Jim Goodman

Long-time faculty member and former Chair of the Department of Geography at the University of Oklahoma, Jim Goodman passed away on November 15, 2004. .

James M. Goodman was born in Henryetta, Oklahoma on July 23, 1929. He earned his BA at the University of Oklahoma in 1952 and his MS and PhD at Northwestern University in 1953 and 1961, respectively. He taught at Western Kentucky State University (1956-64); Wisconsin State University-Oshkosh (1964-66); Oregon College of Education (1966-67); and the University of Oklahoma (1967-93), where he was Chair of the Department of Geography in his last seven years. During his tenure at OU, Jim was President of the National Council for Geographic Education (1980-81). He was founder and the first Director of the Oklahoma Alliance for Geographic Education. He was the author of The Navajo Atlas, which was published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 1982. After Jim retired from OU, he served as geographer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC, for two years before moving with his wife Mary to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Jim Goodman (Necrology). 2005. AAG Newsletter 40(11): 17.

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William Wallace

Retired forty-year University of New Hampshire professor, William H. Wallace died of liver cancer on October 29, 2004. He was born in Chicago, December 10, 1924. After attending Beloit College in Wisconsin, Wallace entered the graduate program in geography at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, receiving his Master of Science degree in 1950 and his PhD in 1956. His first academic position was at the University of Auckland in 1952. After returning to the U.S. in 1954, Wallace joined the faculty of Rutgers University.

Wallace began an appointment at the University of New Hampshire in 1956 and served on the faculty for forty years, retiring in 1997. He introduced the major program in geography in 1964 and established the Department of Geography in 1968. Wallace served as chair of the Department of Geography for twenty-four years. He was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1963 and was a Fulbright lecturer in Norway in 1971. Wallace was active in the AAG, the New England-St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society and the Eastern Historical Geography Association. His most recent scholarship focused on the Historical Geography of New England, particularly issues of colonial settlement and land division. Earlier in his career he wrote extensively about railroads.

William Wallace (Necrology). 2005. AAG Newsletter 40(11): 17.

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Arthur E. Karinen

Arthur E. Karinen, professor emeritus in geography, passed away May 25, 2004, at the age of eighty-five.

Karinen earned his B.A. and M.A. from UC Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland.

Karinen joined the California State University-Chico faculty in 1959 and retired in 1986. Prior to coming to Chico, Karinen had held positions at Ohio State, University of Maryland and the Helsinki School of Economics.

He was a member of the AAG and the American Congress on Surveying Mapping.

An expert in cartography and the economic geography of Europe, Karinen was a consultant to the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1958-59 and was a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Finland in 1970. He contributed to many atlases and publications, and was co-author of California: Land of Contrast and California, both of which went through several editions and revisions.

Arthur E. Karinen (Necrology). 2004. AAG Newsletter 39(7): 28.

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Larry Hargrave

Larry Hargrave, 61, of Medford, Oregon died May 15, 2004, at home surrounded by family and friends after a battle with leukemia.

Hargrave completed his undergraduate work at Southern Oregon University and had just received his master’s in Geography from Miami University in Ohio. He returned to school after full careers first in the lumber industry and then as a financial consultant.

Larry Hargrave (Necrology). 2004. AAG Newsletter 39(7): 28.

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George Carter

Geographer George F. Carter died March 16, 2004.

Carter earned his A.B. in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and then worked as curator of anthropology at the San Diego Museum of Man (1934-38). In 1942 he earned his Ph.D. in geography under Carol O. Sauer at the University of California, Berkeley.

Carter served as an analyst for the Office of Strategic Services (1942-43, 1945), before entering academia definitively. He taught from 1943-67 in the Isaiah Bowman Department of Geography at the Johns Hopkins University (where he was chair 1944-58) and afterward as Distinguished Professor Geography at Texas A&M University until his retirement in 1978.

Carter was a noted scholar in the field of early transoceanic spreads of culture and “Early Man” in America.

George F. Carter (Necrology). 2004. AAG Newsletter 39(7): 28

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Tom McKnight

Tom McKnight died peacefully of kidney problems on February 16, 2004.

Shortly after his 75th birthday, he underwent hip replacement and during the rehabilitation process developed the kidney problems that lead to his death.

McKnight earned a bachelor of arts degree in geology at Southern Methodist in 1949, a master’s in geography at Colorado in 1951, and a Ph.D. in geography and meteorology at Wisconsin in 1955. He began a distinguished teaching and writing career at UCLA in 1956. He retired there in 1993, having gone from Assistant Professor to Full Professor, and was Professor Emeritus at the time of his death. He played many roles at UCLA in those thirty-seven years, and served as departmental Chair from 1978-83.

It was during his term as Chair that he initiated an outreach effort to community college teachers in Southern California. Periodic meetings of varied teachers led to a creative and stimulating interaction between faculty in different academic settings. The seeds of the national Geographic Alliance movement were planted in this McKnight-UCLA innovation. The National Geographic Society diffused this extraordinarily popular concept of teachers from K-12 through to graduate level all working together in the promotion of increased geographic interest, both in education and public awareness.

McKnight’s breadth of belief in geography is shown in his love of the concept of “landscape appreciation” which he defined as “an understanding of everything that one can see, hear, and smell—both actually and vicariously—in humankind’s zone of living on the earth.” During the last decade of his life, McKnight and his wife, geographer Joan Clemons, carried these interests to all corners of the world, and Tom wrote of the wonders of such geography in a number of evocative texts and numerous articles. Although Australia received the lion’s share of McKnight’s foreign fieldwork and writing, his global interests were catholic and touched all continents except Antarctica.

Anyone wishing to remember Tom McKnight in a more formal way is encouraged to send contributions to Friends of Geography (FOG) c/o Department of Geography, 1255 Bunche Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1524.

Tom McKnight (Necrology). 2004. AAG Newsletter 39(5): 19.

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Bob Huke

Our friend and colleague, Bob Huke, passed away on January 17, 2004. Born March 3, 1925, Bob was a devoted and beloved geographer and friend of Dartmouth. He joined the AAG in 1949.

Huke earned his undergraduate from Dartmouth in 1948. After getting his Ph.D. in geography from Syracuse in 1953, he started teaching at Dartmouth immediately. In 1990 Bob retired and became an active emeritus professor. He was also a veteran and served honorably in the Marine Corps, where he received the Purple Heart after being wounded in Okinawa during WWII.

Bob enriched the lives of many through his teaching, research, and his involvement with the AAG. He served on numerous AAG committees at both the national level and as part of the New England St. Lawrence Valley division and he was a focal component of the Asia Specialty Group. Bob’s research interests focused primarily on Southeast Asia, and he was a specialist in agricultural and population geography. Bob was also extremely active in the Retired Geographers Specialty Group and served as their secretary-treasurer in 1999 and led hugely successful trips of the Retired Geographers Organization to Myanmar and Vietnam.

He had a long-term collaboration with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Banos, Philippines. Bob wrote a series of key papers in the 1970s on the Green Revolution, and he had an international reputation for his work on the geography of food and hunger, the Green Revolution, and Southeast Asia. He published extensively and he was the chief investigator on projects funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, NASA, and the Fulbright Foundation.

To memorialize Bob’s ardent field scholarship and devoted undergraduate teaching, the department is establishing a research travel fund. We have numerous students doing senior honors theses every year, with many of them travelling overseas (as Bob would love). Donations may be made out to: Bob Huke Student Research Award, and mailed to: Kelly White, Department of Geography, 6017 Fairchild, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH 03755.

Bob Huke (Necrology). 2004. AAG Newsletter 39(3): 11.

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John Lounsbury

John F. Lounsbury, born in Perham, Minnesota, passed away on December 26, 2003, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, at the age of eighty-five.

John received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Illinois, and his Ph.D. from Northwestern University (1951). He began his career at Antioch College, and later taught at Eastern Michigan University. John joined Arizona State University as chair in 1969 and remained in that position until 1977. He remained in the department until retiring at age sixty-eight, in 1987.

During his tenure at Arizona State, Lounsbury was instrumental in establishing a Ph.D. program in 1972 and through his sociable personality did a great deal to bring harmony to a fractionalized department.

He authored or co-authored several books, chapters, and many journal articles in areas including physical geography, economic geography, planning, agricultural geography, gaming, and land use policy.

John’s greatest contribution to the discipline, however, was as a mediator and consensus builder. This is reflected in his various roles as director of projects including the “Spatial Analysis of Land Use Project,” the “Environment-based Education Project,” and the “Commission on College Geography.” In the period 1957-1980 he was personally engaged in, or supervised, a series of grants from various sources that totaled in excess of $2,700,000.

His duty as an officer during World War II was defining experience. He was among the first to land on Omaha Beach on D-Day. Badly wounded, for the rest of his life he walked with a limp. He received numerous awards and medals for his military service.

Lounsbury had an easy teaching style, and was famous for injecting humor and anecdotal stories in his lectures. An excellent mentor, he guided several M.A. students and four Ph.D. students.

A student scholarship fund was established in John’s name at Arizona State University. To contribute to this fund, send a check made out to “A.S.U. Foundation-Lounsbury Travel Fund,” and mail to the ASU Geography Department, Tempe, AZ 85287-0104.

John Lounsbury (Necrology). 2004. AAG Newsletter 39(2): 17.

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Chauncy Harris

A former president of the AAG, Chauncy Dennison Harris, was at the time of his death on December 26, 2003 the Samuel N. Harper Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. Awarded a Rhodes scholarship in 1934, he studied geography at Oxford and the London School of Economics and then completed his training at the University of Chicago where he received the Ph.D. degree in 1940. His dissertation study of Salt Lake City was an early example of urban as opposed to rural or environmental focus in American geography. After wartime service in the Department of State and OSS, Professor Harris returned to the University of Chicago where he remained for the rest of his career. His early publications on urban functions and industrial location in the United States resulted in prompt recognition by the geographical profession and rapid promotion at the University of Chicago. While still in military service in Washington, he began to study Russian and developed what would be a life-long interest in the Soviet Union. The extraordinarily rapid urbanization of the USSR was the focus of many articles and his much acclaimed book “Cities of the Soviet Union,” published in 1970. The ethnic complexity of the Soviet realm was an additional major subject of investigation. Soon recognized as a serious and objective scholar, he was well received during his many trips to the USSR and made a persistent effort to bring the work of Soviet geographers to the attention of Western colleagues. Together with Theodore Shabad of the New York Times he played a key role in launching and writing for the journal “Soviet Geography: Review and Translation.” He also found time to pursue an interest in bibliography and produced reference works of enduring value.

In addition to his research and teaching, professor Harris served for several years as Secretary-General of the International Geographical Union, a position that permitted him to make good use of his ability to speak French, German, and Russian. At the University of Chicago he served not only as a professor but also as Dean of its Social Sciences Division, Director of its program of international study, and Vice President for Academic Resources. After reaching mandatory retirement age in 1984, he continued to be active in research and wrote articles on German unification and the ethnic composition of Eastern Europe and the successor states of the former Soviet Union.

Professor Harris received many tributes during his long and productive career, including several honorary degrees, membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and medals from the American Geographical Society, Royal Geographical Society, and Berlin Geographical Society. With his natural dignity, four language fluency, and unfailing courtesy, Chauncy Harris acted in many ways as a diplomat as well as a scholar.

Chancy Dennison Harris (Necrology). 2004. AAG Newsletter 39(2): 17.

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George Beatty

George F. Beatty, Professor Emeritus, Department of Geography, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana died on December 3, 2003. He was born in Cowan, Indiana on June 9, 1918. Beatty received his B.S. from Ball State University in 1949 and M.S. and Ph.D. from University of Illinois in 1951 and 1958 respectively. From 1943-54 he worked at the Department of Geography at Calcutta University, India on a Fulbright research grant. Before coming to Ball State, George worked for the University of Tennessee at Martin and Northern Illinois University. He joined Ball State in 1958 and retired in 1983.

George F Beatty (Necrology). 2004. AAG Newsletter 39(2): 18

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