In Memoriam: George F. Jenks (1916-1996)

Abstract

It seems ironic to report on the passing of Professor George F. Jenks just months after the death of his colleague and close friend, John Sherman, the University of Washington cartographer. John and George were born within three months of each other (May 3rd and July 16th, 1916, respectively), received their doctoral degrees in 1947 (Sherman) and 1950 (Jenks), retired in the same year (1986), and died in 1996. Their friendship dated back to the early 1950s. John taught cartography at the University of Kansas in the summer of 1956, where the two interacted on problems in modern cartography curricula. Later, George spent the summers of 1963 and 1966 in residence at the University of Washington. This essay summarizes the accomplishments of George Jenks, leaving others to report on the professional career of John Sherman. George Frederick Jenks was born in Oneonta, New York, and was raised both in the Oneonta area and in Erie, Pennsylvania. He completed his B.S. in Education from the State Teachers College, Albany, in 1941; the same year he joined the Army Air Corps, where he held the ranks from private to first lieutenant. It was his last assignment in the Air Corps--as an instructor in aerial navigation--that piqued his interest in geography. He decided to pursue graduate study in this field when he returned home from the war. On the recommendation of the President of Oneonta State Normal School, he enrolled in a graduate program in geography at Syracuse University, intent on pursuing his interest in agricultural geography. However, as he noted in Jenks (1991), his interest in cartography was quickly elevated with the arrival in the department of the renowned cartographer Richard Edes Harrison. Harrison commuted to Syracuse from New York City (where he was employed in the publishing business with Time, Life, and Fortune magazines) each week during 1946-47 to teach the cartography course. At that time, and especially at Syracuse, students did not write theses or dissertations on cartographic problems. George completed his thesis, The Adjustment of Railroad and Bus Passenger Transportation to Geographic Factors in New York State, in 1947. Shortly thereafter, on completing--also in 1947--a comprehensive examination for his doctoral degree, he accepted a position as an assistant professor in the Department of Rural Economics and Sociology at the University of Arkansas. It was Walter Kollmorgan who attracted George from Arkansas to the University of Kansas in 1949. With his doctoral dissertation (New Land Development in the Rice Economy of the Weiner Area, Arkansas) completed in 1950, George was promoted from instructor to assistant professor at becoming part of a four-person department that also included Walter Kollmorgan, Thomas Smith and A. W. Kuchler. Over the next 37 years, George guided the cartography program at Kansas into one of the three programs renowned for graduate education in the discipline; the other two were at the universities of Wisconsin and Washington. In his early years at George focused on developing courses, completing what was to become the first ever state atlas--the Kansas Atlas, published in 1952 and funded by the Kansas Economic Development Commission--and spending a year in travel to determine what material was necessary to design a modern cartography curriculum. George's interest in modern map production in these early years at Kansas was substantial. He was involved in a series of thematic cartography projects, producing the Look to the Future maps published in the Regional Market; six transportation maps, including Rail Freight Service in Kansas, published in Transportation; a series of maps for Industrial and Commercial Geography published by Henry Holt and Company; The Arab Today published in the Crescent in Crisis; and a series of four-color wall maps (with T. R. Smith)--Transportation Facilities of the World and Communication Facilities of the World--published by Denoyer-Geppert. …