Another Transition

After passing the preliminary exams and advancing to doctoral candidate status I submitted a dissertation proposal to Professor James Anderson, who had become my advisor and the head of my dissertation committee after Stan Brunn accepted a position at Michigan State and flew the coop. The topic was on the isolation of an all-black city in the St. Louis suburbs. The topic was approved without any problems and I started on the initial part of the research, meaning collecting relevant research I needed to review.

Right around that time I heard from another grad student that the Dean of College of Liberal Arts and Sciences was pushing hard for approval of a major re-write of the catalog that would require grad students in all CLAS departments to take more coursework and spend an additional two semesters in full-time residence at the University. Concerned, I popped into Anderson’s office and asked what was going on. He confirmed the rumor and said the changes would take place at the start of the coming Fall Semester but assured me that none of the currently enrolled grad students would be affected. We had started our studies under the old requirements and would finish that way. He made some sort of snide remark about Dr. Niddrie being one of the Dean’s allies in the move. I could tell from his expression and tone that somehow that didn’t sit well with him. Since it wouldn’t affect me I decided to ignore it.

Although I had paid little attention to it in my years at the University, Ray Crist and Anderson were embroiled in a serious struggle for the future of the Geography Department. Crist wanted to continue along regional lines (Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia, etc.) while Anderson was moving the department into specializations like urban, economic, land use, cartography and remote sensing, physical geography, and agricultural geography that had no regional focus. Niddrie was very closely aligned with Crist against Anderson. It didn’t help Anderson’s case that the Dean of CLAS was tight with both Niddrie and Crist.

But a few days later I overheard two students in the Grad Room pissing and moaning about being forced to take two more semesters of coursework because of the new grad school regs. When I told them they wouldn’t have to because they had enrolled under the old grad catalog they both said that Niddrie, who was their doctoral committee chair, had told them they would conform to the new regs or pay a steep penalty. His threat to their continued standing as doctoral candidates was clear and real. Christ, I thought that was bullshit pure and simple and thanked my lucky stars Big Jim wasn’t such an authoritarian prick.

In May 1970, we moved back to St. Louis and I started on the research and began looking for a full-time job. I could have taken that whole year to do the research as a full-time U of F grad student and get paid by the NDEA Fellowship but we were so tired of living close to the bone both San and I thought that if I could get a teaching position I could do the dissertation research and teach at the same time. Okay, it might take a year or two longer but at least we’d be living in a real apartment instead of crummy, roach-filled Flavet and making a lot more money.

Without going into the obviously gory details a white boy doing research in an all-black city went over like a lead turd dropped from a thousand feet into a cheapo toilet. It was downright ugly. Imperialist muthafucka was one of the nicer compliments I heard. For months and months.

Anderson even traveled to St. Louis to pump me up and then delivered what I interpreted as bad news. He was considering leaving Florida for a top-level position as Chief Geographer of the United States Geological Survey. I was happy for him because I knew he had been working hard on a new land use, land cover classification system that could be applied to remote sensing data. The USGS was the perfect place for him because they were at the forefront of that technology. I was somewhat comforted by his promise of continuing as my committee chair even though at some unspecified future date he would no longer be formally associated with the university.

After several months unsuccessful employment search, I received a letter from the head of the Geography-Geology Department at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti asking if I would be interested in teaching urban geography and urban planning there. I was and after going for two interviews was offered and accepted the job. Finally, my first job as a university professor. I didn’t even care that they had rejected my original letter of application or that the only reason for their interest in hiring me was occasioned by the massive heart attack and sudden death two weeks earlier of the guy who had been teaching their urban courses.

A month after accepting the job San and I traveled to Ypsilanti and hunted for a place to live. Luckily we found a brand new apartment that we could afford and signed the lease. After several years living in roach-infested Flavet we were finally about to live in the style we wanted to become accustomed to. In late August 1970, an eight-month pregnant San, David, and I packed our belongings into a 20-foot U-Haul truck and headed north.