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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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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The Professional Geographer

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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Jasper Harris

Jasper Louis “Jack” Harris, Chair of Environmental, Earth and Geospatial Sciences at North Carolina Central University, Durham, died in the fall of 2009.

Harris served on the faculty of North Carolina Central University in Durham for 34 years. He authored numerous articles and professional papers in scientific journals and also served on review panels for many federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation. He received his B.S. from North Carolina Central University, and earned an M.A. and PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition to the AAG, Harris was a member of the American Meteorological Society, the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and the American Water Resources Association.

Jasper Harris (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 45(5): 15.

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Larry Ford

Larry Ford died on September 17, 2009. He was a longtime professor of geography at San Diego State University, where he spent his entire professional career after earning a PhD from the University of Oregon in 1970. Ford’s interests included urban geography, comparative urbanization, urban form/ design, cultural meanings of urban space, downtown revitalization and historic preservation. Known as an innovative thinker and a persuasive writer, he authored the acclaimed books, Cities and Buildings: Skyscrapers, Skidrows, and Suburbs (1994) and America’s New Downtowns: Reinvention and Revitalization (2003), as well as the thought-provoking The Spaces Between Buildings (2000), which examined ordinary and often unnoticed features of the urban landscape such as alleys, driveways and other recesses and suppressed cultural spaces. More recently, Ford wrote Metropolitan San Diego (2004) and My Kind of Suburb: the Inter- War Years in California (forthcoming from The Center for American Places). Ford received many accolades throughout his career. He was presented with a Distinguished Service Award from the Historical Site Board of the City of San Diego in 1981; a Distinguished Teacher Award from the National Council for Geographic Education in 1985; and a Distinguished Service Award from the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers in 1995. He occupied the Benjamin and Louise Carroll Revolving Endowed Chair of Urban Studies at the University of Oregon in the Spring of 2000, and was awarded the Distinguished Educator Award by the California Geographical Society in 2004. Much of his inspiration for research on comparative urbanism came from a number of Fulbright awards. Within the disciplines of geography, urban planning, anthropology and sociology, Ford is known for his conceptual models of urban structure, the most enduring of which is “A Model of Latin American City Structure” (Geographical Review 1980, co-authored with Ernst Griffin). Ford served as President of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers in 1982-1983, as an AAG Regional Councillor, and as a member of the American Geographical Society Council (1996-2003 and 2004-2009). He also served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Geography and the Geographical Review. A recently completed Planetizen poll of architects and urban planners ranked Ford as among the world’s top 100 urban thinkers, placing his name alongside notables such as Frederick Law Olmstead, Walter Benjamin, William H. Whyte, Henri Lefebvre, Lewis Mumford, and Thomas Jefferson.

Larry Ford (Necrology) 2009. AAG Newsletter 44(10): 17.

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John Odland

Professor emeritus John Odland of the Department of Geography at Indiana University died on September 14, 2009. Odland joined Indiana University in 1970 as lecturer and rose through the ranks to the position of professor in 1989. He served the department as chair from 1989 to 1993 and retired in December of 2007.

Odland was known as a rigorous scholar with diverse research interests. These included national and international migration, spatial analyses of labor markets, urban and regional economic inequalities, and spatial modeling. His teaching interests included population geography, mathematical and statistical models in geography, and geographic information systems. Born in Saskatchewan on March 26, 1943, Odland spent his early years in North Dakota, Montana, and Oregon. Working his way through college primarily as a road and bridge surveyor, Odland received his B.S. in geography from Oregon State University in 1966 and earned an M.S. from the same department the following year. He acquired his PhD from Ohio State University in 1972, where his mentors Emilio Casetti, Leslie King, and Reginald Golledge were at the forefront of the quantitative revolution in human geography. Following this lead, Odland became an outstanding spatial modeler, quantifier, and economic geographer with a strong reputation as an empiricist. Odland was also known as an influential teacher and mentor who constantly sought to motivate and facilitate excellence in the students and colleagues with whom he interacted. He has been referred to by colleagues as selfless in his willingness to provide mentorship and to serve as a reviewer for tenure and promotion cases from across the country and hundreds of journal articles and research proposals.

John Odland (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 44(10): 17.

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Henry L. Hunker

Henry Louis Hunker, Professor Emeritus at Ohio State University, died on April 10, 2009. Hunker began his long association with Ohio State University in 1949. He completed a PhD there in 1953, was appointed Professor of Geography, and later served as Professor in the School of Public Administration. He retired in 1994 following 41 years of service. In 1957, Hunker was Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Queensland, Australia, and in 1972-1973 was a battelle Memorial Institute Fellow. He served in various administrative positions at Ohio State, including Assistant Dean of the College of Commerce and business Administration 1966-68; Director, Center for Community and Regional Analysis 1968-1970; Associate Dean of the College of business 1989-90; and Director of the Ohio State Summer Program at Oxford University in England 1983-1985. Hunker’s work in economic geography appeared in many professional and popular journals. He authored several books, including Industrial Development, Concepts and Principles (1974), and Columbus: A Personal Geography (2000). His courses attracted future business leaders in Columbus and Central Ohio. Hunker also served his profession as editor of The East Lakes Geographer from 1963-72.

Henry L. Hunker (Necrology). 2009. AAG Newsletter 44(7): 19.

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Mahmut Gokmen

Mahmut Gokmen, a PhD student in Geography at the University of Oklahoma, died July 21, 2008 in Norman, Oklahoma. He was 27.

Gokmen was born in Havza, Turkey on July 2, 1981. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Istanbul in 2002. He completed his master’s degree at the University of Akron in 2007 under the supervision of Ghazi-Walid Falah. At the University of Oklahoma, Gokmen was working on his PhD under the supervision of Darren Purcell.

Mahmut’s research interests included political geography, geopolitics, sovereignty, territoriality, and the history of geographical thought. He was the author (with Tyler Haas) of “Modern Mapping of Orientalism on the Arab World: National Geographic Magazine, 1990-2006” in The Arab World Geographer (volume 10, 2007). He received the Charles Standley Memorial Award for outstanding graduate student publication from the OU Department of Geography in April 2008.

Mahmut Gokmen (Necrology). 2008. AAG Newsletter 43(8): 17.

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Bill Hance

Professor emeritus and former chair of the department of geography at Columbia, Bill Hance, died on July 12, 2008. Hance was born in New York City. He served during World War II as a naval officer and later earned his PhD from Columbia University (1949). Hance was an active member of the American Geographical Society and served a term as AGS President from 1972-73. He also served on the faculty advisory committees of the American Assembly, the Columbia University Press, and the Smithsonian Institution International Program on Population Research, and on many Columbia committees including the University Senate.

Hance was a founding fellow and director of the African Studies Association. In 1967, he was named an honorary fellow of the AGS, and was honored by the Nigerian Society of Geographers for “distinguished contributions to the science of geography in Africa.” He gave visiting lectures on Africa at many of American colleges and universities in the 1950s, when the future of Africa was emerging an important topic of public debate in the U.S. in the years following WW II. Hance also served as a consultant to several government agencies, including the State Department and the Office of Naval Research.

Bill Hance (Necrology). 2008. AAG Newsletter 43(8): 17.

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