In Memoriam |
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Robert H. Bremner, professor emeritus, The Ohio State University, died on September 7, 2002. He is survived by his wife, Catherine, and two daughters, Ann and Sue. He received his BA from Baldwin Wallace College, and the MA and PhD from Ohio State University. After civilian service in the U.S. War Department and the American Red Cross in World War II, he taught in the history department of Ohio State University from 1946 to 1980, focusing on social thought, social welfare, philanthropy, and poverty. Yet Bob was not a narrow specialist, and had an amazing catholicity of interests to include literature, art, architecture, towns and cities and, always, their people. Among his many publications are From the Depths: The Discovery of Poverty in the United States (1956), American Philanthropy (1960), Children and Youth in America: A Documentary History (1970), and The Public Good: Philanthropy and Welfare in the Civil War (1980). His many awards included fellowships from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University, and the Rockefeller Foundation. At Ohio State he received the Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching. Bob formally retired in 1980, but continued to research, write, and always stay connected to his students even through his last days. In 1989, as a tribute to his importance in their lives, Bob's graduate students dedicated a festschrift in his honor. Bob contributed to the historical profession, serving on the editorial board of the American Historical Review, chairing the Social Welfare History Group, serving as president of the Ohio Academy of History, and was a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee, and the Panel on Federal Programs for Youth of the National Academy of Science. For all of his professional accomplishments, he was, above all else, a modest and humble man who was always interested in the welfare of his graduate students. Never an entrepreneurial academic "scrambler" concerned with status, self-promotion, or bathing in the glory of his own ego, Bob was a superb and profoundly dedicated teacher who would have wanted to be remembered for that more than anything else. He directed forty students toward their doctorate in history. He was a professor's professor who encouraged, inspired, and supported his graduate students' endeavors with energy, wisdom, insight, patience, and, finally, deep humanity. His family reported that in his last days in the hospital he asked about his students by name. He and his wife and life companion, Kay, never forgot their students, maintaining an interest in those who had long since finished their graduate work at OSU, following their careers and their lives with affection, letters, gifts, and cards. They entertained small legions of graduate students at their home, and in numerous restaurant or professional convention outings which became joyous, informal seminars on industrial and public architecture, city planning, the history of Ohio small towns and villages, and on such diversions as neighborhood taverns as social history. As a teacher Bob was especially skilled in explication of text: to listen to him find new insights in William Graham Sumner, analyze the broader significance of Henry George, explicate Thorstein Veblen on work and craftsmanship, or analyze Biblical notions of philanthropy were treats for his students' minds. He loved the term "turning a phrase"; he was a master stylist, and his criticism of written drafts gave ample evidence of concision and wit, always leaving room for students to expand, explore, and enhance their research and writing. His classroom demeanor was calm, modest, unassuming, and self-possessed, but beneath that gentle exterior resided a mind of steel and the muted strength of a classroom lion. In presenting ideas to his students he would read a particular passage several times, with different emphases on certain words or phrases, creating italics with his voice to make a point about interpretation. A gifted lecturer and seminar leader, he was strongest in substantive analysis and downplayed flamboyant theatrics, but always saved room for subtle and muted humor and irony which he expressed with a twinkle in his eyes and a calm and at sometimes mischievous smile on his face. Bob's graduate students developed a loyalty to this gentle and great professor that can best be described as tenacious, even ferocious. He never forgot his students, and, in the circularity of life, we shall never forget him. Roy T. Wortman James C. Olson, accomplished historian and highly regarded university administrator, died on August 17, 2005, at the age of 88. A native of Bradgate, Iowa, Olson earned his A.B. in history from Morningside College in 1938 and his master's degree and PhD from the University of Nebraska in 1939 and 1942. Both institutions, and Chonnam National University in Korea, later conferred honorary degrees on him. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. During World War II Olson served as a historian in the United States Army Air Corps in the Pacific. In 1946, he was appointed director of the Nebraska State Historical Society, a position he held for ten years. He also began teaching at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where he would become Regents Professor of History, chair of the department of history, dean of the graduate college, director of graduate program development, and vice chancellor for graduate studies and research. In 1968, Olson left Nebraska to become Chancellor of the University of Missouri–Kansas City. He later admitted to having turned down the position, only to change his mind the next day, when he and his wife realized he had made a mistake. By his own admission, it was a major turning point in his life. UMKC had become part of the University of Missouri System only two years earlier, and Olson led the university through a period of substantial growth in its curriculum and physical plant. In 1976 he was named president of the University of Missouri, a post he held until 1984. Although his work varied, James was best known as a historian of the American West. His first of several books, J. Sterling Morton (1942), which grew out of his dissertation, focused on the Nebraska resident and early leader in the American environmental movement, whose work led to the creation of Arbor Day. In 1955 Olson published History of Nebraska, which helped set the standard for modern state and local histories. He elaborated on his understanding of that standard in his 1964 presidential address to the American Association for State and Local History. In that address, which was subsequently published under the title, "The Role of Local History," Olson allowed that state of local histories were not highly regarded among professional historians. If this were to change, he argued they would have to be more than antiquarian compilations of information of interest only to state and local readers. They would have to meet the highest professional standards, placing state and local histories into the larger context of national, even international, events. With coauthor Ronald Naugle, History of Nebraska was reissued in a third edition in 1997. In 1965 Olson ventured into Native American history with his publication of Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, which, as the title suggests, was not only a biography of one of the best known Native Americans, but also an examination of the history of Native American – Anglo-American relations. He framed his history in the following manner: "Stripped to its essentials, the problem was the ancient one that always arose when one people attempted to dispossess another of their lands," but for which "no satisfactory solution" had yet been found. James Olson published two books on university administration: Higher Education: A Short Look Ahead (1979) and Serving the University of Missouri: A Memoir of Campus and System Administration (1993). His memoir, however, was not to be his last publication. Upon leaving the university presidency, Olson plunged into yet another book project, which appeared in 2003. Stuart Symington: A Life is the definitive biography of one of the nation's most influential political leaders of the twentieth century—first Secretary of the United States Air Force, four term senator from Missouri, and holder of six major presidential appointments. In 2005, shortly before his death, in recognition of this book, the University of Missouri Curators presented Olson with its Award for Scholarly Excellence. Olson served on numerous national, state, and local boards, including his chairmanship of the board of the Harry S Truman Library Institute, the Department of the Army Historical Advisory Committee, the Missouri Arts Council, and the Mid-America Arts Alliance. He served on the executive board, and as secretary-treasurer, of the Organization of American Historians, as well as on the editorial board of American Heritage. Olson leaves behind two daughters and a wife of over sixty years, Vera Farrington Olson, with whom he coauthored four books, three for young readers on Nebraska history, and, in 1988, on the sesquicentennial of the University of Missouri, The University of Missouri: An Illustrated History. In his foreword to Red Cloud, he gave "special thanks" to his wife and daughters, to whom he dedicated the book, "for cheerfully accepting the fact that vacations are times for visiting libraries, Indian reservations, and abandoned forts." In 1997 University of Missouri President Emeritus Mel George described James Olson as "a decent human being with good academic values and good personal values, who deals with people with integrity and humor." At his memorial, friends and colleagues described Olson as having "the patience for leadership and a passion for history." Bryan F. Le Beau Homer Edward Socolofsky, emeritus professor of history at Kansas State University, died on August 6, 2005, at the age of eighty-three in Manhattan, Kansas. Born May 20, 1922, in Tampa and raised in Marion, Kansas, he earned a bachelor's degree at Kansas State University in 1944. Upon graduation Socolofsky served as an artillery battery commander in the 3rd Marine Division in the Pacific theater. In 1960 he retired from the United States Marine Corps Reserves with the rank of captain. After World War II, he returned to Kansas State University where he earned his M.A. in 1947. Socolofsky then studied with Lewis E. Atherton at the University of Missouri and earned his Ph.D. in 1954. Socolofsky spent his career at Kansas State University and retired in 1992 after forty-five years of teaching. During that time, he held a Fulbright Fellowship at Punjab University in Chandigarh, India, and the positions of Carnegie Intern and Visiting Assistant Professor at Yale University. He also served twice as acting chair of the department of history. At Kansas State, Homer Socolofsky was a respected teacher and his courses always proved popular. During the course of his career, he taught an estimated ten thousand students, all in small classes. Jon Wefald, president of Kansas State University, reflected that he was "a terrific scholar and an excellent teacher." Graduate students invariably were impressed by his encyclopedic knowledge in his areas of expertise as well as by his gentle, unassuming manner. He was always generous to his students and helped them advance their careers in many ways. Homer Socolofsky was a past president of the Agricultural History Society (1968-1969). He also served as the president of the Kansas State Historical Society (1975-1976). His presidential address to the Society, entitled "Kansas in 1876," appeared in the spring 1977 issue of the Kansas Historical Quarterly. He was a strong supporter of the Kansas State Historical Society and served on its board of directors and the executive committee. Socolofsky was a member of the Western History Association and was elected to the Council in 1978; he also served on the Awards Committee. He specialized in the history of Kansas, agriculture, and the American West, particularly the Great Plains. Much of his research and article publication involved settlement and the Homestead Act. Among his book publications are: Arthur Capper: Publisher, Politician, Philanthropist (1962); with Hubert Self, Historical Atlas of Kansas (1972); Landlord William Scully (1979); with Allan Spetter, The Presidency of Benjamin Harrison (1987); and Kansas Governors (1990). After he retired, Socolofsky remained an active scholar publishing, with Virgil Dean, Kansas History: An Annotated Bibliography (1992) and A Biography of the Honorable Richard Dean Rogers, Senior United States District Judge (1995). Socolofsky also served as the historian for Kansas State University, and he enjoyed membership in the Kansas Corral of Westerners. He was a lifelong athlete and lettered in football and track at Kansas State. He placed fifth in the 1943 NCAA Championships (then called the UCAA Championships) in the javelin. After retiring, he continued to compete in the javelin at track and field meets for seniors. In 1998, he placed second in the Nike World Masters Games in Portland. A year later he placed fourth in the National Senior Games in Orlando and, in 2001, fourth in the USA Masters Championships in Baton Rouge. Four days before he died, Homer Socolofsky submitted his registration fee for a senior track and field meet scheduled later that month. He is survived by Penny, his wife of nearly fifty-nine years, six children, twelve grandchildren, and six great-grand children. Doug Hurt
Meeting John L. Thomas was a bit like encountering a figure from one of Jack's brilliant histories of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. There was the same flinty, New England resolve of a William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist who was the subject of Jack's first book, The Liberator (1963). The same outrage at the inequities of American society that so moved Henry George, one of the central figures in Jack's analysis of Gilded Age reform, Alternative America (1983). The same love of nature and of good writing that animated Bernard DeVoto and Wallace Stegner, the thinkers whose relationship was at the heart of Jack's recent A Country of the Mind (2000). And the same hunger for intellectual friendship so important to Mari Sandoz, the Great Plains novelist and historian who was the subject of the manuscript that Jack was working on when he passed away in Providence on June 11, 2005 at the age of seventy-eight. Jack first came to Brown in 1953 to earn a Ph.D. in the university's program in American Civilization. Other than a short stay in Cambridge in the early 1960s, when he was an assistant professor at Harvard, he would spend the next half-century at Brown as a member of the history department. Although Jack earned remarkable acclaim for his research—his biography of Garrison received the 1964 Bancroft Prize, the most prestigious award given to American historians—his legacy as a teacher was even more impressive. For those of us who were fortunate enough to take one of his classes (as I did in 1986), the experience could be both thrilling and a little daunting. Jack had high expectations for his students, and he was not shy about letting us know when we were not measuring up. Essays would come back tattooed with comments, and no shirking was permitted during classroom discussions. I can still recall one afternoon when Jack, frustrated that we had little to offer about our weekly reading, blurted, "If you aren't prepared, I'm not going to waste my time here," and stormed out of the room. For a moment my classmates and I sat there in stunned silence—could professors do that, leave in the middle of class? But Jack had made his point: there was to be no coasting in his classroom. For the rest of the semester, we came to class ready to engage with the reading and with one another in a way that I have seldom seen equaled in any other class that I have ever taken. Despite his passionate interest in the affairs of the day and the latest historical scholarship, Jack often seemed as if he would have been more at home in the company of the turn-of-the-century reformers whose lives he limned so eloquently in his research. Jack had little use, for instance, for computers. He wrote mainly by hand or on a trusty manual typewriter. He never acquired an email account or spent time surfing the World Wide Web. Even though the university bought him a computer shortly before his retirement, the machine remained in his office in the box in which it had arrived, untouched and unused. Instead, Jack savored his summers in his remote cabin in Maine. It was a quiet spot, ideal for reading, writing, and contemplation—and far from most intrusions of the modern world. Although Jack technically retired as the George L. Littlefield Professor of American History in 2002, the effect of this transition on his day-to-day life was negligible. His colonial home on Benefit Street remained a salon for everyone from undergraduates seeking advice on their honors theses, to graduate students on whose committees Jack still served, to colleagues hoping to get one of Jack's rigorous readings of their latest chapters. Visitors seldom failed to notice that in Jack's living room the place of pride was reserved not for his own work but for a stack of books written by his former students. The pile was impressive: over the course of his long career at Brown, Jack directed more than twenty-five dissertations in history and American civilization and over fifty-five masters and honors theses. Indeed, many of today's leading historians (as well as many notable lawyers, journalists, businesspersons, and the like) can trace their intellectual genesis to a class they took as an undergraduate or graduate student with Jack. John L. Thomas was married for forty-one years to Patricia Blake Thomas. He is survived by his son John, his daughter Jayn, and his grandchildren Blake and Chandler Ellis. Memorial contributions to the Professor Jack Thomas Fund can be made payable to: Brown University, c/o Brown University Gift Accounting, Box 1893, Providence, RI, 02912. Karl Jacoby |
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