Peter H. Nash Sr.

Peter Nash died on January 19, 2011. He was Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Waterloo, Canada.

Nash took a B.A. degree at UCLA in 1942 before enlisting in the U.S. Army. He won two Purple Hearts and the Bronze Star during World War II, serving with the United States 160th Engineer Combat Battalion and the 12th Army Group Intelligence Service. After the war he took an MCP from the Harvard Graduate School of Design (1949), an M.P.A. from the Graduate School of Public Administration (1956), and a Ph.D. from Harvard University (1958).

As his career unfolded, Nash moved from Medford, Massachusetts, to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, to the University of Cincinnati, to the University of Rhode Island. In 1970, he became the founding dean of the new faculty of environmental studies at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. In each of these stages of his career he was involved in applied geography with special reference to planning and administration. As the years passed, he became ever more interested in the larger reaches of thought. At Waterloo the new faculty included four academic units: architecture, geography, man-environment studies, and urban and regional planning. Nash studied and published in each of these units.

Nash published 180 items including articles, reviews, and notes during an active career. These are listed as appendix B in Abstract Thoughts: Concrete Solutions: Essays in Honour of Peter Nash (1987. Eds. L. Guelke and R. Preston). Included in this collection of 15 essays by geographers whose lives were touched by Nash is his autobiographical essay, “The Making of a Humanist Geographer: a circuitous journey.” This chapter reveals study with Whittlesey at Harvard, participations at IGU Conferences, his enthusiasm for music and its place in the humanities, administrative moves encouraging ever more study of the environment, participation in the Delos conferences, and activity within the AAG. Some of his other interests are indicated by his membership of the board of directors of the Kitchener-Waterloo Philharmonic Choir, Kitchener Rotary International American Planning Association, and the American Geographical Society.

Peter H. Nash Sr. (Necrology). 2011. AAG Newsletter 46(4): 29.

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Charles F. Lane

Charles Franklin Lane, professor emeritus of geography at Longwood College (now University) in Farmville, Virginia and longtime member of the AAG, died on December 31, 2010 in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Lane was born December 10, 1919 in Knox County, Tennessee. He received his B.A. degree from the University of Tennessee in 1944 and his M.S. in 1945. He then pursued graduate work at Clark University and Northwestern University, finishing his Ph.D. at the latter institution in 1951. After teaching at the University of Georgia, he began his 35-year tenure as professor of geography and geology at Longwood College in 1951. During his career at Longwood, he served as president and journal editor of the Virginia Geographical Society; state coordinator for the National Council for Geographic Education; managing editor of the Virginia Journal of Science; chairman of the Virginia Resource-Use Educational Council; and president and secretary-treasurer of the Virginia Social Science Association.

Charles F. Lane (Necrology). 2011. AAG Newsletter 46(5): 22.

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William Beetschen

C. William “Bill” Beetschen died in 2010 at the age of 84. Born in Pekin, Illinois, he later moved to Bremerton, Washington. He joined the U.S. Navy in July of 1943 at the age of 17. He was assigned to the Argus 27 unit and later to an aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Shangri-La, CV-38, where he served as a radarman third class prior to his discharge in April, 1946. A brief summary of his wartime activities in the Pacific appears in the book, Heroes Among Us, Volume 2. In November 1950, he was recalled and served on the U.S.S. J.C. Butler (DE 339) during the early days of the Korean War. Beetschen earned his Ph.D. from the University of Washington and later moved to Washington, D.C. to work for the U.S. Geologic Survey, where he spent the majority of his professional career. He did early work on the National Atlas of the United States and was often responsible for USGS liaison with the domestic and international cartographic communities, map and atlas publishers, federal and state mapping agencies, and the public. His wife, Liz Beetschen, served as the AAG Executive Assistant for 30 years.

C. William “Bill” Beetschen (Necrology). 2011. AAG Newsletter 46(4): 29.

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Daniel J. Hogan

Daniel J. Hogan, for 35 years as a Professor at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), in Campinas, Brazil, near Sao Paolo, has died. A major contributor to the field of population and environment, Hogan trained many top Brazilian demographers and was part of the first (and only) Committee on Population and Environment at IUSSP in 1990-94, which helped pave the way for the development of both PERN and the new field of Population and Environment. He organized and hosted the first international conference on the topic in Campinas in 1992, which included the first significant presentation of findings from the initial 1990 survey of migrant colonists in Ecuador, along with other early case studies on population and environment in the Philippines, India, Nepal, Thailand, Cameroon, Brazil, Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica, Argentina and Peru.

Hogan was a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, former president of Brazilian Population Association (ABEP), and served as Professor and Founding Researcher of the Unicamp Population Studies Center (NEPO) and the Environmental Studies Center (NEPAM). Hogan was also an active member of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP), the Population Geography commission of the International Geographical Union (IGU), and Population & Environment’s editorial board.

Daniel J. Hogan (Necrology). 2010. AAG Newsletter 45(9): 22.

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James Wheeler

James O. Wheeler, the Merle Prunty, Jr., Professor Emeritus, Department of Geography, University of Georgia, died at his home in Athens, Georgia, on Thursday, December 9, 2010. Born in Muncie, Indiana, on March 7, 1938, he was the son of educators Emerson Franklin Wheeler and Ruby Rachel McCreery Wheeler. He attended Indiana public schools and received his undergraduate degree from Ball State Teachers College (now Ball State University). After teaching English and geography in junior high and high school, he began graduate work at Indiana University, where he was awarded the M.A. in 1963 and the Ph.D. in 1966.

Wheeler’s early teaching career at the college level included positions at Indiana University (Gary), Ohio State University, Western Michigan University, and Michigan State University. In 1971, he joined the faculty of the University of Georgia’s Department of Geography, where he served as department head from 1975 to 1983. He advised graduate students and taught until his retirement in 1999, and his active professional life of writing and research continued until his death.

Wheeler served as head of two divisions of the Association of American Geographers, first as chair of the East Lakes Division and later as president of the Southeastern Division. He published numerous research articles and authored two widely used textbooks, Economic Geography and Urban Geography. He was a founding editor of the journal Urban Geography, which he co-edited from 1980 to 2003. In addition, from 1992 to 2003 he served as editor of the Southeastern Geographer.

Wheeler was inducted into Phi Kappa Phi and received the Creative Research Medal from the University of Georgia, Honors from the Association of American Geographers, and the Southeastern Division of the AAG’s (SEDAAG) Research Award, Outstanding Service Award, and Lifetime Achievement Award.

James O. Wheeler (Necrology). 2011. AAG Newsletter 46(2): 45.

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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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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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The Professional Geographer

March 15, 2010

Paul Dean Simkins

Paul Dean Simkins passed away on February 9, 2010 at the age of 82.

Simkins was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, on October 1, 1927. He graduated from the University of Missouri at Columbia with a B.A. in 1951 and a Master of Arts in Geography in 1954. He completed his PhD in 1961 at the University of Wisconsin.

Simkins spent his professional career as professor of geography at Pennsylvania State University. His specialties included Latin America, migration, and population. Simkins was a member of the Pennsylvania Geographical Society and received a distinguished teaching award in 1990. He was a longtime volunteer with the American Association of University Women, as well as a driver for the State College Area Meals-on-Wheels. He was an avid wild flower enthusiast and photographer and was on the Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania Native Plant Society. He received the outstanding teacher award from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences in 1974.

Paul Dean Simkins (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 45(5): 15.

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Robert W. Marx

Robert W. Marx, former Chief of the Geography Division at the U.S. Census Bureau, died following an illness. Marx served as the Geography Division’s Chief from 1983 to 2003, interrupted only by a three-year period as Associate Director in the 1990s to prepare for the 2000 Census. He was the architect of the Census Bureau’s TIGER System, which began in the early 1980s as a collaborative effort with the U.S. Geological Survey. Marx was known as a trailblazer who sought new ways to advance the importance of census geography through technological advances that were made practical through useful applications. By making spatial data for the nation available, the TIGER effort opened the way for GIS development and pioneered an entire new industry. Bob Marx began his GIS career in the early 1960s while a student in geography and urban planning at the University of Minnesota, studying under John Borchert. To cover his educational expenses, he worked in the offi ces of Hodne Associates, Architects and Planners, preparing land use and comprehensive plan maps for small communities in Minnesota and Illinois under the auspices of the former “Section 701” program of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In this capacity, he used the precursor to modern automated GIS methods – mylar base maps and clear overlays emblazoned with Zipa- Tone shadings and Presstype letters – to create the various “views” that illustrated combinations of information integral to the planning process. After joining the Census Bureau in 1966, Marx helped launch the Bureau’s then fl edgling Metropolitan Map Series, which provided the base for the Address Coding Guides that covered the 145 largest urban centers of the United States for the 1970 decennial census. Although crude by today’s standards, these two systems – comprising the base map information of streets, street names, address ranges, rivers, lakes and their names, railroads, governmental unit boundaries and names, census tract boundaries and numbers – once entered into the Census Bureau’s computers and enhanced with the Dual Independent Map Encoding (DIME) technologies, this series evolved into the Geographic Base Files (GBFs) covering the 287 largest urban centers of the 1980 census, and then to the Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) files that covered the entire United States, Puerto Rico, and the associated Island Areas of the 1990 census and Census 2000. During his more than 36-year career at the Census Bureau, Marx received several awards for exceptional performance, including the Department of Commerce’s Gold and Silver Medals, and the Meritorious Presidential Rank Award. A memorial/tribute session in honor of Bob Marx is currently being organized at the AAG Annual Meeting for the evening of Wednesday, April 14. Consult your conference program for place and time.

Robert W. Marx (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 45(3): 14.

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