Taber Green
1926-1997

With regret we note the passing of Professor Taber Green, who died last November.

An Alabama native, Professor Green graduated from Birmingham Southern College and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in twentieth-century German history from Emory University. He came to the University of South Alabama in 1965. During the university’s and department’s early years he helped to establish our traditions of superior teaching and collegiality.

His advocacy of academic freedom still benefits us. Taber’s generous spirit enabled him to contribute immeasurably to his colleagues’ personal and professional lives. We turned to him when conditions were at their worst, because then he gave us his best.

Taber Green was a good colleague and a good friend.

Leonard Macaluso

New Chair, Fall 1998

Our new chair, Clarence Mohr, comes to us following seventeen years at Tulane University. He was born
in Michigan but grew up in the Decatur area and attended Birmingham-Southern College. Clarence
received his graduate training at the University of Georgia, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1975. He and
his wife Janet are excited to return to Alabama.

Professor Mohr is a highly regarded scholar of the Deep South. His outstanding book, On the Threshold
of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia (1986), won the 1987 Avery O. Craven Award
from the Organization of American Historians. In recent years his research interests have turned to
higher education in the South. He is currently completing a scholarly history of Tulane University for
LSU Press, and has contracted with the University of North Carolina Press to write The Higher Learning
in the Modern South, which he describes as "an interpretive overview of twentieth century Southern
higher education." His most recent article, "Schooling, Modernization, and Race: the Continuing
Dilemma of the American South," appeared in the May 1998 issue of the American Journal of Higher
Education.

Clarence brings broad expertise in administration, grantsmanship, advising, and teaching. From 1975 to
1979 he was an editor of the Frederick Douglass Papers for Yale University. From there he went on to
the University of Mississippi from 1979 to 1981, where he laid the groundwork for the acclaimed
Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. At Tulane, he served as associate chair and director of graduate
studies, and guided several graduate students who have gone on to make significant contributions of
their own.

We feel very fortunate to have attracted such an outstanding scholar as our new chair and we look
forward to the Mohr era (and the semester system) beginning in August.

Richmond Brown

Leonard Macaluso has successfully chaired the department for the past year. He will be spending the
summer in France researching and enjoying a break.

Rebecca Ard Boone is working on her Ph.D. and has been teaching part-time for the past year.

Richmond Brown is continuing his research on the Aycinena family and is building a storage shed at his new house.

Chen-kuan Chuang is working on a book review for the China International Review (Spring 1999).

George Daniels is doing well after his retirement. He has recently completed another addition to his house in Silverhill. He is busy picking blueberries and selling antiques.

Aaron Fogleman is getting married. He is also doing research in Germany this summer...or so he
says.

Larry Holmes is revising a book-length manuscript, Stalin’s School:Moscow’s Model School No. 25,
currently under consideration bythe University of Pittsburgh Press.

Bob Houston will be teaching and writing this summer. He will then go on a combined business/pleasure trip to Germany.

Helga McCurry is following the department trend to go to Germany for the summer. She will visit her family in Heidelberg and travel to Switzerland.

Marty Mercer who has been on the part-time faculty since 1994 is teaching this summer and has just
returned from an extensive scenic tour of the West, including Yellowstone Park, Grand Tetons, Crater
Lake, the northern California redwoods, and San Francisco.

Michael Monheit is continuing to work on his book The Calling of Calvin: The Formation of a
Reformer, 1528-1541, and revising his courses for the new semester system.

Joseph Nigota  is returning to London on a research trip, where he will be working on the careers of
members of the Vernon family of Derbyshire, a group of “knightly hooligans” in the fifteenth century.

Dan Rogers is doing research on the way German chancellors dealt with the Holocaust. He is traveling
in Germany and visiting several archives.

Carol Sibley, MA (95) has joined the staff of the department. She is the production coordinator of the Gulf South Historical Review and assists us as part-time secretary.

Philip Theodore is teaching weekend college and is continuing his administrative duties by managing
the campus recreation program. His second son, Andrew Philip, was born in May.

Michael Thomason is working as the editor of Mobile: A Tricentennial History which he hopes to submit
to the University of Alabama Press this fall. Drs. McKiven and Brown have each written chapters in this
book, as has George Ewert.

Amie Bryant has completed her MA degree this spring. She is getting married in Birmingham, AL on
August 22 to Tyler Bond and will be living in Arizona.

Lawrence Hyland, MA (96) will join the part-time faculty this fall. He will be teaching survey courses on
American history.

George Ewert BA (91), MA (93) is Director of the Museum of Mobile and supervising the process of
moving it into the old City Hall/Southern Market which will also be extensively remodeled.

Joe Free is working part-time in the archives department of the Mobile Probate court.

Aaron Kruger will be defending his thesis "Soviet Journalism in World War II: June-October 1941" this
July.

Jack Schodlbauer has finished his Master’s Degree and returned to Washington state.

Graduates:
Please let us hear from you so we can keep track of your achievements and share them with others in our next newsletter.