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4. Sig Diettrich: The Geographer Draws the Line
- University Press of Florida
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4 Sig Diettrich The Geographer Draws the Line Sig Diettrich could appreciate the desperation of his position but not its irony: that he—a devout Catholic—on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, 1959, knelt in a church dedicated to the Irish saint and argued with God. In an act of both faith and defiance, Diettrich insisted that his suicide would not bea sin because itwasnecessary.Themiddle-agedprofessorthenreturned to Floyd Hall on the UF campus for his afternoon class but first took what he hoped was a lethal dose of aspirin. After class, he went up to the third floor of the building, where he climbed into a window and stared down at the cold, rain-soaked sidewalk. He started to jump but stopped. He tried again, and for several “frightful minutes [his life] seemed to be hung on eternity.”1 Finally, Diettrich returned to his department offices, where his staff noticed that he was acting strangely.2 They did not know that the Johns Committee had just claimed another victim. Diettrich had been caught in the wide net of homophobia cast by the Johns Committee as it shifted from an attack on Communists and the NAACP to an assault on homosexuality ; Diettrich never cooperated with the committee and was left with his integrity intact, but the Johns Committee continued to affect UF. • A hundred yards away from Diettrich’s office, UF’s Century Tower peacefully stood guard over his world that, until that day, had been the nearly idyllic product of many years of hard work. Sig (Sigismond) Diettrich had begun his academic career years earlier as an industrious student in Hun- 66 | State of Defiance gary. With bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from the University of Budapest, he immigrated to the United States in 1928 after receiving a fellowship to study at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Under the leadership of its third president, Wallace Atwood, a renowned professor of physical geography from Harvard, Clark founded the first graduate program for geography in the United States. Atwood would also be a mentor to Diettrich, who received his doctorate in economic geography in 1931.3 During one of Wallace Atwood’s trips through the South, he convinced UF administrators that they needed a geography department. Atwood’s elder son, Rollin, soon chaired the new geography program, and when a vacancy developed in 1931, he recruited Diettrich to teach economic geography. Diettrich brought his new bride, Iren, to Gainesville the following year.4 Like many nonnative Floridians, Diettrich came to love Florida very quickly. He also enjoyed teaching at UF and thought nothing of working on a research or teaching project until 2 or 3 a.m. A naturally gregarious and optimistic man, he made friends easily, both within UF and the larger Gainesville community. When his and Iren’s only child, Rosemary, was born, he was delighted to be a father. Diettrich also became an active parishioner of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, even serving as choir director , with his wife as church organist. His interest in music also extended into the theater when he became a charter member and later president of both the Gainesville Community Playhouse and the Gainesville Music Association.5 Iren Diettrich did not adjust to Gainesville as quickly as her energetic husband. She must have missed the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Budapest , but she soon joined her husband in volunteer work for the city’s community playhouse. Iren was glad that the theater season was during the fall and winter, when she felt restored by the cooler weather, because Florida’s climate was her greatest concern. Coming from a city that was on the same latitude as Quebec, she found Florida’s hot, humid summers extremely uncomfortable and annoying. After she contracted malaria in the early 1930s, her health was compromised. Diettrich himself remained healthy, energetic, and very busy at UF, teaching a new interdisciplinary course in the sciences. He also continued his work with the Gainesville [3.230.1.23] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:54 GMT) Sig Diettrich: The Geographer Draws the Line | 67 Community Playhouse. With classes and meetings during the day and play rehearsals at night, Diettrich admitted that, although he was having fun, he was hardly ever home. Despite her father’s frequent absences, her mother’s intermittent illnesses, and the Florida weather, Rosemary Diettrich thrived in Gainesville.6 In 1939, Diettrich tried unsuccessfully to leave UF. Although he had recently become a U.S...