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  • Dr. John J. Winberry, Jr. (1945–2012)
  • Gregory J. Carbone

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Dr. John J. Winberry Jr., Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of South Carolina, died on March 8, 2012, after a lengthy illness.

John attended St. Joseph College in St. Benedict, Louisiana, for one year before transferring to the University of New Orleans, where he graduated a history major in 1967. He continued his graduate studies at LSU in Baton Rouge, earning a PhD in geography, with a minor in anthropology, in 1971. His dissertation, entitled, The log house in Mexico: Distribution, origin, and dispersal, was directed by Dr. Robert C. West.

John’s move from Louisiana (which he once described as “traumatic”) brought him to the University of South Carolina, where he spent a thirty-three year career. Two aspects of John’s scholarship reveal him as the academic grandson of Carl Sauer—his extensive focus on Latin American geography and his love for the cultural landscape. He expressed the former through his active involvement with the Latin American Studies Program at USC and numerous publications on material culture, transportation, and migration in Mexico. Increasingly in his career, John focused on the landscapes of the southeastern [End Page 341] United States. As he traveled his adopted state, he fell in love with its cultural landscape and explored how the region’s history influenced it. In 1987, his travels culminated in a book, South Carolina: A Geography, coauthored with his colleague and friend Charles Kovacik. (The text was reprinted by the USC Press in 1989, with the more expressive title, South Carolina: Making of a Landscape.) His journal articles include investigations of state boundaries, early colonial crops (rice and indigo), historic (Confederate monuments), and botanical symbols (kudzu) of the South. A 1973 piece in Southeastern Geographer entitled “Rise and decline of the miracle vine: Kudzu in the Southern Landscape” revealed both John’s sense of the interplay between people and the natural world and his enormous sense of humor.

We remember John as a passionate teacher. He lured students to geography through introductory general education classes with his wit, enthusiasm and curiosity about the world. In his cultural geography and Latin American geography classes, students found new ways to understand the role of history and culture in shaping the cultural landscape. They saw the landscape afresh on his field trips and through the classroom slides that took them on a trip during each class. He inspired many to travel themselves, to shed their inhibitions and fears, and to experience new places with excitement and wonder. He shared his passion for cultural geography with many graduate students, supervising eighteen on research topics ranging from historic agricultural practices to mill villages, local streetcars and railways, migration, tourism, and historic preservation. The University of South Carolina student honor society recognized his skills by bestowing an Excellence in Teaching Award in 1989. He brought these skills to other places around the world, lecturing in Mexico, India, Brazil, England, and Ireland.

John was an accomplished editor. He served for many years on the editorial committees of Perspectives on the American South, Professional Geographer, and Southeastern Geographer and as editor of Southeastern Geographer, 1988–1991. He carried out his editorial duties with acumen, fairness, and a sharp pencil. He knew good ideas when he saw them, could settle differences in reviewers’ opinions, and always found ways to improve the grammar, syntax, and clarity of manuscripts. To his closest colleagues, the editor never seemed to rest, and consequently, everything from monographs, to policy statements, to faculty meeting minutes improved under his careful eye.

He served in so many other ways. He was treasurer of SEDAAG and won the organization’s Outstanding Service Award in 2001. At the University of South Carolina, he served as acting director of the Latin American Studies Program and associate dean of the Graduate School, and within Geography was director of undergraduate studies director of graduate studies, and chair. As chair, he skillfully guided the department through hard financial times and built consensus on important issues. He brought his wisdom, fairness, light-heartedness, and grace to this role, and the department emerged the better...

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