James Murry Hunter, eighty-three, a longtime professor of geography at Georgetown University, died October 15 at his home in Rockville, Maryland of complications from a stroke.

Hunter joined the Georgetown faculty in 1946 and taught political geography until he retired in 1986. He was the author of Perspective on Ratzel’s Political Geography, published in 1983, and he co-wrote several other books on geography with other professors. He also was a visiting professor at Boston University and wrote numerous articles for professional journals.

Born in Homer City, Pennsylvania, Hunter graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He earned a master’s degree in geography from the University of Pittsburgh and a doctorate in geography from the University of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.

During World War II, he served in the Army Corps of Engineers at Fort Belvoir.

He was a member of the American Association of Geographers and the American Association of University Professors.

James Murry Hunter (Necrology). 2005. AAG Newsletter 40(11): 17.

Geography professor at Wayne State University, died April 15, 2005, at age eighty-six.

The youngest of four children, Goodman was born in Gwinn in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He studied geography at the University of Chicago, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. In 1941, he went to work for the U.S. Army Map Service in Chicago and in 1942, was drafted by the Army to make war-related maps in Washington. He was honorably discharged as a technical sergeant in 1945.

Goodman earned his PhD in geography at Northwestern University. He also met his wife, Marjorie Smith, a fellow geography student at Northwestern; they married in 1950.

He joined Wayne State University’s geography department in 1948.

In his teaching, Goodman used more than 10,000 photo slides from a lifetime of trips to Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.  Before the days of computers, he also allowed students to draft their maps in his Grosse Pointe Woods basement, which was filled with overhead cameras, tables, desks, and maps. He eventually incorporated film into his lesson plans and made a movie called “Growth Patterns in Detroit.”

In 1961, Goodman earned a Fulbright scholarship to spend a year in India to establish a geography department at the University of New Delhi.

He won numerous accolades including the Wayne State Excellence in Teaching Award in 1979 and a Distinguished Teaching Award from the NCGE in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, in 1983. Goodman retired in 1983.

Robert Goodman (Necrology). 2005. AAG Newsletter 40(6): 19.

Henry Bruman died March 6, 2005, of a heart attack. Bruman, was a longtime University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) geography professor who helped create a highly regarded map library and other programs at the Westwood campus.

A Berlin native who came to Los Angeles at age eight, Bruman earned undergraduate degrees from UCLA in chemistry and geography before receiving a doctorate in geography from UC Berkeley in 1940. He joined the UCLA faculty in 1945 and over the next four decades played a major role in the development of its geography department, acting as chair of the department from 1957 to 1962.

Bruman was an assistant professor of geography at UCLA in 1946, when he called together geography educators from across the state to discuss the status of geography in the schools of California beginning what is now know as the California Geographical Society.

Bruman was known as an expert in Latin American cultural-historical geography, plant geography and land use in the American West, and on the career of German nature researcher and explorer Alexander von Humboldt.

Shortly before his retirement in 1983, Bruman established an educational foundation that created endowed chairs at UCLA in geography and German history. He made large donations to the UCLA library, which named its map library in his honor in 1987.

Henry J. Bruman (Necrology). 2005. AAG Newsletter 40(5): 21.

Economic geographer Edgar “Ed” Conkling died November 24, 2004.

Born in Indiana in 1921, Edgar Conkling earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and sociology from Morehead State College, a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Chicago, and another master’s degree and a PhD in geography from Northwestern University. Beginning in 1961, Ed served as professor of economic geography at Kent State University and then at Queen’s University in Canada. In 1968, he moved to the State University of New York at Buffalo where he taught various courses in rural land use theory and regional development, economic geography, international trade, and regional economic integration until his retirement in 1989. During his tenure at SUNY at Buffalo, he was instrumental in creating the department’s undergraduate and graduate programs in international business, which built upon his earlier work as a manager of the home office of a multinational corporation headquartered in Chicago. He was Chair of the department from 1974-77.

In addition Conkling was Associate Editor (1963-64) and then Editor (1978-82) of The Professional Geographer, and Co-editor of the Annals of the AAG (1982-84). Among his publications are the following co-authored books: Geography of International Trade; The Geography of Economic Systems; Man’s Economic Environment; Economic Geography: Resource Use, Locational Choices, and Regional Specialization in the Global Economy; and The Global Economy: Resource Use, Locational Choice, and International Trade. Deeply involved in historic preservation during his retirement, he wrote Frederick Law Olmsted’s Point Chautauqua: The Story of an Historic Lakeside Community and was a founding member of the Point Chautauqua Historical Preservation Society.

Edgar “Ed” C. Conkling (Necrology). 2005. AAG Newsletter 40(3): 17.

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.

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.

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.