BERNARD ARATOWSKY, professor of history and classics, State University of New York, College of New Paltz, died on January 7, 1986, in New York City, at the age of sixty-three.
He earned his BA and MA from New York University in 1944 and 1945 respectively. He went on to take his PhD from The Johns Hopkins University in 1947 while holding a Charles A. W. Vogeler Memorial Archaeological Fellowship,
Professor Aratowsky began his teaching career as a classics instructor at The Johns Hopkins University. He went on to hold various history and classics posts at Loyola College, Baltimore; Rhodes Preparatory School, New York; New York University; Stanford University; and the University of Florida, Gainesville before settling at the State University of New York, College of New Paltz.
He was selected for faculty fellowship awards, by the Fund for the Advancement of Education in 1953-54, by the University of Florida Research Fellowships, 1958 and 1962, and by SUNY in 1968 and 1972.
A popular speaker and AHA member, he lectured at various institutions and learned societies. At the time of his death, Dr. Aratowsky was preparing a source text for the teaching of Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman history.
Maud Aratowsky
New Paltz, New York
FERNAND BRAUDEL, internationally acclaimed French historian and dean of the influential Annales school of historiography, died November 28, 1985, at the age of eighty-three.
An honorary AHA member and widely respected scholar, Dr. Braudel’s major works on the Mediterranean world during the reign of Philip II and his history of capitalism in the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries pioneered new approaches in scholarly writing. As a founder of the “Annales” or “New History” school, his works reflect the incorporation of hard data along with the traditional focus of famous personages and events, forcing a reexamination of popular historical thought.
He was educated at the Lycee Voltaire and the University of Paris, leaving in 1923 to hold various teaching and research posts in France, Brazil, and Algeria. He served briefly as an army lieutenant in World War II, was captured in 1940 and sent to a prison camp in Lubeck, Germany. While in prison, he managed to write, from memory, a 600,000 word thesis, which was the first draft of his Mediterranean work. The manuscript, written on school exercise books, was smuggled out of the prison camp.
In 1949, he took his doctoral from the Sorbonne, and published his book, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World of Philip II. Since then, Dr. Braudel has accrued some twenty honorary doctorates from institutions all over the world. From 1956-72, he was the president of the VIth Section of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, and has been identified with the College de France since 1949. As commander of the Legion of Honor, he was elected to the Academie Francaise in 1983.
At the time of his death, he was working on a three-volume history of France. He was married and had two daughters.
WINFRED A. HARBISON, former vice president for academic administration, chair, and professor of history, Wayne State University, died on November 9, 1985, at the age of eighty-one.
He earned his AB degree at Wabash College and MA and PhD from the University of Illinois. In 1929, he came to the College of the City of Detroit, where he became a prominent member of a group of distinguished scholars and educators who created Wayne State University. At the time of his retirement in 1972, he had served the university by enrolling over 30,000 students in the more than forty-year course of his career.
Professor Harbison will be remembered particularly as the coauthor, with Alfred H. Kelly, of The American Constitution: Its Origin and Development, a work published in 1948 and still in use in a revised edition. He also wrote Lincoln and Indiana Republicans, 1861-1864 (1938). His unfailing good humor and sure erudition made him especially effective in both the classroom and committee room. As an administrator, he was conciliatory but fair and firm, guided by an enlightened historian’s perspective in the resolution of complex problems.
He is survived by his wife, a son, and two grandchildren.
Richard D. Miles
Wayne State University
FLORETTE HENRI, historian and writer, died October 12, 1985, at her home in Yonkers, New York, at the age of seventy-seven. A 1929 graduate of Barnard College, she received her MA from Columbia University. As a historian who studied discrimination against blacks and American Indians, she had just finished a history dealing with relations between government agencies and Indian tribes in the Southwest, when she died. Among her other works were Bitter Victory: A History of Black Soldiers in World War I (1970); George Mason of Virginia (1971); The Unknown Soldiers: Black American Troops in World War I, coauthored with Arthur Barbeau (1974); and Black Migration: Movement North 1900-1920 (1975). She also authored a 1950 novel, Kings Mountain, and a play, The Earl of Surrey, which won the Maxwell Anderson First Prize in 1936.
Florette Henri is survived by a son, a sister, and three grandchildren.
LAWRENCE KINNAIRD, professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Berkeley, died September 27, 1985, in Carmel, California, at the age of ninety-two.
He earned his AB degree in 1915 at the University of Michigan, flew observation and combat missions during World War I, and did graduate work at the University of Grenoble.
He studied and taught history under Herbert Eugene Bolton at the University of California, Berkeley, earning a PhD in 1927. He taught at San Francisco State College and the University of California College of Agriculture, Davis, before joining the history faculty at Berkeley in 1937. When Dr. Bolton retired in 1939, Dr. Kinnaird was chosen his successor and carried on the Bolton tradition in scope of studies and methodology at the famed Bolton Round Table, from 1939-60. He also served as acting director of the Bancroft Library, 1954-55, and from 1942-45 was the cultural attache to the US Embassy in Chile. As professor emeritus, he taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at Chatham College, Pitts burgh.
His publications include three volumes of documents entitled Spain in the Mississippi Valley, 1765-94 (1949) and other monographs and many articles on Spanish Border lands topics. He was a superb teacher of graduate students and emphasized the positive and obtained production by encouragement and adherence to high standards. He was a gentleman, scholar, and friend. In the art of teaching, he stood as a giant.
S. George Ellsworth
Western Historical Quarterly
MADISON KUHN, professor emeritus Michigan State University, died on December 7, 1985, in Santa Barbara, California, at the age of seventy-five.
Dr. Kuhn graduated from Park College, Missouri in 1931, and received a PhD in history from the University of Chicago in 1940. He joined the Michigan State faculty in 1937 as an instructor and rose to the rank of professor in 1951, retiring 1979.
He enjoyed a campus-wide reputation as a classroom lecturer and director of graduate seminars, whose challenging teaching techniques aroused intellectual curiosity and critical thinking in his students. In 1959, he received a distinguished teaching award from Excalibur, a senior men’s honorary society, and was the recipient of the University’s Distinguished Faculty Award in 1968. In 1970, he was awarded a Michigan State Honorary Alumni Award for outstanding service to the University.
During his career at Michigan State University, he was acting chair of the history department in 1960 and 1970; served as graduate chair of the College of Arts and Letters, and was Secretary of Faculties, 1970-79. As a member of several profession al organizations, including the AHA, the Mississippi Valley Historical Society, and the Organization of American Historians, he served as president of the Michigan Historical Society and of the Lansing Historical Society.
Specializing in recent American and Michigan history, he wrote numerous articles and book reviews. He is best known for his work, Michigan State: The First Hundred Years (1955), written to commemorate the centennial of the University, at that time called Michigan Agricultural College. In 1955, when the book appeared, Michigan State was officially designated a university. In 1956 the Board of Trustees conferred upon Dr. Kuhn the title of University Historian.
Survivors include his wife, a daughter, and a brother, Donations may be sent to the Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara, 300 West Pueblo, Santa Barbara, CA 93105.
LAWRENCE LAFORE, professor emeritus in the University of Iowa Department of History, died November 24, 1985, in Iowa City, at the age of sixty-eight.
Professor Lafore graduated from Swarthmore College in 1938 with highest honors and received his MA and PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts in 1939 and 1950, respectively.
Serving with the US Department of State from 1942-46, he returned to Swarthmore as a member of the history department from 1946-69, before he accepted a position as history professor at the University of Iowa, a position he held until his retirement in May 1985. From 1974 until 1977 he served as department chair.
Professor Lafore was the author of a dozen books, including The Long Fuse (1965) and The End of Glory (1970), internationally recognized studies of the origins of World Wars I and II. With Sarah L Lippincott, he was the coauthor of Philadelphia: the Unexpected City, a book of pictures and comment, and he published five novels. Out of his work as a professional photographer, an amateur architectural historian, and a past chair of the Architectural Heritage Committee of Iowa City’s Project Green, Lafore wrote American Classic (1975), an architectural history of his adopted city, Iowa City, illustrated with many of Lafore’s own photographs.
He also served on the Iowa City Urban Renewal Design Committee to refurbish the city’s central business district, and also worked to place dozens of Iowa City buildings on the National Register of Historic Places, including the whole of historic Summit Street, where many houses were threatened with demolition.
At the time of his death, he was working on an illustrated history of the University of Iowa, incorporating a brief survey of the history of higher education.
Professor Lafore also authored some eighty articles in many popular magazines, including the Journal of Modern History and Harper’s. Among his many honors were Phi Beta Kappa, Leary’s Literary Award (1962), Philadelphia Athenaeum Prize (1965), and the Commendation for Significant Achievement of the American Association of State and Local History.
He is survived by two brothers and a sister. Memorial contributions may be made to the University of Iowa Foundation, Iowa City, IA 52242.
ROSEMARY MASEK, associate professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, died November 3, 1985, at the age of fifty-four, following a long illness,
Although stricken with polio in 1954 and confined to a wheelchair, she earned an MA in library science in 1959 from Denver University and went on to graduate work in history at the University of Illinois, receiving an MA in 1961 and a PhD in 1965, She specialized in British history, with Maurice Lee, Jr., directing her dissertation, and taught English and history at Casper College part- and full-time from 1956-62.
Joining the faculty at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 1965, Professor Masek taught undergraduate and graduate courses in western civilization, medieval, and early modern Europe. As an effective and innovative teacher, she nurtured interest in history, and was receptive to new tasks and challenges. She developed courses in women’s history, taught in interdisciplinary settings, and chaired the College Committee on Interdisciplinary Degree Programs, This led to a particular interest in the history of British women. In 1979 her article “Women in the Age of Transition, 1485-1715” appeared in Barbara Kanner (ed.), The Women of England from the Anglo-Saxons to the Present. An other article, “The Humanistic Interest of the Early Tudor Episcopate,” appeared in Church History (1970), and she contributed to the Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals in the Seventeenth Century and to the Milton Encyclopedia. She was a regular reviewer for Choice.
Rosemary Masek was active in professional and community organizations, She presented six papers at regional and national historical meetings and in 1977 was vice-president of the West Coast Association of Women Historians. The following year she served as president and co-editor of the organization’s Newsletter. In 1979 she was president of the Las Vegas branch of the American Association of University Women. As scholar and teacher, Rosemary Masek demanded the best from her students and herself. Her accomplishments, despite her disability, were an inspiration to all who knew her. We will miss her keen intellect, humor, and love of life.
Robert W. Davenport
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
ROBERT NEIL McLARTY, an AHA life member, died on September 20, 1985, at the age of sixty-two.
He graduated in English from Eastern Michigan University in 1944, and pursued his graduate work in history at the University of Michigan, where he secured his PhD in 1951. While at Michigan he was the recipient of both a two-year Rackham grant from 1948-50 and a Fulbright scholarship at the University of London from 1950-51. He largely completed his PhD dissertation while in London. His major interest as a graduate student and later as a professor lay in English historical studies, especially of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Dr. McLarty accepted a position as a member of the history department at the University of Michigan in 1951 and remained with the department until 1956. In 1957 he returned to Eastern Michigan University to join the department of history and social sciences. From 1965-73, he served as department head during a period in which the university doubled in size. He was instrumental in establishing separate departments of history and philosophy, sociology, economics, and political science, and was involved in the hiring of a substantial proportion of the current faculties in those areas, including three department heads. He resigned as chair in 1973, and remained on in the department of history and philosophy as full professor until his death.
Neil McLarty is remembered for his integrity, keen intelligence, great historical sense, and a winsome and somewhat ironic humor. He valued decorum and dignity without pretension.
A Neil McLarty Merit Prize has been established under the Office of Development, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI 48197.
Gerald Brown
Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan
RONALD R. NELSON, professor of history, Northwestern College, Iowa, died March 17, 1985, of a gunshot wound sustained while being robbed in the parking lot of the Christian Ministries Center, Chicago. He was fifty years old.
Professor Nelson held a tenured position in humanities at Michigan State University before accepting a position as professor of history at Northwestern University in 1974. A deeply committed Christian with broad interests in history, theology, and the humanities, Nelson had planned a sabbatical for the 1985-86 school year during which he hoped to write a book on a Christian understanding of history, a subject which had long occupied his interest, his scholarship, and his thought.
Professor Nelson was a member of the American Historical Association and the Conference on Faith and History. He was a book review editor for Christian Scholar’s Review and the author of a number of articles in a variety of publications.
He was an active member of Bread for the World, and more recently, a leader in the Northwest Iowans for Peace, a group that sought to educate the public on the threat of the escalating nuclear arms race. In 1983, he traveled as a representative of the Reformed Church to the Soviet Union seeking out individual Russian Christians for fellowship. From that experience, he created an impressive slide program and lecture on Russian Christiandom, as a presentation for various church groups, hoping to promote under standing between American and Russian Christians.
He will be honored in our memory as a deeply intellectual person who was truly committed to integrating his firm Christian beliefs into his studies and into his life. All who knew him recognized the depth of that commitment.
George De Vries, Jr.
Northwestern College, Iowa
ROBERT L. NICHOLSON, professor emeritus of history, University of Illinois at Chicago, died on October 22, 1985, at the age of seventy-seven. He left no surviving family,
Professor Nicholson earned his BA, MA, and PhD at the University of Chicago in 1930, 1931, and 1938 respectively. He began teaching at the Navy Pier campus of the University of Illinois in 1946. He previously taught at the University of Chicago’s Downtown College, Kent State University, Alfred Holbrook College, John Marshall Law School, Culver-Stockton College, and Bucknell University Junior College. He continued at the University of Illinois when it moved to the Chicago Circle campus and retired in 1977 after thirty-one years of service.
A medieval history specialist, his research focused on the Crusades. He wrote two books in the field: Joscelyn I, Prince of Edessa (1954) and Joscelyn III and the Fall of the Crusader States, 1134-1199 (1973). For the Chicago Plan Commission, he also wrote An Historical Review of Chicago and its Growth, in 1942.
He had a lifelong interest in public affairs, notably the role of the United States in the world. He became an activist at the time of the “battle against isolation” before World War II, and the issues of the era remained vivid to him—and to his students—for the remainder of his life. Those events marked his debut as a lecturer on world affairs. He spoke frequently to civic and fraternal groups on lecture tours, which in his later years he sometimes meshed with his world wide travels. He was also active in the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, Chicago Area Phi Beta Kappa, and the English Speaking Union.
He was noted as a careful scholar. One Medievalist commented that his Joscelyn III work “will be welcomed by all of us who are students of the Crusades.” As a teacher, he asked much of his students. A number of them revered him for his exacting expectations and for the passion with which he communicated both his scholarly specialty and his concern for current issues.
Richard M. Fried
University of Illinois, Chicago
HELEN ADAMS NUTTING, sixty-seven, professor emeritus of history at Wilson College and a recognized scholar in seventeenth century English history, died on June 24, 1985, at her home in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.
Professor Nutting earned an AB degree from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota in 1940, graduating summa cum laude with honors in history and distinction in history and Latin. She received the MA and PhD from Bryn Mawr College in 1942 and 1945. She was named a Fellow in History at Bryn Mawr both in 1941-42 and 1943-44. In 1952-53, she received a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Association of University Women.
Professor Nutting was appointed professor of history and chair of the department at Wilson College and was on the faculty from 1961-85. She received the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1966. That same year alumnae and friends established the Helen Adams Nutting History Prize awarded at commencement to the outstanding student of history. During her tenure, she served on numerous college committees, including the faculty, the Board of Trustees, and the Wilson College Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. She was included in the 1974 edition of Outstanding Educators of America.
In honor of Professor Nutting’s retirement, a 1985 spring symposium was held and attended by the college community, former students, and colleagues. At the May meeting of the Board of Trustees, she was honored by being named professor emeritus of history.
STANLEY ZDENEK PECH, professor of the history department at the University of British Columbia, died November 4, 1985, at age sixty-one. A native of Czechoslovakia, he came to Canada in the wake of the Communist take-over in Prague in 1948.
A graduate of Charles University (1947), he obtained his MA at the University of Alberta in 1950. He then proceeded to the University of Colorado, Boulder, and studied under Professor S. Harrison Thomson, a well-known American authority on Czech history.
His first teaching post was at the Western Montana College of Education in 1955-56. In 1956 he joined the University of British Columbia’s department of Slavonic studies as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 1962. After the reorganization of the area studies program in the 1960s, he transferred to the history department in 1967 and was promoted to the rank of professor in 1971.
Throughout his UBC career, Professor Pech taught East-Central European history and attracted a devoted following among appreciative students. His scholarly interests included the revolution of 1848 in the Czech parts of the Habsburg monarchy, on which he wrote his fine book, The Czech Revolution of 1848. In the 1970s he shifted the focus of his research from 1848 to a series of comparative studies of nationalist movements and their representatives in Austria-Hungary.
Professor Pech’s articles published in Canadian and American journals attracted much attention for their use of a wide range of printed sources in half-a-dozen languages and good use of recently developed analytical tools.
Largely responsible for the strength of the Slavic collection in the UBC library, he was very active in European studies organizations. He held office and was active in tl1e Canadian Association of Slavists, the Czechoslovakian History Conference, and the American Committee to Promote Studies of the Habsburg Monarchy. Also, he sat on the editorial boards of Slovakia, 1978-81 and the Austrian History Yearbook, 1977-83. He is survived by his wife and daughter.
ALBERT U. ROMASCO, professor of history at New York University, died of cancer on November 1, 1985, at fifty-five. Despite illness, Professor Romasco continued to research his third book, a study of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and the politics of poverty in the 1960s.
His first book, The Poverty of Abundance: Hoover, The Nation, the Depression remains among the best studies of the Hoover administration, twenty years after its publication. His second book, The Politics of Recovery: Roosevelt’s New Deal, published in 1983 is currently being reviewed as a study of political culture in the 1930s. The third book would have capped a wonderful career as teacher and scholar.
His books, and their relentless common theme of poverty amid plenty reflect Romasco’s experiences as the son of immigrant Italian parents who settled in western Massachusetts. He was graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and completed his PhD at the University of Chicago under Walter Johnson. In a career spanning thirty years, he taught at the University of California at Berkeley before coming to New York University in the early 1960s, among the first of a new generation of historians arriving here in the years from 1962 through 1969.
A gifted graduate and undergraduate teacher, he understood that not all groups were given equally the opportunity to move up in this society as he had, and his success never blinded him to the truth that some people always remain shut out; it is about those that he wrote and taught. Proud to have been an award-winning instructor in Washington Square College, he taught in great pain until ten days before his death.
He leaves behind his wife, two teen-age children, his mother and father, and a brother.
Carl E. Prince
New York University
EDWARD TANNENBAUM, professor of history at New York University, died of cancer on December 16, 1985, in Manhattan, at sixty-four. Professor Tannenbaum was a productive, dedicated researcher whose scholarly interests encompassed European social, cultural, and political history, with emphases on nineteenth- and twentieth-century France and Italy, European historiography, and historical methodology.
Professor Tannenbaum received a BA in history from the University of Chicago in 1942. He served in the US Armed Forces during World War II, earned his PhD in modern European history from the University of Chicago in 1950, and studied at the Universities of Grenoble and Paris.
He taught at Colorado State University, Columbia University, and Douglass College at Rutgers University before coming to New York University in 1962. From 1955-56 he held a Ford Faculty Fellowship at Columbia University.
In addition to publishing numerous articles and reviews, which appeared in major scholarly journals, he authored textbooks and major interpretive studies that made substantial contributions to modern French, Italian, and general European history. He published four books, several of which have been translated into foreign languages: The New France (1961); The Action Francaise: Die Hard Reactionaries in Twentieth-Century France (1962); The Fascist Experience: Italian Society and Culture, 1922-1945 (1972), winner of the Howard Marraro Prize of the American Hist0rical Association in 1973; and 1900, the Generation Before the Great War (1976). Before his death, he had completed a major book-length manuscript, “Who Runs France: Ruling Elites and the Upper Class from Louis Phillippe to Mitterand”.
A nationally and internationally recognized scholar, he was the recipient of several grants including the American Philosophical Society in 1967 and 1969, a senior NEH fellowship in 1974-75, and was a resident scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy, during the summer of 1977.
Professor Tannenbaum served as president of the Society for French Historical Studies in 1981-82 and presided over the memorable New York meeting of the society in April 1982. He was elected vice-president (1974-76) and president (1976-78) of the Society for Italian Historical Studies and was a member of the American Historical Association, the Columbia University Seminar on Modern Italy, and the Columbia University Seminar on European Politics.
As departmental director of graduate studies from 1972-75, his principal teaching responsibilities at New York University were in the graduate history department where he trained and lectured an impressive number of students in modern European history. He also taught courses at the university’s Institute of French Studies in nineteenth-century European intellectual history, twentieth-century European culture and society, Europe since 1914, Fascism, modern Italian history, and modern French history.
Darline Gay Levy
Molly Nolan
Stewart Stehlin
ERNEST WALLACE, Horn professor emeritus of history, Texas Tech University, died on November 17, 1985, at his home in Lubbock, Texas, at the age of eighty. He is survived by his wife and daughter.
Professor Wallace received a BS degree from East Texas State University, a MA degree from Tex.as Tech University, and a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. He began his teaching career in the public schools of West Texas before joining Texas Tech University in 1936, where he worked until retiring in 1976. For several years he was assistant dean of the school of Arts and Sciences.
Of his sixteen books, the best known were: The Commanches, Lords of the South Plains, with E. Adamson Hoebel; Ranald Mackenzie on the Texas Frontier and Texas, the Lone Star State, with Rupert Richardson and Adrian Anderson; and Texas in Turmoil. He wrote more than twenty articles and numerous book reviews for many scholarly publications including The American Historical Review and the Journal of American History.
A member of many historical organizations including the AHA, the Organization of American Historians, and the Southern Historical Association, he was a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association. In 1968, Professor Wallace received the Cultural Achievement Award for Significant Contributions to Historical Literature from the West Texas Chamber of Commerce. In 1971, he received the Action Award from the West Texas Museum Association, and was also recipient of the prestigious Minnie Stevens Piper award for excellence in teaching. Texas Tech graduate students honored Professor Wallace with the Outstanding Teacher award in 1976.
A dedicated family man and enthusiastic gardener, he is remembered by neighbors, colleagues, and students for his delightful personality, historical insight, and meticulous writing. Professor Wallace lived a long life, not nearly long enough for those of us who miss him.
Paul H. Carlson
Texas Tech University
ROBERT HILLIARD WOODY, long-time member of the department of history, Duke University, died on December 30, 1985, in San Diego, at the age of eighty-two. He is survived by a daughter, a son, and three grandchildren.
After receiving his undergraduate education at Emory University, he took his PhD at Duke University in 1930, after having become an instructor in the department the previous year. He retired as a full professor in June of 1970.
In collaboration with Francis B. Simkins, Dr. Woody published the pioneering revi sionist study, South Carolina During Reconstruction (1932), which was awarded the American Historical Association’s John H. Dunning Prize in American history. In 1951 he edited and wrote an extensive biographical memoir for William Preston Few: Papers and Addresses. Beginning in 1937, and for the following decade, he served as director of the George Washington Flowers Memorial Collection of Southern Americana in the Duke University Library. A member of all of the major historical organizations, Professor Woody served on the board of editors of the Journal of Southern History and was a member of the executive council of the Southern Historical Association. In 1954-55 he was president of the Historical Society of North Carolina.
Well known as a careful, craftsman-like reviewer of many important volumes in southern and American history over a long period, Professor Woody was also a teacher and scholarly mountaineer much admired by many undergraduate and graduate students.
Robert F. Durden
Duke University