In Memoriam – 2000-2001

Robert D. Barbour
Robert D. Barbour, an early member of the American Planning Association and the American Institute of Certified Planners, died January 24, 2001, at his home in Neptune Beach, Florida. He was 76. Mr. Barbour's professional career began in 1955 when he became a staff planner at the University of Arkansas. In 1957, he was named the first administrator of the North Carolina Division of Community Planning. He established and became president of Barbour-Cooper & Associates in 1965. In 1971, he moved to Jacksonville to head a branch office of the firm serving local governments. Mr. Barbour received his Master of Regional Planning degree from the University of North Carolina. He was a member of the Florida Planning and Zoning Association.

Lachlan F. ("Lock") Blair, FAICP
Lachlan F. ("Lock") Blair, FAICP, preservationist and urban planning pioneer, died August 5, 2001, at the age of 81. He was a member of the first class of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners, named in 1999. Born in Lakewood, Ohio, Mr. Blair attended Western Reserve University (now Case Western) from 1936 to 1940, before serving as a captain in the 1308th Army Corps of Engineers during World War II in both the European and Pacific theaters, in England, France, Okinawa, and Korea. Mr. Blair graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1949, then served as senior planner for the Providence City Planning Commission from 1949 to 1951 and the chief of the planning division for the Rhode Island Development Council from 1952 to 1956.

Mr. Blair turned to private practice, serving as President of Blair Associates from 1957 to 1966, with offices in Providence, Rhode Island; Syracuse, New York; and Washington, D.C. During this tenure, Mr. Blair produced "College Hill: A Demonstration Study of Historic Area Renewal," in 1959, noted as the nation's first urban renewal study to address historic preservation. The firm also produced the Vieux Carre district study for New Orleans. Mr. Blair joined the faculty of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1966, founding the Preservation Planning concentration, in addition to teaching urban design and urban planning courses. He was associate department head from 1973 to 1987, and interim department head in 1982-83. As a professor, Mr. Blair kept close track of his former students, who became known as "Lock's Flock." According to UIUC Professor Lewis Hopkins, "He knew what they'd done, where they'd gone, whether they got married, whether they had kids."

Following his retirement from the university, Mr. Blair formed The URBANA Group, an Urbana, Illinois-based consulting firm that specialized in historic preservation. He chaired the Urbana Plan Commission for many years and served on the city's first Historic Preservation Commission. He also helped found the county historic preservation organization, the Preservation and Conservation Association, which continues as one of the strongest grassroots preservation organizations in the state. He was appointed to the first Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council, serving 17 years. Mr. Blair chaired Illinois's first statewide preservation conference in 1977. From 1983 to 1989, he served on the advisory board of the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois (LPCI), before becoming an honorary board member. As part of LPCI's first annual awards ceremony in 1991, Mr. Blair was honored as a Distinguished Illinois Preservationist.

In 1999, AICP named him as one of its first Fellows, selected for "distinguished contributions to the advancement of the profession of planning." Lachlan Blair is survived by his wife, Mary, two children, and three grandchildren. Memorial contributions may be made to the Preservation and Conservation Association, P.O. Box 2575, Station A, Champaign, IL 61825. Former students may wish to contribute to the Lachlan F. and Mary A. Blair Endowment, Reference #30-371-484, c/o the University of Illinois Foundation, 1305 West Green St., Urbana, IL 61801.

Charles O. Brown
Charles O. Brown, whose 18-year career with the Town of Amherst, New York, Planning Department included two years as director, died May 26, 2001, in Amherst. He was 68.

Mr. Brown went to work for the town in 1980 after five years as county deputy planning commissioner and took over the top job in the 15-member department in January 1997. He retired in 1998. He supervised preparation of numerous town plans, including the 1988 Open Space Acquisition Plan.

He was named 1999 Planner Emeritus by the Upstate New York Chapter of the American Planning Association and received the 1999 Distinguished Professional Achievement Award from APA's Western New York Section.

Mr. Brown was a native of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, and a 1958 graduate of Penn State University. He received a master of fine arts in landscape architecture from the University of Illinois in 1960. Heheld planning jobs in Des Moines, Iowa, and Rochester before becoming principal planner for the state Office of Planning Services in Buffalo from 1973 to 1975. He was a former part-time lecturer on zoning ordinances at the University at Buffalo.

Hermann Haviland Field, FAICP
Hermann Haviland Field, FAICP, died on February 23, 2001, at the age of 91, at his longtime home, Valley Farm, in Shirley, Massachusetts. He was 15 days away from being accepted as an AICP fellow and had hoped to travel to New Orleans to accept the honor.

Mr. Field was a true pioneer and visionary in the planning profession, who carried out his work in several different venues: practicing planner (FAICP) and architect (FAIA), groundbreaking educator, author, and local and regional decision maker and volunteer. Perhaps his greatest contribution, manifested in the founding of the Tufts University graduate program in Urban, Social and Environmental Policy, was in seeing that planners needed to broaden both the way they viewed the world and the way that they practiced their profession. They needed to understand that the urban and natural environments were inseparable pieces of the planet and must be considered together holistically, and in a more inclusive and participatory way. This viewpoint was a direct precursor to the sustainability concepts that are now emerging worldwide.

Mr. Field not only taught this philosophy but practiced it in projects such as the Tufts New England Medical Center development in Boston, which became a model of both neighborhood participation and transit-linked development. His professional and volunteer service included: membership on the Devens Enterprise Commission overseeing redevelopment of a former military base, chairman of the Shirley Planning Board, director of the Massachusetts Association of Conservation Commissions, membership in the International Commission on Environmental Planning (IUCN), delegate to United Nations Habitat Conference, and dozens of additional examples. His professional awards were numerous.

His personal life was marked by a five-year disappearance and imprisonment during the 1950s, after being kidnapped by the Polish Secret Police. His struggle for sanity during this imprisonment led to co-authorship of the novels Angry Harvest (later made into an Academy-award nominated film) and Duck Lane, and the recent nonfiction book — co-written with his wife, Kate — Trapped in the Cold War: An Ordeal of an American Family.

Robert Heifetz
Robert Heifetz, planner and social justice advocate, died in San Francisco on April 7, 2001, at the age of 68. The son of silent screen star Florence Vidor and violinist and conductor Jascha Heifetz, Mr. Heifetz was born in Los Angeles. Before receiving his doctorate in urban planning from Columbia College, he attended William and Mary and Antioch colleges. He taught urban studies at the Hampton Institute and the University of Illinois before joining the newly formed Third College at the University of California at San Diego (Thurgood Marshall College), teaching in the department then known as the Department of Urban and Rural Studies.

His interest in social justice led him to advocacy planning, where, among many other projects, he worked with organized residents and community-based organizations in planning New York City's Cooper Square neighborhood. He was a member of the National Committee for Full Employment, and, in 1985, was among 29 U.S. peace activists held captive on the Nicaraguan border by anti-Sandinista rebels. Mr. Heifetz was an avid sailor, a charter captain, and one of the founders of the Bay Area Peace Navy, a group of local boat owners who engage in political activity protesting militarization in San Francisco Bay.

He is survived by two children and two grandchildren.

Rowland Ian Kingham
R. Ian Kingham, 68, died September 6, 2001, following a long battle with cancer, in Victoria, British Columbia.

Mr. Kingham worked for the Trans Canada Highway Division of Public Works Canada from 1957 to 1958, and from 1958 to 1961 for the Canadian Good Roads Association. Following his studies at Purdue, he worked for the Ontario Department of Highways from 1962 to 1964. He then moved to Maryland, where he worked for the Asphalt Institute and the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences.

From 1986 to 1991, he worked as a transportation consultant with Greenhorne and O'Mara, Inc., of Greeenbelt, Maryland. In 1991 he returned to Victoria to form his own consulting firm, GMK Transportation Planning and Engineering Ltd., from which he retired in 2000. He remained active in retirement as editor of the Journal of Urban Planning and Development (American Society of Civil Engineers). Ian had an impressive list of published articles and he received an equally impressive set of honours and awards for his professional service.

He held a BASc in Civil Engineering from the University of British Columbia, and an MSc in Civil Engineering from Purdue University. He also held a master's in Urban and Regional Planning from George Washington University.

Mr. Kingham is survived by his wife, Norma, two daughters, a grandson, a sister, and a brother.

Ian L. McHarg
Ian L. McHarg, internationally renowned landscape architect and planner, died at the age of 80 on March 5, 2001. He was one of the gurus of the environmental movement, and his seminal 1969 book, Design With Nature, inspired the first Earth Day. He was the founder and the chairman of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania from 1955 to 1986, and later emeritus professor there.

For more than 30 years, he served as the principal in more than 60 projects in the U.S. and other countries, both through the University of Pennsylvania and with his Philadelphia consulting firm, Wallace, McHarg, Roberts and Todd. McHarg's work took on national proportions in 1972, when he did a project for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The resulting report, Towards a Comprehensive Plan for Environmental Quality, established the approach that would later be incorporated into environmental impact assessments.

One of his many former University of Pennsylvania students, William J. Cohen, explains McHarg's ideas and his charisma in a May 2001 Planning magazine article.

George Nolte, Sr.
George Nolte, Sr., founder of Nolte Associates, died November 11, 2000. Mr. Nolte had a distinguished career as both a registered engineer and licensed land surveyor. Under his direction, the Nolte firm grew from a one-person operation to an organization of 350 employees working in a dozen offices throughout the West and Mexico. Nolte Associates provides engineering, land planning, surveying, and management services. He was a lifetime member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and a inductee of the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame. After his retirement, Mr. Nolte was active in the Boys and Girls Club of Monterey, California, and served on the Pebble Beach infrastructure committee. He was a native of Bellingham, Washington, and a 1940 graduate of the Polytechnic College of Engineering in Oakland, California.

John Stanley ("Stan") Ott, AICP
John Stanley ("Stan") Ott, AICP, a long-time planner and APA member, died December 6, 2001, at the age of 91. Mr. Ott's membership in the predecessor organizations of APA and AICP dates back to 1954.

Born in Cleveland in 1910, Mr. Ott earned architecture and master of arts degrees from Case Western Reserve in the 1930s. He also undertook studies at MIT and Fountainbleau Chateau in France. Mr. Ott served as a planner for more than 40 years in Ohio, Nevada, and many California communities. He retired from the San Rafael Planning Department in 1977. He also served in the U.S. State Department's planning efforts in Bogota, Columbia, for the Caribbean area, and for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Kingston, Jamaica. He remained active in his professional organizations well after retirement.

He is survived by his wife, Bettie, three daughters, a brother, six grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. His first wife, "Val," died in 1988.

John A. (Jack) Parker
John A. (Jack) Parker, 91, professor emeritus and founder of the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, died March 18, 2001. Mr. Parker started the department in 1946. It was the first planning program in the nation with its principal university base in the social sciences rather than landscape design, architecture, or engineering. He served as the department chairman until his retirement in 1974. Mr. Parker was a native of Canada who earned two architecture degrees and a Master of City Planning degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He taught at Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture in Groton, Massachusetts, and the Rhode Island School of Design before moving to Chapel Hill. Mr. Parker earned the Medal of the American Society of Planning Officials in 1975, the Distinguished Professional Achievement Award from the North Carolina Chapter of APA in 1982, and the Distinguished Planning Educator Award of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning in 1994. Memorials may be made to John A. and Jane C. Parker Endowment Fund, Office of University Development, PO Box 309, Chapel Hill, NC 27514.

William L. Rafsky
William L. Rafsky, 81, a long-time influential Philadelphia planner, nationally recognized expert on public housing, and director of the 1976 bicentennial celebration in Philadelphia, died June 11, 2001. Mr. Rafsky, who had worked for the War Production Board in Washington in World War II, was hired by Mayor Joseph Clark Jr. in 1951. He went on to become development coordinator under Clark and the following two mayors.

Mr. Rafsky was a member of the city planning commission under Mayor Frank Rizzo, deputy finance director under Mayor Bill Green, and deputy managing director under Mayor W. Wilson Goode. He retired in 1992.

Born in Lodz, Poland, Mr. Rafsky came to the U.S. in 1919 and grew up in the Bronx. He moved to Philadelphia in 1945. He is survived by his wife, Selma Chafets Rafsky; a son, Lawrence; and a granddaughter.

Gregory Schlinkmann
Gregory Schlinkmann, 47, a planner from 1978 to 1993, died January 4, 2001, in St. Louis, Missouri, of Huntington's Disease. Mr. Schlinkmann earned his master's degree in urban planning and policy in 1978 from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He worked in planning and economic development in suburban Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Hamilton County, Ohio. His illness forced him to stop working in 1993.

Frank Setzer
Franklin Setzer, founder and director of the Auburn University Center for Architecture and Urban Studies, died May 23, 2001, at the age of 53.

Mr. Setzer joined the AU faculty in 1990. As a teacher, architect, and planner, he had a significant impact on the quality of life in Birmingham and Alabama through his work with AU architecture students, said Behzad Nakhjavan, professor of architecture and interim head of AU's School of Architecture. "He introduced students to all sorts of architectural issues that deals with cities and urbanisn," Nakhjavan said. "Frank not only taught students about urban architecture, but was massively involved in the community of Birmingham. He was a very knowledgeable person, very serious and a kind, caring person."

Mr. Setzer was a board member of the Housing Authority of the Birmingham District and a founding member of The Tuesday Group, YourTown Alabama and Birmingham Affordable Rental Communities. He also worked with several nonprofit and volunteer organizations.

He held a bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Florida and a master's degree in urban design architecture from Rice University. He was a veteran of the Army, where he reached the rank of captain.

He is survived by his son, Christian Setzer and two stepchildren. A Franklin Setzer Memorial Scholarship Fund has been established in AU's College of Architecture, Design and Construction.

John M. Stockbridge
John M. Stockbridge, 50, died of cancer on Sunday, February 18, 2001. Mr. Stockbridge was Planning Director for Athens-Clarke County, Georgia. He had been in the planning profession for more than 27 years and had served in Macon, Georgia; Overland Park, Kansas; Sumter, South Carolina; and Athens. He was a member of APA throughout his professional career, and was a graduate of the M.A.P.A. program at Kent State University, with an emphasis in Urban Planning.