MISCELLANEOUS OBITUARIES
of
ANTHROPOLOGISTS


ALICE BLYTH CHILD, 79, died November 24, 1997, in Branford, CT, of heart failure while suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Born on Dongan Hills, Staten Island, NY, she attended Radcliffe C (1939). Majoring in anthropology, she had the good fortune to be assigned Clyde Kluckhohn as her tutor, at a time when that meant weekly individual tutorial conferences with him over a period of three years. Her interest in witchcraft and supernatural beliefs dates from this period. As a graduate student in anthropology at Yale (1939-44), she was influenced by Murdock and Malinowski. She completed all the requirements for a PhD except a dissertation.
As part of a wartime project sponsored by the coordinator of Inter-American Affairs through Yale, she took part (1941-42) along with her psychologist husband Irvin Child in a study of the backgrounds of public opinion in Costa Rica. She had some hope that material for a dissertation might develop from this but eventually abandoned the idea.
For some years, Child devoted herself mostly to family but continued her interest in anthropology, reading extensively in the files of the Human Relations Area Files and in Yale's library. Her reading eventually came to be concentrated on religion and magic. Parts of her findings were reported at several annual meetings of the Society for Cross-Cultural Research. With a lack of experience in lecturing or other public speaking, Child always wanted these reports to be presented by her husband as coauthor, even though the work had been mostly hers. Eventually, with the cooperation of her husband as junior author she published Religion and Magic in the Life of Traditional Peoples (1993). The volume reviews the actions, thoughts and feelings that characterize the religious aspect of life in a worldwide sample of traditional societies and considers their role in both the individual's and the group's daily life. Attention is drawn to the basic similarity between traditional and world religions. Variations in religious beliefs among traditional societies are presented as related to the differing situations and histories from which they emerge. It is hypothesized that traditional religions serve similar functions in diverse societies, with the suggestion that the great religions of the present day may likewise serve the same human needs.
It is to be regretted that Child's broad knowledge of the religions of traditional peoples, her conclusions based on comparative cross cultural research and her exploration of universal human needs were not presented to a larger audience in the role of teacher and lecturer. I feel privileged that she shared them with me. (Beatrice Blyth Whiting)

WILLIAM W ELMENDORF, 85, died October 13, 1997, in Davis, CA. Elmendorf was born September 10, 1912, in Victoria, BC. His parents were United States citizens who soon returned to Seattle, where he grew up. Elmendorf entered the U of Washington in the depression year of 1930. Like many others in that period, he had to work his way through college, serving as a gasoline station attendant, disc jockey and, after advancing in anthropology, working as a reader for Fred Hulse. Taking his BA in 1934, he went immediately to the Muckleshoot Reservation in western Washington, studying the mythology of the Duwamish and Puyallup. The next year, he made the first of many trips to the Twana; he was to become the outstanding authority on that group and its culture. During that year he also wrote and submitted his MA thesis "The Soul: Recovery Ceremony among the Indians of the Northwest Coast" (1935).
Admitted to graduate study in 1938 at U of California, Berkeley, where he worked with A L Kroeber, and awarded a teaching assistantship in anthropology in 1940, Elmendorf found himself one of the great age-grade of late-1930s Berkeley products. Doing research for his doctoral dissertation, he returned to the Twana in 1939 and 1940. In 1940 he married Eleanor Gerlough, a student of anthropology at Berkeley; their marriage was a loving, firm and productive partnership that lasted 57 years. Before Elmendorf could finish his doctorate, he was swept up in the war. Sent to Japanese language school, he spent 1942-46 as an officer in military intelligence. His wartime experiences were part of the basis for two reports on the political anthropology of Okinawa and later a note of Ryukyuan-Japanese linguistic resemblances.
In 1946 he returned to the U of Washington as an instructor. He remained in that position while finishing his Berkeley degree (1949) with a dissertation on The Structure of Twana Culture. Kroeber suggested that Elmendorf should wait for publication until the older man had added comparative notes on northern California, thus tying that area to the Northwest Coast. In an evil hour for his chances of promotion, Bill agreed. For the moment, all was rosy; while Kroeber took up his task, Elmendorf was promoted to assistant professor at Washington and granted leave to join an innovative social science group at Northwestern University. During the fall quarter of 1950, he gave me a cram course in New World anthropology, one for which I have been ever grateful. I became aware that he read seemingly everything in the four fields of anthropology relating to all parts of the world. Indeed, in my experience, only G P Murdock was as widely read in the field.
At the end of that academic year, Elmendorf was recalled to the colors because of the Korean War and was assigned to Japan and Okinawa. The loss of productivity in those two wars was serious because Kroeber's failure to provide his part of the proposed joint project caused major delay in the appearance of Elmendorf's dissertation. That work appeared in 1960. By that time, the Elmendorfs were settled at Washington State, where a year later he published another monograph, Skokomish and Other Coast Salish Tales. Now an associate professor, he entered a period of great productivity, concentrating increasingly on the linguistics of the Salish peoples, including kinship terminologies, dialect differences, linguistic evidence for Salish prehistory, word taboo as a factor in lexicostatistical inference and subgrouping. At this time appeared the first paper on a topic that was to become a major preoccupation: Yukian.
In 1963 Elmendorf went to the U of Wisconsin as a visitor, in 1965 he was appointed professor of anthropology there, where he remained until he retired in 1981. He continued to publish on Northwest Coast ethnology and linguistics. From the relatively close ties among the Salishan languages, his interest widened to the problems of deep genetic relationships, exemplified by Yuki and Wappo: their relationship to each other and, possibly, to Siouan and Hokan. For many years he was a regular participant in the Hokan-Penutian workshops.
After retirement from Wisconsin, the Elmendorfs settled in Davis, where he replaced me as visiting professor during parts of 1982-84. Contributing solidly to the Californian emphasis of our department, he also brought his extensive knowledge of the Northwest Coast. From 1984, he was research associate at the U of California, Davis. It was a productive period, capped by his last great work Twana Narratives: Native Historical Accounts of a Coast Salish Culture (1993). Even in his final days, he was collaborating with Alice Shepherd on a paper maintaining his view (contra J O Sawyer) that the similarities between Wappo and Yuki were due to genetic ties rather than borrowing. Shepherd has put that work into final form (AL 39:1, spring 1997).
Elmendorf was an accomplished field linguist before he came to Berkeley, as a result of training by Melville Jacobs at Washington and briefly in Berkeley by Murray Emeneau. Surely he ranks with Morris Swadesh in his sure control of the difficult phonologies of the Northwest Coast.
William Elmendorf is survived by his wife Eleanor, and sons William and Anthony; his legacy to linguistic anthropology comprises many brilliant analyses of some of the most difficult problems concerning Native American languages. He is sorely missed by his many colleagues and friends. (D L Olmsted)

EDWARD I FRY, 73, professor emeritus of anthropology at Southern Methodist U, died June 17, 1997, in Dallas, TX of complications from multiple sclerosis.
Having edited the deaths column of AN for two years, I know that it is difficult to write a short note about a person who has influenced you, your academic discipline and so many others. But I also know that a short note is perhaps one of the only academic accounts of a scholar's life for future historians of anthropology to use in the study of the development of the field. With many major journals no longer publishing obituaries or considering dropping them in the near future, what a loss that is and will be.
I first met Fry as a freshman student at the U of Nebraska and have had the great good fortune of being here with him at SMU for over 25 years. If I was writing a book on his life, I would have to title it "He Had Guts." And he did. Over the last 30 years, Fry carried out his academic duties fighting and winning every day over the ravages of multiple sclerosis until his death.
Edward Irad Fry was born on January 7, 1924, in Long Branch, NJ. He lived his early years in New York and Texas and received his BA (1949) and MA (1950) from U of Texas, Austin, and PhD in anthropology from Harvard (1958) under E A Hooton and W W Howells. He received two Fulbright fellowships, one in 1953-54 to Auckland U and the Cook Islands and a second in 1963-64 to Hong Kong. In the 1950s he taught at Harvard, Antioch College, directed their anthropometric project and began his academic stint at the U of Nebraska, Lincoln. Here he was involved in teaching, academic advising and his ongoing research on human growth. Fry was involved in a twin study and worked closely with the College of Dentistry. From 1966 until his death he was professor and emeritus professor at SMU. Here he spent much of his time teaching, advising graduates and undergraduates, writing and with red ink pen in hand, editing PhD dissertations. His publications may be found in American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Human Biology, Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, Plains Anthropologist, Nature and others.
Fry served as secretary (1969-73) and then president (1973-75) of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, had fellow status in many other organizations and was president of Section H of AAAS.
Fry's long battle with multiple sclerosis and his ability to go on as a productive academic was made possible by his willpower and by Peggy Fry, a lady and wife in the full sense of the terms.
Those wishing to make a contribution to the Ed and Peggy Fry scholarship fund should send this to the Chair, Dept of Anthropology, SMU, Dallas, TX 75275. (John F S Phinney)

WESLEY R "WES" HURT, 80, professor emeritus of anthropology at Indiana U, Bloomington, and founding director of Indiana's Mathers Museum, died suddenly at his home in Albuquerque, NM, on November 3, 1997. Hurt was an anthropologist of the "old school," well-versed and interested in the entire breadth of the discipline, professional qualities that emerged throughout his distinguished career. Known above all as a pioneering archaeologist who worked on early human habitation sites throughout the Americas, from the high plains to Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay, he constantly reviewed books from all fields, and among dozens of articles and monographs, he also published significant works in cultural anthropology on religious movements, conjuring and witchcraft and alcohol use among Native Americans. His most recent monographs dealt with cultural change in the Hispanic American community of Manzano (1989) and the historic archaeology of Quarai, a Spanish colonial mission in New Mexico (1990), in both instances concluding research begun in 1938 when a master's student at the U of New Mexico and employed by the WPA.
WWII interrupted Hurt's career, and he served in Europe as a special agent in Italy and other European fronts before resuming his doctoral work at Chicago (1946) and finishing under Jimmy Griffin at Michigan (1952). His wide-ranging archaeological work took him to Lagoa Santa, Brazil (1956), to lead a reassessment of the (then) earliest known human remains in South America, confirming Lund's 19th-century conclusions. Later he conducted similar pioneering work in Colombia where his El Abra rock-shelter site revealed a time depth of 12,500 BP. Although constantly engaged in research, Hurt was also a very active teacher at the U of South Dakota and Indiana U and as a visitor at Berkeley and 5 Brazilian universities (1956-86). In 1985, Hurt was given the 50th anniversary award for Outstanding Contributions to American archaeology, by the Society for American Archaeology. One can appreciate Hurt not only as a superior archaeologist and general anthropologist but as a congenial and talented person: immensely knowledgeable about and interested in all kinds of things, a painter and artist of talent, a cabinetmaker, an avid outdoorsman and, always, a reliable colleague and generous teacher. With Hurt there was always something new; he embraced new technology and methods with enthusiasm. One year it was the computer; another, making "stained glass"; then, using a camcorder. Mary, his wife of 49 years, was his constant partner in life, research and travel, as were his children Steven, Rosalind and Teresa. Professionally, Hurt never retired but sought more knowledge to fuel his desire to uncover the new, as well as the old. Indeed, up to the moment of his death he continued to work with his research files, preparing material for publication, studying ethnographic data and enjoying his beloved New Mexico. (Paul Doughty)

JOHN CHARLES KELLEY, 84, died in El Paso, TX, December 13, 1997, from a respiratory virus and renal failure. Born in Era, TX, October 9, 1913, Kelley earned his BA in anthropology from the U of New Mexico (1937) and PhD from Harvard (1948), where he was awarded Thaw, Hemenway and Winthrop fellowships. He began fieldwork at Carved Rock Shelter in Texas (1931), continued at southwestern archaeological sites in the 1930s and 1940s and included Navajo ethnography (1935-36) and ethnohistoric research on the Texas-Mexico border area. During WWII he did anthropometric research to improve gas-mask design and was honorably discharged from the Army (1945).
Kelley's best-known research in northern Mexico began at La Junta de los Rios (1936) and continued at Schroeder, La Quemada, Totoate, Alta Vista and other sites. He was active in both Mesoamerican and Texan archaeology until shortly before his death. Kelley was a major proponent of northern Mesoamerican-southwestern interaction, a topic to which he brought his vast wealth of knowledge from 6 decades of work.
Kelley first taught at (now) Sul Ross State U (1937), where he was curator of archaeology at the museum. He was an instructor at U of Texas-Austin (1941-42), assistant professor (1945), associate professor (1949) and became curator of the Anthropology Museum. He moved to Southern Illinois U-Carbondale (1950) as professor of anthropology and director of the museum. There he organized the Anthropology Department and recruited Walter Taylor as chair (1958), and by the mid-1960s SIU-C was ranked among the best new anthropology departments. Kelley retired from SIU-C as professor emeritus (1976) and then was Alfonso Caso Distinguished Visiting Professor at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (1980). Kelley trained dozens of archaeologists while at SIU-C and served as a mentor to many more. Students and colleagues honored him with three festschriften.
Kelley received numerous grants from NSF and Wenner-Gren. He chaired the special committee on "Archaeological Identifications and the Cooperation of Specialists in Related Disciplines" for the National Research Council (1955-57), producing The Identification of Non-Artifactual Archaeological Materials (Walter Taylor, ed, 1958). Kelley's professional publications include Jumano and Patarabueye: Relations at La Junta de los Rios (1986), "Mesoamerica and the Southwestern United States" (vol 4, Handbook of Middle American Indians, 1966), "Archaeology of the Northern Frontier: Zacatecas and Durango" (vol 11, 1971) and over 25 journal articles, many of which were coauthored with his wife and professional collaborator Ellen Abbott Kelley.
Kelley was a first-rate scholar, brilliant teacher, mentor in the best and fullest sense of the word and a marvelous storyteller. He especially enjoyed telling stories on himself in a wonderful, wicked and sometimes self-deprecating manner punctuated by sly grins, winks and his infectious laugh that started deep in his belly and rolled upward through his chest and throat. Above all, Kelley was a loving companion and partner to his wife and a dear friend to those privileged to know and love him. His death is a terrible loss to American archaeology. He will be sorely missed by Ellen and by his children Nancy and Kevin. (Jonathan E Reyman; photo courtesy Victoria Riley Evans)

LITA S OSMUNDSEN, 71, president emerita and longtime director of research of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, died on January 9, 1998. Osmundsen was born in New York City. She spent her early grade-school years in Jamaica and completed her precollege education in New York. Osmundsen discovered anthropology while still a teenager enrolled as an undergraduate student at Hunter College. She was trained in each of the 4 subdisciplines, first at Hunter, later in the graduate program at Columbia U and, of great importance, via interactive, "hands-on" education through her experiences associated with the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Osmundsen understood and always appreciated the many facets of anthropology. She especially promoted interest in connections within and among the subdisciplines and cognate fields.
Osmundsen came to the Wenner-Gren Foundation while still an undergraduate student. She was proud that over the years she held (and learned from) every job at the foundation. During the early years she worked in partnership with Paul Fejos, the foundation's imaginative director of research. After his death in 1963, Osmundsen became director of research and, eventually, president. She brought to these positions her commitment to international anthropology, extensive knowledge of the discipline, expertise in promoting communication among scholars and practical management and business skills. She understood when, where and how to invest in the future of anthropology through support of individuals at critical times in their academic careers, development of the legendary Wenner-Gren Foundation small conferences and creation of technical and other programs. Osmundsen took the right kinds of intellectual risks. She enabled support of established professionals with exciting ideas at important junctures in their careers. She also provided opportunities for young scholars to develop their professional lives.
Osmundsen was an innovative thinker and creative problem-solver. She excelled throughout her career in bringing people and ideas together. The incomparable combination of her warm personality and organizational skills allowed the successes of supper conferences during the late 1940s and 1950s and, later, international conferences at Burg Wartenstein, Austria, and other conference sites. Expertly facilitated by Osmundsen, these conferences fostered integration of anthropological subdisciplines and new directions for research in anthropology and related fields. The conferences provided a forum for sharing concepts and data and, especially, generating new ways of thinking and new projects to pursue. Books and resulting new research enabled by these Wenner-Gren Foundation activities profoundly influenced the goals and directions of our discipline.
Osmundsen retired from the Wenner-Gren Foundation in December 1986. She maintained an active interest in anthropology. Her legacy is for all anthropologists, now and for generations to come. She received one of the first Distinguished Service Awards established by the AAA (1976). The award highlights the significance of her professional work. She was cited for her "contribution to the internationalization of anthropology, for her furtherance of all branches of the field through support of research and for uniquely creative use of conferences and symposia to further scholarly integration and development."
Osmundsen is survived by her husband John A Osmundsen, children Jonathan Osmundsen and Mirjana Dougherty and infant granddaughter Meaghan Kate Dougherty. They will miss her, and so will we. (Mary Ellen Morbeck)

FRANK T SIEBERT JR, 85, medical pathologist and ethnolinguist, died January 23, 1998, in Bangor, ME, after a long bout with cancer. Born in Philadelphia, April 2, 1912, Siebert graduated from Haverford C (1934). He completed medical training at U of Pennsylvania (1938) and specialized as a pathologist. But the morbid science of diseases never won Siebert's love. His true vocation, the study and preservation of threatened North American Indian languages, began in 1932 when he first visited the Penobscot reservation on Indian Island, ME. That trip launched a 65-year affaire de coeur. In 1934, while at medical school, Siebert became acquainted with anthropologist Frank Speck, whose own Penobscot fieldwork reached back to 1907. He attended Franz Boas's classes and audited Edward Sapir's lectures. Impressed by Siebert's linguistic skills, Speck hired him as a teaching assistant. Beyond sharing a deep interest in Penobscot language and culture, both men also studied Catawbas, Iroquois, Canadian Munsees and Oklahoma Delawares, as well as Innu (Montagnais) of Lake St John.
Throughout Siebert's medical career, he devoted much of his personal capital and free time to ethnohistorical and linguistic research. Upon retiring in the mid-1970s, he settled near Indian Island in Oldtown to devote himself to Penobscot studies. Highly opinionated, Siebert did not suffer fools gladly and could be relentless in his critique of scholars whom he felt did not measure up to his high standards. Even the admired Speck was blamed for being a bit careless and hasty, too readily accepting primary data given him by Native informants. A perfectionist, meticulous in scholarship, Siebert was unrivaled in his knowledge of Penobscot Indian history and linguistics. He received a small Guggenheim grant in 1969, but not until late in life did he acquire more substantial funding (an NSF grant) for his Penobscot dictionary project.
In addition to his soon-to-be published dictionary (over 15,000 entries), Siebert's legacy includes a Penobscot language project on CD-ROM, two volumes of Penobscot legends and almost 30 other publications, some of them seminal. During the 8-year Maine Indian Land Claims case (settled in 1980), Siebert provided crucial testimony on behalf of the Penobscot Indian Nation. After the death of the last fluent Native speaker of Penobscot in 1993, he became the only living person who knew the tongue well.
With a large pile of unpublished research data, Siebert was not ready to die. In one of his last letters he lamented, "I look old and beat!! Depresses me very much. Mentally I feel young but I fear my body is falling apart: 'sic transit gloria mundi'." As one of the original founders of the annual Algonquian Conference (1968), Siebert will be duly honored at its 30th gathering at Harvard next October. Also, his colleagues laud him in a special issue of the Maine Historical Society Quarterly. Although the great ethnolinguistic amator died before it appeared in print, we can well imagine his grumbles about some minor error or missed detail. (Harald E L Prins)

CLARA LEE FRAPS TANNER, 92, professor emerita at the U of Arizona and a leading authority on the arts and crafts of Southwestern American Indians, died at her home in Tucson, AZ, December 22, 1997. Born in Biscoe, NC, May 28, 1905, her family moved to Arizona two years later. She entered the U of Arizona intending to major in English, but concentrated on anthropology after being inspired by the first course she took with Byron Cummings. She earned a BA in archaeology (1927) and MA (1928), joined the faculty at Arizona as an instructor, and retired as Full Professor in 1978. Tanner was a Visiting Professor for brief periods at Denver U (1949) and Colorado College (1980). She did additional graduate work at the National U of Mexico (1929) and the Oriental Institute of the U of Chicago (1934). The U of Arizona awarded her an Honorary Doctor of Letters (1983).
In 1936 she married John F Tanner, whose sister Helen was the wife of anthropologist John Province, then on the Arizona faculty. The Tanners had one child, Sandra Lee (Elers), and have two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Tanner taught many different courses in all fields of archaeology and ethnology; she was living proof that women did have to work harder than their male colleagues. The centerpiece of her teaching career was an elective course in Southwest Indian art first taught in 1940. Through this course, she gave hundreds of undergraduate students with only limited interest in anthropology an appreciation for the creativity of their American Indian neighbors. Her own research resulted in the publication of 6 scholarly books on Southwest Indian painting, craft arts and baskets. Her last major research effort, a study of Chemehuevi basketry, was not completed because of declining health. 
Tanner wrote scholarly books with the general reader in mind and published dozens of articles in newspapers and popular magazines. She also gave hundreds of talks to many different groups, with an almost missionary zeal to introduce the entire world to the beauty, skill and creativity of Indian artists and artisans. Tanner supported many groups that promoted Indian art and she and her husband, an art dealer, were much in demand as judges at Indian art events. They judged annually at the Gallup Indian ceremonials beginning in 1941. In 1971 she received the 50th Anniversary Award of the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial Association.
Tanner was honored many times for her work, especially by organizations that value outreach, writing and women: Arizona Press Women, National Federation of Press Women, Society of Southwestern Authors, Sharlot Hall Museum (Outstanding Woman of Arizona, 1985), U of Arizona Alumni Association (Faculty Achievement Award, 1974), and National Museum of Women in the Arts (National Lifetime Achievement in the Craft Arts, 1993). In 1992 the U of Arizona Press established the Clara Lee Tanner Fund to support publication of the work of young anthropologists. (Raymond H Thompson; photo by Helga Teiwes courtesy of the Arizona State Museum, U of Arizona.)

DENNIS MICHAEL WARREN, 56, University Professor of anthropology at Iowa State U, died December 28, 1997, of an embolism in Osogbo, Nigeria. He was buried at his country house in Ara, Nigeria, on January 3, 1998.
Warren received his BS in biology from Stanford U (1964) and on graduation went into the Peace Corps, spending two years in Ghana. On his return he enrolled in the anthropology program at Indiana U, completing his PhD in 1974. Warren arrived at Iowa State in 1972, was promoted to full professor in 1980 and last year was appointed University Professor in recognition of his longtime service and accomplishments at ISU.
During his early period at Iowa State, Warren spent two years (1977-79) on a United States Agency for International Development project in Ghana. In part, it was this experience that convinced him of the value of local-level input in social-change programs. If his experience in the Peace Corps had taught him that local farmers possessed an often untapped wealth of knowledge about the environment, working with USAID convinced him of the importance of incorporating these peasant farmers as team players in development schemes. As recognition of how important his work was at the local level, Warren wound up being installed as a chief in three Ghanaian and two Nigerian communities.
In 1987 Warren created the Center for Indigenous Knowledge for Agriculture and Rural Development (CIKARD). The CIKARD acts as a clearinghouse for collecting, documenting and disseminating information on local-level agricultural and rural development knowledge.
The list of professional honors Warren garnered was extremely impressive and covered a range of topics from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology to chairing the Anthropology Section of the Iowa Academy of Sciences. Warren's expertise in the area of international development resulted in more than 50 consultancies, including the US State Department and World Health Organization. His level of knowledge about matters related to social change made him a frequent evaluator of research proposals and manuscripts, outside evaluator for faculty promotions and an external examiner for graduate students.
Warren's list of publications and papers was as impressive as other facets of his professional career. He produced 29 books or manuals, wrote 44 book chapters, generated 51 journal articles (and another 61 book reviews), pulled together 26 reports and gave more than 60 professional papers. These publications and papers were in major areas where Warren established himself as an international authority. They included work in international agriculture, communications and rural development, alternative health systems, development planning and cross-cultural understanding.
We will miss Mike Warren's boundless energy, his good sense of humor and his no-nonsense approach to work. While his earthly remains rest in his adopted country that he loved so much, his spirit will continue to reside with all of us who knew him. He is survived by his wife Mary and daughter Medina. (Michael B Whiteford)

VIOLA G WATERHOUSE, 89, one of the most important figures in the Summer Institute of Linguistics and the Wycliffe Bible Translators in the 1950s and 1960s, died in 1997 at her family home in Independence, MO. She had been in frail health for a number of years but kept actively involved in linguistic work, coauthoring a paper as recently as 1996.
Born in 1917, Waterhouse worked as a missionary linguist among the Chontal (Tequistlateco) of Oaxaca (1942-56) and wrote a grammar of Lowland (Coastal) Chontal as her doctoral dissertation at the U of Michigan (1958). This study was one of the first full grammatical descriptions in the Tagmemic model developed by Kenneth L Pike, and Waterhouse went on to become one of SIL's leading proponents of Tagmemic theory. She served for several years as SIL's bibliographer/librarian and compiled the 25th anniversary bibliography of SIL in 1960. She also published several historical and comparative studies of Chontal, a language isolate that she firmly believed to be a southern outlier of Hokan.
Waterhouse was one of the founding members of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas in 1981. (Excerpted from a notice in SSILA Bulletin 60, January 30, 1998)

RICHARD P WHEELER, 88, died in a retirement home in Chapel Hill, NC, on February 17, 1997. The majority of Wheeler's archaeological career was with the River Basin Surveys and National Park Service, and it is for this work that he will be most remembered.
Wheeler was born in 1909 in Chicago but spent his early life in Ohio. He was sent to Philips Exeter Academy and from there entered Harvard College in what would have been his senior year of preparatory school (1929). After graduation he spent two years away from school because of illness, but 1934 saw him on Paul Martin's field crew at Lowry Ruin, Colorado. The following year he worked as a summer fellow for the Museum of North Arizona at Sunset Crater and Grand Falls and in the great kiva at Wupatki. He returned to Harvard for a year of graduate work (1935-36); the summers of 1936 and 1937 were spent at Awatovi in northern Arizona with the Peabody Museum Expedition, where he concentrated on studying the stone, bone and antler artifacts. For personal reasons he dropped out of archaeology for 10 years, during which he ran the family farm, married Lucy Pope and moved to Michigan to run his father-in-law's farm.
By 1948 the pull of archaeology brought Wheeler back, this time to the Plains, where he worked for the Missouri River Basin Survey until 1950, when he was appointed to a permanent position. For the next 9 years, every field season saw him working in reservoir areas: Angostura, Boysen, Keyhole, Jamestown and Oahe. One final report was published in 1963 (The Stutsman Focus in the James River Valley, North Dakota, River Basin Surveys 30). In 1959 he was transferred to the National Park Service, returning to the Southwest on the staff of the Wetherill Mesa Project, Mesa Verde. There Wheeler was laboratory supervisor until 1965, working on stone and bone. In 1965 he was transferred to Washington, DC, where he served as technical publications editor for the NPS, Division of Archaeology. Wheeler was able to see many of the Wetherill Mesa reports to publication, as well as several from the Plains. He also completed the analysis of the animal bone from Awatovi (1978, Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology Paper 70). At the end of 1974, he retired but did not end his association with archaeology. He spent several years as a volunteer in the laboratory at the Alexandria Archaeological Research Project, carrying out faunal analysis for historic research projects.
After his wife died, Wheeler moved in 1992 to Chapel Hill to a retirement community. He was proud to see the publication in 1995 of his Angostura report as volume 46 of Reprints in Anthropology. Wheeler was a quiet, sensitive and shy man with a good sense of humor. I am proud to have had him as a friend. He is survived by his daughters Hanna and Valerie and several grandchildren. 


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