Perspectives Section

In Memoriam

Paul H. Clyde

Paul H. Clyde passed away on April 29, 1998, in Clearwater, Florida. He had been in failing health for several months. It appeared that he was in no pain and went peacefully in his sleep. He would have been 102 if he had survived to October 27, 1998.

Dr. Paul Hibbert Clyde was born in Victoria, British Columbia, on October 27, 1896, to Albert and Florence (MacNaughton) Clyde. He attended the University of British Columbia and after two years transferred to Stanford University, then known as Leland Stanford, receiving his BA in 1920, an MA in 1922, and a PhD in 1925. He was Phi Beta Kappa while at Stanford and was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from Davidson College on May 23, 1976.

Clyde was a faculty member at Ohio State University from 1925 to 1931, Stanford University from 1928 to 1929, the University of Kentucky from 1931 to 1937, and Duke University from 1937 to 1962. While at Duke he was a professor of history; University Marshall, 1948–50; director, the summer session, 1950–61; and executive secretary, University Committee on Long Range Planning, 1958–61. He resigned from Duke University in 1961 to accept the position with the Duke Endowment as secretary of the Committee on Education heading its permanent staff, a position he held 1mtil his retirement in 1969.

Clyde’s field of expertise was the Far East. He made three research trips to the Orient to obtain information for his text The Far East: A History of Western Impacts and Eastern Responses 1830–1975, which was co-authored with Burton F. Beers. The sixth edition was recently reissued in paperback form by the publishers. On one of his trips during the 1930s he had the good fortune to be introduced to Admiral Count Heihachiro Togo at his home in Tokyo. They discussed the strategy and tactics Togo used against the Russians when, as the Lord Nelson of Japan, he sent the Russian fleet to the bottom in the famous battle of the Sea of Japan in 1905.

The citation for the Honorary Doctor of Letters from Davidson College reads in part, “Canadian born and American educated, [Paul Clyde] has taught at universities from Stanford to Salzburg, most notably at Duke, where he served as distinguished professor of history. His scholarly attainments were of great use in World War II… The learned world esteems his many works on the Far East and its history. The best known of them, written with Burton F. Beers, has just gone into its sixth edition. Hailed as monumental by Sir George Sansom, its careful scholarship is valued by scholars east and west as a significant contribution to history.”

Clyde’s first marriage to Mildred R. (Smith) Clyde ended in divorce in 1941. There were two children: a daughter Mrs. Pauline M. (Clyde) Gaffney, and a son, Payson J. Clyde. Clyde married Mary Irene Elizabeth Kestler on July 28, 1942. Both wives predeceased Clyde, who had lived in Florida since the early 1970s. He is survived by his two children, three grandchildren, and one great grandchild.

Remembrances may be made to the Duke University Library, Durham, NC.

Payson J. Clyde, Hilton Head Island, SC

Harry W. Nerhood

Harry W. Nerhood passed away on April 25, 1998, at the age of 87. He received his AB at Findlay College in Ohio in 1936, an MA in history at Ohio State University, and a PhD from the same institution in 1945.

He came to Whittier College in California in 1939 as an instructor in history, and through the years rose up the academic ladder until he became chair of the history department in 1955. He took mandatory retirement in 1975 as professor emeritus but that did not conclude his association with the college. For a number of years he went back as a student to audit classes in various disciplines, as well as teaching remedial reading at a state boy’s school in Whittier. In 1982 he was invited to rejoin the college faculty on a part-time basis, where he team taught a class, “Arabs and Muslims,” as well as Russian history. This continued until the end of 1988, when ill health forced his second retirement.
A grateful institution honored him several times when they made him an honorary alumnus in 1982, and in 1985 established the “Harry W. Nerhood Award for Excellence in Teaching,” through which the “Teacher of the Year” is awarded a medallion inscribed with his name, to be worn with academic dress, as well as a stipend of $1,000. The final recognition came in 1995, when he was granted an honorary degree, Doctor of Letters. It was the first time in its history that the college had awarded such an honor to one of its own faculty.

During his many years of teaching, he influenced many, many young lives, and through them Dr. Nerhood lives on. He is survived by his wife of 66 years, Leona, well as thousands of students he considered to be his sons and daughters.

Leona Nerhood, Whittier, California

Howard N. Rabinowitz

Howard N. Rabinowitz, professor emeritus of history at the University of New Mexico, died at his home in Albuquerque on July 11, 1998, after an extended illness. He was 56 years old.

Rabinowitz was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 19, 1942, and graduated from South Side High School in Rockville Center, New York, in 1960. He received his BA from Swarthmore College with high honors in history in 1964, and proceeded to graduate study at the University of Chicago, where he specialized in US, southern, African American, and urban history under the guidance of distinguished scholars Richard Wade and John Hope Franklin. He obtained his MA in 1967 and his PhD in 1973.

Rabinowitz first taught at Grinnell College during the 1970–71 academic year, and came to the University of New Mexico in the fall of 1971. At UNM he gave popular lecture courses on American urban history, southern history, America in the Gilded Age, and African American history. He offered seminars for graduate students on southern history and urban history. A number of his urban history seminars concentrated on the modern history of Albuquerque. Rabinowitz had retired from teaching at UNM in December 1997, but had intended to continue his scholarly activities.

As a scholar, Rabinowitz enjoyed a national and international reputation. He was best known for his book Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865–1890, a pioneering study of the origins and significance of the system of racial segregation, first published by Oxford University Press in 1978 and reprinted by the University of Illinois Press in 1980 and by the University of Georgia Press in 1996. In 1982 Rabinowitz edited Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era, and in 1992 he published The First New South, 1865–1920. A prolific essayist, Rabinowitz’s articles and reviews appeared in almost all the major journals in his field. In 1994, the University of Missouri Press brought out a collection of his most important shorter writings under the title Race, Ethnicity, and Urbanization: Selected Essays, which received the Myers Center Award for outstanding work on intolerance in North America. At the time of his death, Rabinowitz was nearing completion of a major study of the politics of development in Albuquerque during the years since World War II, tentatively titled “Coping with Urban Growth in the Sunbelt: Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1940–1974.”

In addition to his studies of urban affairs and race relations, Rabinowitz was a historian of golf. He published a large number of articles, both serious and humorous, on the subject. (In one tongue-in-cheek piece, he suggested that cheating was the real reason for the game’s popularity.) One of Rabinowitz’s long-term goals was to write a social history of golf in the United States. In Albuquerque, Rabinowitz was widely known for his many radio talk show appearances, where his strongly held opinions on a wide variety of subjects generated sometimes heated discussions. He frequently contributed letters and op-ed essays to local newspapers.

Rabinowitz was a member of the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians, and a member and officer of the Southern Historical Association. In Albuquerque, he served on the Landmarks and Urban Conservation Commission as vice chair (1978–82) and chair (1982–84).

Rabinowitz is survived by his mother, Gertrude, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and by his wife, Diane Wood, and his daughters, Lorii and Deborah, all of Albuquerque.

Courtesy Department of History, University of New Mexico

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