Oscar Horst

Oscar Heinz Horst, Professor Emeritus at Western Michigan University (WMU), died at the age of 86.

Horst was born on March 4, 1924 in Newark, Ohio. After serving in World War II with the U.S. Army, he earned a B.S. in Geography in 1949, an M.A. in 1951 and a Ph.D. in 1956, all from The Ohio State University. In the same year, he joined Western Michigan’s Geography Department as Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Professor in 1964, chaired the department from 1972 to 1975 and again from 1977 to 1978, and retired in 1987 following 31 years of service at WMU.

Horst specialized in Latin American and Physical Geography. He published over 40 professional articles, books, and book chapters over the course of his career and gave over 40 presentations at professional meetings. He led numerous educational trips to Mexico, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic, and served as a visiting professor at universities in Florida, Kansas, and Michigan, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Japan. He was actively affiliated with the Pan American Institute of Geography and History, and the Organization for Tropical Studies.

An avid and talented photographer, Horst documented landscapes and people throughout the course of his many travels. The Center for Mesoamerican Research is the benefactor of his notable collection of materials on Guatemala.

Horst received numerous awards throughout his professional career including Western Michigan University’s Alumni Teaching Excellence Award, WMU’s Distinguished Faculty Scholar Award, and the Annual Achievement Award for Contributions in Teaching, Research, and Service from the Latin Americanist Geographers.

Oscar H. Horst (Necrology). 2011. AAG Newsletter 46(6): 17.

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Ladis K. D. Kristof

Ladis K. D. Kristof, born 1918 in Romania of Polish and Armenian parents, died recently at the age of 91. A political geographer, he taught at Portland State University as recently as 2007. Owner of a 73-acre farm, he survived a tractor rollover at the age of 86 and still chopped wood and hunted deer and elk at the age of 90. Kristof was born to the aristocracy and grew up wealthy on a sprawling estate in Romania. He learned seven languages and attended university in Poland. During World War II, Kristof was captured for spying and imprisoned by the Nazis. He escaped jail and eluded capture for the rest of the war, but at the war’s end his family’s estate was confiscated by the Red Army, eventually becoming absorbed into the Soviet Union and later the Ukraine. Having lost everything and considered suspect by the Communists, Kristof escaped by horseback and then by swimming across the Danube River on a dark night in 1948, in hopes of reaching the West. He was detained on the Yugoslav side of the river however, and sent to a concentration camp and later to an asbestos mine and logging camp. Marked for execution, Kristof once again escaped his captors, reaching Italy and eventually France. He worked as a laborer in Paris until 1952, when he was finally able to emigrate to the United States. Arriving in New York, Kristof began his new life by purchasing a copy of the New York Times, the newspaper for which his son, Nicholas D. Kristof, would later become a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist. Upon his father’s death, his son wrote a column in which he quoted his father’s entry in Who’s Who in America: War, want and concentration camps, exile from home and homeland, these have made me hate strife among men, but they have not made me lose faith in the future of mankind… I remain a rationalist and an optimist at a time when the prophets of doom have the floor…If man has been able to create the arts, the sciences, and the material civilization we know in America, why should he be judged powerless to create justice, fraternity and peace? To earn money while learning English (his eighth language), Kristof found a job at a logging camp in Oregon. He enrolled at Reed College, graduating in 1955 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He became a U.S. citizen in 1958 and earned his political science PhD at the University of Chicago in 1969. He taught and conducted research at Temple University, Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, the University of Santa Clara, and the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. Kristof specialized in political geography and geopolitics, and published many articles on topics such as frontiers, boundaries, and the history of geopolitics. He also published substantially in the field of political science. Kristof wrote and edited books, monographs and articles, including Revolution and Politics in Russia, The Nature of Frontiers and Boundaries, and The Origins and Evolution of Geopolitics. He frequently attended meetings of the International Geographical Congresses where he was an active participant, and held visiting professorships in the U.S. and abroad. Kristof was a fifty-year member of the Association of American Geographers.

Ladis K.D. Kristof (Necrology). 2010. AAG Newsletter 45(9): 22.

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Roger P. Miller

Roger P. Miller, Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Minnesota, died on May 30, 2010 at the University of Michigan Medical Center from complications to injuries he sustained in a motorcycle crash. Born in Chicago on March 29, 1951, Miller graduated from the University of Chicago Lab School (1968), attended Oberlin College (1968-70), the San Francisco Art Institute (1970-71; photography and film), and University of California- Berkeley (1971-72; A.B., English Literature) before turning to Geography at Berkeley (1973-79; M.A., PhD), working closely with Alan Pred and Clarence Glacken. Miller will be remembered as one of the “New Urban Historians.” He joined Theodore Hershberg and the Philadelphia Social History Project at the University of Pennsylvania for dissertation research, and taught at Penn’s Department of Regional Science (1977-78), and the University of Colorado-Boulder (1979-80) before joining the University of Minnesota Geography Department in 1980. Miller’s specialties included the history of city planning, European and North American Cities, urban and historical geography, Scandinavia, and social theory. An award winning teacher, he was elected to the University of Minnesota’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers. His course “The City in Film,” based on analysis of full-length commercial feature films, was immensely successful. Other teaching included “Geographical Perspectives on Planning,” “Global Cities,” “Cities, Citizens, and Communities,” and “Historical Geography.” His recent research focused on the historical population geography of Sweden and included regular work with colleagues at the University of Stockholm, Gotland University in Visby, and the University of Lund.

Roger P. Miller (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 45(6): 18.

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Jerome D. Fellmann

On May 29, Jerome D. Fellmann died following over 50 years of contributions to the university community and the department of geography at the University of Illinois, Urbana. He was born June 28, 1926, in Chicago.

Fellmann arrived at Urbana-Champaign in 1950, shortly after receiving his PhD from the University of Chicago. His research interests included urban and economic geography, geographic bibliography, the geography of Russia, and geographic education. In addition to teaching and research, Fellmann served as both an associate and acting head of the department of geography in the early 1970s and served on several committees within the department, LAS, the Graduate College, the Russian and East European Center (now the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center), the Center for International Studies, and the University. Fellmann’s many publications may be found in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Professional Geographer, Journal of Geography, and the Geographical Review. He also co-authored several editions of Mc-Graw Hill’s Introduction to Geography and Human Geography. Fellmann was an active member of the Association of American Geographers, American Geographical Society, Illinois Geographical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Regional Science Association, Illinois Academy of Science, and Sigma Xi. He also held visiting professorships at Wayne State University, the University of British Columbia, and California State University, Northridge. Fellmann’s contributions to the department, in particular to undergraduate education, continue to be honored annually through the Jerome D. Fellmann Prize, awarded each year to a graduating senior in geography who has written a senior honors paper rated superior.

Jerome D. Fellman (Necrology). 2010. AAG Newsletter 45(7): 15.

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Burke Vanderhill

Burke Gordon Vanderhill died on May 24, 2010. He was born in La Porte, Indiana, on January 15, 1920, and grew up in Bellaire, Michigan where his father was a telegrapher and station agent for the Pere Marquette Railroad, later the Chesapeake and Ohio, inspiring Burke’s lifelong interest in trains and railroads as well as his love of geography. Vanderhill attended Kalamazoo College, Michigan State University (B.S, with Honors), the University of Nebraska (M.A.), and received his PhD in Geography from the University of Michigan where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 he enlisted in the United States Army Air Force. During 1942-45, he served in the 8th Air Force near Ipswich, East Anglia, England. Upon returning to the U.S., Burke used the GI Bill to complete his degrees. He came to Tallahassee in 1950 to join the Florida State University Geography Department. Vanderhill retired in 1995 after 45 years of service to the university community. His research interests varied, but his primary focus was on the northern fringe of agricultural settlement in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and later Alaska, areas he returned to many times camping with his family.

Burke Gordon Vanderhill (Necrology). 2010. AAG Newsletter 45(10): 22.

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Donald J. Patton

Donald John Patton died on May 15, 2010 in Boulder, Colorado. Born May 18, 1919, in Chicago, he studied geography at Harvard University and served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. After earning his PhD, Patton held positions as a researcher, lecturer, consultant, and professor, working for various government agencies and universities in and around Washington, D.C. and at Colorado University in Boulder. He joined the faculty at Florida State University in Tallahassee in 1969 and retired there in 1989 with the distinction of Professor Emeritus. Throughout his professional career, Patton published many reports, articles, and book chapters. He contributed to several atlases and also served as editor of the Professional Geographer. Florida’s water resources were a special area of interest for him, and his life’s work demonstrated his love of scholarship and the earth sciences.

Donald J. Patton (Necrology) 2010. AAG Newsletter 45(7): 15.

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Bruce C. Ogilvie

Bruce Ogilvie, a former longtime employee at Rand McNally in Skokie, Illinois, and chief editor of some of its best known publications, died of natural causes on Tuesday, May 11, 2010, at the age of 94. Born in Avon, New York, Ogilvie received undergraduate degrees from the University of Maine in Farmington (1935) and Rhode Island College (1938). He was a graduate student at Clark University when World War II broke out and in 1942 joined the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C. as a cartographer. He later received a direct commission in the U.S. Navy Reserve, serving as a Line Officer Afloat in the North Atlantic Theater and with the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office in Washington, D.C. He later worked for the national mapping division of the U.S. Geological Survey in the Department of the Interior. Ogilvie received his master’s degree in 1948 and his PhD from Clark University in 1956. During his two decades with Rand McNally, Ogilvie was chief editor and coordinator for The Time-Life Atlas, The International Atlas, and The Children’s World Atlas. Known simply as “the geographer” at the map-making giant, he brought to creation thousands of maps, globes and atlases. Ogilvie had recently finished an autobiography about his service in the Navy. The book, Getting the Cargo Through: The U.S. Navy Armed Guard on Merchant Ships in World War II, is scheduled to be published this summer. Ogilvie resigned his Navy commission in 1955 as a lieutenant senior grade and returned to Clark University to complete his PhD. During various years from 1947 until 1987, Ogilvie taught at the University of Georgia (Athens), Chico State College (California), the University of Chicago, George Mason University, and Mary Washington University. In 1978, he became Supervisory Geographer, National Mapping Division, U.S. Geological Survey, before retiring in 1986.

Bruce C. Ogilvie (Necrology). AAG Newsletter 45(7): 15.

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Jacques Bertin

French cartographer and graphic language theorist Jacques Bertin died on May 3, 2010. Bertin was born in 1918. He studied geography and cartography at the Sorbonne and later became founder and director of the Cartographic Laboratory of the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) in 1954. He began a professorship at the Sorbonne in 1967 and in 1972 became head of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Bertin published many scientific maps, academic papers and mainstream articles on cartography, semiotics, graphic language, and visual design. In 1967, he published Semiology of Graphics, a groundbreaking book analyzing graphic visualization. His work defined differences between the graphic symbols that appeared on maps and the perceptual properties of the symbols themselves, leading to a new approach in understanding the ways that maps function.

Jacques Bertin (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 45(6): 18.

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Edwin H. Hammond

Ed Hammond, age 91, passed away in April. Born on January 8, 1919 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he was raised in Columbia, Missouri near the campus of the University of Missouri, where his father was a Professor of Physics. He entered the University of Missouri in 1935 and graduated with a degree in geography in 1939. Hammond was pursuing graduate study at the University of California, Berkeley when Pearl Harbor came under attack on December 7, 1941. Overtaken by world events, Hammond accepted a position in Washington, D.C., as a geographer in the Office of Strategic Services, where he participated in intelligence and mapping exercises that preceded U.S. and allied military activities in both the European and Pacific theaters of war. In November 1942, he enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve and was trained in 1943 at the U.S. Naval Academy as a meteorologist for the Navy. In July 1944, Hammond began service as an Aerology Officer, Division Officer, and Watch Officer on the seaplane tender U.S.S. St. George, “mothership” to a squadron of 15 seaplane reconnaissance bombers supporting the Pacific Fleet. His ship endured attacks by Japanese fighter planes, torpedo bombers, and kamikazes, one of which hit the St. George. Hammond flew combat area reconnaissance missions as weather and intelligence analyst for sea/ air operations, for which he was awarded the Naval Air Medal. His missions included flights over Nagasaki and Hiroshima within days after the dropping of the atomic bombs. On returning to civilian life, Hammond resumed studies and teaching at UC Berkeley, where he completed his doctoral dissertation in physical geography. His career in university teaching and research subsequently took him to University of Nebraska (Lincoln) from 1948-49, the University of Wisconsin (Madison) from 1949-1964, Syracuse University from 1964-1970, and the University of Tennessee (Knoxville) in 1970, where he remained until his retirement in 1987. At Wisconsin, Hammond was co-author of major revised editions of a leading college geography textbook, published numerous maps, and served on the editorial board of the Britannica Atlas. At UT, he served for six years as Chair of the Geography Department, assisting in its development and growth. Hammond was known to be a passionate teacher of undergraduate and graduate students.

Edwin H. Hammond (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 45(6): 18.

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Reds Wolman

M. Gordon “Reds” Wolman was a towering figure in 20th century fluvial geomorphology and an internationally-respected expert in river science, water resources management, and environmental education. He died on February 24, 2010, at the age of 85, in Baltimore.

Wolman was a member of the Johns Hopkins University faculty for more than 50 years, where he helped to establish the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering. He received a bachelor’s degree in geology from Johns Hopkins in 1949. He later earned his doctorate at Harvard University, also in geology.

Wolman’s pioneering research fundamentally shaped our understanding of river forms and processes. In his PhD research at Harvard and subsequent work with Luna Leopold at the U.S. Geological Survey, Wolman played a central role in defining rivers in a modern, quantitative framework that still provides the standard against which new models and concepts are evaluated.

Wolman educated scores of students who continue to advance our scientific understanding of landscape morphology and hydrologic processes. He co-authored the classic Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology, a pioneering work in the study of landform development, with Luna Leopold and John Miller, a book that has been a standard in the field for 40 years and continues to be used widely.

Wolman’s career was defined by an extraordinary commitment to the application of research to river management and policy. Wolman demonstrated that relatively common floods do the most work in shaping river channels and, further, that there is remarkable consistency in the frequency of these “effective” floods. This result has guided interpretation of rivers and challenged river theory for the past 50 years, while also providing important input into modern channel restoration and design.

Wolman’s scholarly honors included election to both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.

Reds Wolman (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 45(5): 15.

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