Obituary

David Van Tassel

In the early 1970s, half a decade after he arrived at Case Western Reserve University, David Van Tassel became increasingly concerned about the decline in scholarship in history and the inadequacy of history instruction in American schools. His response was to create History Day, a competition that moved the concept of science fairs to the study of history. The first History Day competition, limited to Cleveland, Ohio, attracted 129 secondary school students in 1974.
During the week of 4 June 2000, 2,112 students from all fifty states, along with family members and teachers attended the finals of the National History Day competition in College Park, Maryland. They were the representatives of nearly 40,000 teachers and 700,000 students who had competed in local and state programs that year. Their participation in the program served as the most fitting memorial possible for David Van Tassel who had died, suddenly of heart failure, on Saturday, 3 June at the age of 72.

National History Day, which during twenty-six years has introduced millions of students to historical research, was one of a number of programs and projects created by David Van Tassel during an innovative, productive career that spanned the second half of the twentieth century.

Born in Binghamton, New York, to Dr. Walter Raymond and Etta May Strathie Van Tassel, he studied at Cherry Lawn School in Darien, Connecticut, and received his A.B. in 1950 from Dartmouth. He went on to the University of Wisconsin where he studied with Merle Curti. He received his doctorate in history from Wisconsin in 1955. His dissertation on the evolution of historical societies and the historical profession in the United States appeared as the book, Recording America's Past: An Interpretation of the Development of Historical Studies in America, 1607-1884. Published by the University of Chicago Press in 1960, the volume remains the standard review of the development of historical studies in America.

From 1961 to 1969 he taught at the University of Texas. He came to Case Western Reserve University as a visiting professor in 1968, and joined the history faculty there in 1969. During his thirty years at CWRU, he twice served as chair of the department for a total of ten years and held the Hiram C. Hayden and Elbert Jay Benton professorships.

Van Tassel came to CWRU at a time when the department was losing faculty positions and the general prospects for the employment of graduates were diminishing. His leadership turned the department around as it created the Archival Administration and Museum Studies programs and garnered grant support for a variety of Van Tassel-led initiatives including National History Day, the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, and the project, Humanistic Values and Aging.
It seemed to many that David Van Tassel was, foremost, a consummate grant procurer. That he was, but always within the context of the highest standards of scholarship. Each of the major programs he created, National History Day, the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, archival and museum studies, and the focus on the history of aging, were predicated on creating new scholarly tools, improving research skills, or directing humanities scholarship toward new issues, and, in the case of the first two, bridging the gap between the public and the academy. History Day students and their teachers were brought into the world of primary research and the critical examination of sources. Conversely, History Day also exposed many academic historians, who served as judges, to the students and teachers who had both talent and a deep interest in history. For some, it was an eye-opening experience to see such ability outside of their peer group. The Encyclopedia, the first of its kind and the model for other municipal encyclopedias that followed, brought scholars and amateur historians together in an endeavor to create a multi-faceted review of the history of Cleveland, Ohio. His work in creating such programs was recognized when the National Endowment for the Humanities presented him with the Charles Frankel Prize in 1990. In 1998 CWRU recognized his contributions by bestowing on him the Hovorka Prize, its highest academic honor.

Van Tassel continued to produce--even while he directed a department, crafted grants, and oversaw the scholars supported by those grants. While at Texas he edited American Thought in the Twentieth Century (1967) and co-edited Science and Society in the United States. At CWRU he edited or co-edited another thirteen volumes including, Aging, Death and the Completion of Being (1979), The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History (1987, 1996), Aging and the Elderly: Humanistic Perspectives in Gerontology, and the Handbook of the Humanities and Aging. After he retired in 1998, Van Tassel continued his scholarly activities. He curated a major exhibit, Civil War! For God, Union, and Glory, at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, an agency for which he served as a trustee. At the time of his death he was engaged in writing a catalog for the exhibit that centered on a history of Cleveland and northeastern Ohio in the Civil War.
Those who met David Van Tassel for the first time perceived a somewhat quiet individual who responded to questions not with immediacy, but with somewhat delayed, yet deeply considered responses. That process of careful deliberation was his measure, epitomizing the man whom his students, colleagues, and friends knew as a rigorous scholar deeply dedicated to his profession and gifted with extraordinary foresight and persistence.

David Van Tassel is survived by his wife of fifty years, Helen Liddell Van Tassel; children and spouses: Emily Field Van Tassel and Charles Geyh of Bloomington, Indiana; Katharine Van Tassel and Richard Williams of Cleveland Heights, Ohio; Jonathan J. Van Tassel of State College, Pennsylvania; and Jeanie and Michael Swed of Missouri; and his brother, Jonathan Van Tassel of Shreveport, Louisiana.

John J. Grabowski
Case Western Reserve University