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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Frank F. Ehrenthal

Frank Ehrenthal, noted urban planner and architect, passed away on August 2, 2003, aged 93.

Ferenc Frederik Ehrenthal was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1910. From a young age he was determined to be an architect and was studied at the University of Florence, Italy, earning a doctorate in architecture in 1935.

After spending four years as an architect in Milan, Ehrenthal emigrated to the United States in 1939, anglicizing his name to Frank. He settled in New York and worked as an architect until joining the naval architecture firm, George Sharp Inc. in 1942. There he helped to design destroyer escort ships and escort aircraft carriers that protected cargo vessels from enemy submarines as the convoys crossed the Atlantic; these proved vital for the war effort.

In 1945 Ehrenthal moved to San Francisco and established an architectural practice, designing an array of buildings over the next 18 years.

His academic career in architecture and urban design began in 1963 when he was invited to join the faculty at Penn State University. He moved to Oklahoma State University in 1965 and then to Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1968, where he stayed until retirement as Emeritus Professor in 1980. There he was instrumental in creating the Graduate Division of Environmental and Urban Systems, elevating the importance of integrated planning in the public domain. He also led the research and design efforts that eventually created the bus stop shelters seen in many cities.

In 1981, he founded Architects, Designers, Planners for Social Responsibility, an organization that promotes disarmament, protection of the environment and responsible planning practices.

Ehrenthal belonged to the Unitarian Church all his life. Throughout his life and career, he was dedicated to Unitarian-Universalist principles and was a member of local congregations wherever he lived. His architecture is found in a number of Unitarian-Universalist churches located throughout the U.S. including The Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California, and the Sepulveda Unitarian Universalist Society church which was recognized as “one of the most distinctive ecclesiastical buildings in all of Southern California.” It was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 2009.

He wrote a book tracing the origins of Unitarianism among the Hungarian Szekely people and the relationships between Unitarianism and early Christianity in Eastern Europe and Asia. From Mongolia to Transylvania: Szekely Origins and Radical Faith: The Birth of Unitarianism uses source material written in archaic languages and brings to light little known information about Eastern European history within a geographic context. This work of scholarship was published posthumously by his family in 2014.

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Raymond “Tom” Hill

Professor Emeritus Tom Hill died Sunday July 27, 2003. Hill taught geography for 51 years at Concord College. He received his undergraduate degree from Southeast Missouri State Teachers College and his masters degree from George Peabody in Nashville. R.T., as he was known to his friends, initiated the Appalachian Studies program at Concord College and the Biennial Conference on Appalachian Geography. He is survived by his wife Jean and his daughters Mary Grace and Martha and their families. Professor Hill was 81 years old.

Raymond “Tom” Hill (Necrology). 2003. AAG Newsletter 38(9): 16.

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Terence Burke

Terence Burke, longtime professor and administrator at the University of Massachusetts, and associate to the president at the University of Arizona from 1982 until 1998, died 17 June 2003 at the age of 72. He is survived by his wife of 19 years, Philanne “Toppy” Burke, four children, and five grandchildren.

Born in Leicestershire, England, Burke received Smith-Mundt and Fulbright Awards to study historical geography at Clark University in Massachusetts. After earning his doctorate from the University of Birmingham, England, he served as a Flight Lieutenant with the Royal Air Force for four years before coming back to the United States to begin teaching as an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. During his 20-year tenure at Amherst, he received many awards including the Distinguished Teacher Award, and was widely published. He eventually moved on to become associate to Henry Kofler, the Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts system, and in 1982, followed Dr. Koffler to the University of Arizona to act as associate to the president. He retired from this position in 1998.

A memorial service was held 23 June at the First United Methodist Church of Tucson, Arizona. Donations may be made in Dr. Burke’s honor to the American Red Cross or the Community Food Bank of Tucson.

Terence Burke (Necrology). 2003. AAG Newsletter 38 (8): 21

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