): 23.

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Nicholas Helburn

Nicholas Helburn, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado and a former President of the AAG, died recently at the age of 93.

Helburn was born in 1918 in Salem, Massachusetts, and grew up in Cambridge. He enrolled at Harvard University but left after one year to work in the New Hampshire mountains. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago and later received an M.S. in Agricultural Economics at Montana State.

During World War II, Helburn was a conscientious objector who provided alternative service by participating in bridge building and other public works projects in Tennessee and by working as a “smoke jumper” in Montana, parachuting to reach and extinguish wildfires in their beginning stages. After the war, he earned a PhD in geography from the University of Wisconsin.

Helburn was known as an avid educator, mentor, outdoorsman, traveler, gardener, ecologist, peace activist and advocate for alternative life styles. At the beginning of his career, he moved to Bozeman to start the Department of Earth Science at Montana State College. While at Montana State, Helburn spent a year in Turkey in the early 1950’s on a Ford Foundation grant, the research from which resulted in a book about dry land agriculture and village culture in Anatolia.

In 1965, Helburn became director of the High School Geography Project, one of the “New Social Studies” curriculum projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation to develop a new approach for teaching geography in high schools. He also became the first director of the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) for Social Studies.

Helburn joined the geography department at the University of Colorado in 1971 and chaired the department for three years. During its formative years he served on the senior faculty of the University of Phoenix, helping to develop a unique college curriculum for working adults.

In 2002, the Peace and Justice Center in Boulder, Colorado recognized him as “Peacemaker of the Year.”

Nicholas Helburn (Necrology). 2011. AAG Newsletter 46(8): 22.

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Stephen J. Lavin

Stephen J. Lavin, Professor of Geography at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), died May 3, 2011 at the age of 68 following a year-long battle with cancer.

Lavin was born February 1, 1943 in Buffalo, New York. Following service in the U.S. Navy, Lavin earned a B.S. in Geography at the University of Buffalo in 1969, an M.S. at Montana State University in 1971 and a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas in 1979. He taught four years at Dartmouth College before joining the Department of Geography at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1981. During his three decades at UNL he mentored more than 40 graduate students, served as Department Chair for five years, and was Chair of the Geography Graduate Committee for nearly 20 years.

A specialist in cartography, Lavin was well known for his research on map design, cartographic communication and computer cartography. His published work received a number of awards including, for example, the British Cartographic Society’s Best Article Award for 1988 for his research with Randall Cerveny on Unit-Vector Density Mapping, published in The Cartographic Journal.

During the last decade, Lavin devoted much of his time to working with his close colleague Clark Archer on production of atlases. These included The Atlas of American Politics: 1960-2000 and The Historical Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections 1788-2004. The latter was a Best Reference List selection by the Library Journal and was chosen as the Best Single Volume Reference in Humanities and Social Sciences for 2006 by the Association of American Publishers, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division. In total, Lavin designed and prepared well over 1,000 maps for these books.

Lavin’s two final projects, published this summer, serve as a fitting culmination to his career. In May, the University of Nebraska Press published his Atlas of the Great Plains, a volume containing over 300 maps within its 336 pages. Shortly thereafter, Rowman and Littlefield issued the Atlas of the 2008 Elections, on which Lavin served as chief cartographer and co-editor with Archer and others.

In honor of Lavin’s lifetime achievements in cartography, his students and colleagues will sponsor a special session at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the North American Cartographic Information Society.

Stephen J. Lavin (Necrology). 2011. AAG Newsletter 46(7): 20.2011

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Alexander Vias

Alexander C. Vias, associate professor of geography at the University of Connecticut (Storrs), died at the age of 51.

Vias was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. After beginning his academic studies at Rutgers University, he completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Colorado, Denver in 1993. Vias then earned a master’s degree (1995) and a PhD (1998) in geography, both from the University of Arizona. Between 1998 and 2002 he was an assistant professor at Northern Colorado University. Since 2002, he had served as a member of the faculty of the Geography Department at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. He was promoted to associate professor in 2005. Vias coordinated the Urban and Community Studies Program on the Storrs campus and worked closely with the Institute of Puerto Rican & Latino Studies at the University of Connecticut.

Vias was a widely respected population and economic geographer best known for his research on micropolitan areas, population change, economic-demographic linkages, and the settlement geography of rural America. He published over twenty professional articles and several book chapters. In recent years his research moved into the area of community health and health disparities, leading to a number of funded projects and the publication of several important research papers as well as close working relationships with the Connecticut Department of Public Health.

Vias was an active organizer of rural geography sessions at AAG Annual Meetings and Regional Science Association conferences. He worked collaboratively with federal researchers from the USDA Economic Research Service and the U.S. Census Bureau. Among his many service activities, Vias was an editor of the Population Specialty Group Newsletter and a member of the AAG’s Census Advisory Committee.

Vias received numerous awards and honors throughout his career, including being named a University of Connecticut Service-Learning Teaching Fellow in 2010, the Best Paper of the Year 2004 from the Great Plains Research Center, the Economic Geography Specialty Group Award for Best Dissertation (2000), and the 1998 Charles Tiebout Prize for Best Graduate Student Paper from the Western Regional Science Association. He received the National Hispanic Scholarship Award from the National Hispanic Society in 1996.

Alexander C. Vias (Necrology). 2011. AAG Newsletter 46(8): 44.

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Allan Rodgers

Allan Rodgers, emeritus professor at The Pennsylvania State University, died at the age of 89 on April 19, 2011.

Rodgers was born in New York in 1922. He received a B.S. in economics from the City College of New York, graduating cum laude with honors in the social sciences. He served as lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War, as a crewmember on a destroyer escort in the Atlantic Theatre. Following the war, Rodgers returned to his studies and earned both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Wisconsin. He received his doctorate in 1950. His first position was as an assistant professor of geography at the University of Oklahoma, from 1948 to 1950.

Rodgers was appointed to a position in the Geography Department at Penn State in 1950, where he served until his retirement in 1988. He taught at Penn State for 38 years, serving as department head from 1963-70. Rodgers was an economic geographer with primary interests in regional economic development, industrial geography, and the economic geography of Italy, the U.S.S.R., and China.

Rodgers received numerous grants and awards throughout his career, including a research grant from the Office of Naval Research (1955-58) for work on the industrial port of Genoa, Italy; a Guggenheim Fellowship and two Fulbright Grants (1960-61) for research on the industrial geography of southern Italy; a grant in 1957 and 1960 for research on the USSR from the Inter-University Committee on Travel Grants; and a number of research grants from the Social Science Research Council and the National Science Foundation. In 1977, he was named an honorary foreign fellow of the Italian Geographical Society. In 1982-1983, he was awarded a Fulbright Lectureship for the University of Rome.

Rodgers authored or co-authored numerous journal articles, which appeared in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers; Economic Geography; The Geographical Review; Essays in Geography and Economic Development; The China Geographer; and Industrial Change; in addition to those that appeared in many foreign publications. He served the discipline and academia at large as head of the Symposia Committee of the AAG; consultant to the National Science Foundation; and consultant to the U.S. Council of Graduate Schools. Rodgers also served on the writing staff of the Columbia Encyclopedia. Rodgers published The Soviet Far East: Geographical Perspectives on Development in 1990.

Rodgers served as a member of a special delegation to China in the 1980s following President Richard Nixon’s landmark trip to that country. The Penn State group in that delegation included the president of the university and several deans as well as Rodgers, and they spent several weeks as invited guests. He enjoyed the experience. “I believe that one cannot become a good teacher without extensive field and library research,” he told his co-worker E. Willard Miller for the history book The College of Earth Mineral Sciences at Penn State in 1992. During an active retirement, Rodgers gave invited lectures at several universities in The People’s Republic of China.

Allan Rodgers (Necrology). 2011. AAG Newsletter 46(7): 20.

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Paul E. Lydolph

Paul E. Lydolph passed away on March 25, 2011 at the age of 87.

Lydolph was born on January 4, 1924 in Bonaparte, Iowa. He attended Harvard University in 1944 and was a student at MIT in 1945 while serving in the U.S. Army Air Forces (1943-47), where he underwent meteorology cadet training and served as a Radar-Weather Officer during the Second World War.

Lydolph received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Iowa in 1948, and both a Master of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1951 and a Ph.D. in 1955. In 1956-57, Lydolph was a Ford Foundation Fellow and completed a Russian area studies program at the University of California-Berkeley.

Lydolph was a math teacher in Iowa Public Schools from 1946-49. He was assistant and then associate professor at Los Angeles State College from 1952- 1959 and professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee from 1959-1992. He served as UWM department chairman from 1963-1969 and again in 1971-1972.

Lydolph specialized in the geography of the U.S.S.R. and climatology. He served as a visiting lecturer at Oxford University, the Stockholm School of Economics, and the University of Hawaii at various times during his career. He was the Smithsonian Institution Tour Director to the U.S.S.R. from 1976-1979.

Lydolph was the author of Geography of the U.S.S.R. (editions 1 through 5, 1964-1990), Climates of the U.S.S.R. (volume 7,1977), World Survey of Climatology (1977),and many other publications on climatethroughout his career. Published in 1987,a Festschrift was written by his colleaguesin his honor, “Soviet Geography Studiesin Our Time” edited by Lutz Holzner andJeane M. Knapp.

Paul E. Lydolph (Necrology). 2011. AAG Newsletter 46(5): 22.

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