And whom I made acquaintance with before. K.P. came over to Michigan and gave an absolutely outstanding lecture on the Humboldt Current. And there were no slides, nothing, but he created the Humboldt Current and all of the birds, the fishes, et cetera, so that felt the surf, you felt… Read More
Well, now, after moving on and getting your degree from the University of Michigan, did you see yourself going into academia or were you thinking of different directions?… Read More
And (chuckles) it’s a wonder I’m here today, because this was a American Museum, Natural History expedition. The co-owner of the little schooner, a 45-foot schooner had been a Navy destroyer commander. So I felt he must know the business but (sighs) he didn’t, and he couldn’t read the water,… Read More
But it was quite an adventurous time in terms of collecting creatures. And particularly I concentrated on the Leiocephalus, the curly-tailed lizards that were so abundant right through the islands, on the beaches for the most part. Read More
So it was a worthwhile first summer in grad school. But then came a real opportunity in terms of the… An offer that came to not go back to Mexico, which I’d visited with a couple of my Charleston friends, Moseman and Azel. And where we’d collected salamanders and other… Read More
But I turned off in terms of ornithology as a result, especially because the replacement curator at the museum came down from Cleveland, Cleveland Museum. And all he was interested in were the lengths of the primary feathers on the wings of the local birds. And I felt this was… Read More
And so I spent a summer, sort of final summer in my college time checking all of the references in their book. And this involved, among other things, going through the Audubon Folio and the museum had original Audubons. It had Catesby, et cetera. So I had a wonderful experience… Read More
But he’d introduced me to so many things that, before I went to Michigan, my final summer was at the Emory University Field Station in Southwest in Georgia, in Baker County, Georgia. The Emory University Field Station was not populated by Emory University students. It was University of Georgia students… Read More
Both masters and doctorate were at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I only applied to three places. And because of my interest at that time in terms of going on in herpetological studies, I applied to Florida, Harvard and Michigan. Florida wanted some 200 bucks at that time. Read More
And he ran out to the guy, “You’ve killed my fox!” (George laughing) And the guy of course was extremely apologetic, et cetera, et cetera. And (chuckles) so Arthur comes back to the Model T with the fox in his arms. And so that was a pretty good specimen collection… Read More
Now your advanced degrees were where?… Read More
He offered an additional semester long course on advanced mammalogy in which we could do whatever we wanted. And I studied the Peromyscus, the wood mice and a friend who was in a class ahead of me Arthur Ravenel Jr., and Ravenel, by the way, is honored by the bridge… Read More
What are your degrees?… Read More
Well, I went to the College of Charleston after my high school in Charleston and at the College of Charleston, a very small faculty, a very small institution at the time, but it had been around for a couple of hundred years. So it was quite a delight in terms… Read More
What was your formal schooling?… Read More
Well, I’d… (chuckling) I’d grown up being curious about the creatures around and in Charleston, for instance, we used to try to bring the bats down by throwing objects in the air and then waving branches, et cetera, when they did swoop down after the objects. And we collected creatures… Read More
So there were all kinds of growing up adventures of that kind. But I do remember too in front of my grand parental home in Lumberton, North Carolina, there was a giant live oak that extended out into the highway. And I remember that, because I tracked the carpenter ants… Read More
Did you know then that nature or science was a direction you wanted to go into?… Read More
So when I went back to Charleston, I was really already turned on by the experiences that she’d given us and allowed us in terms of our experiments and so forth. So that was quite a turn on. And then when I got back, fortunately the Curator at the museum… Read More
And it was fortunate in terms of the mischiefs we got into with some of the bird walks with adults comprising the majority, but with us right alongside. So that’s my beginning. It wasn’t in a zoo or zoo circumstances. It was in the natural world in the low country. Read More