In Memoriam
Frank Curtis Shontz (1926 - 2015)
Frank Shontz died on August 6, 2015, at the age of 88, in his home in Lawrence, KS.
Frank was born to Curtis Groner Shontz and Ida May Painter on Dec. 9, 1926, in Cleveland, Ohio. He served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during WWII. He received his PhD from Case Western Reserve University. He married Nancy Kimball Shontz in 1954 and moved to Kansas, where he was a professor of Psychology at the University of Kansas, with an emphasis on rehabilitation psychology and quantitative analysis. He retired in 1992. During his retirement, he worked as a consultant for Resource Development Institute in Kansas City, MO. Throughout his career, he published seven books and was an advisor, mentor and friend to many graduate students.
Frank was also an accomplished musician and craftsman. He had an insatiable curiosity about a wide variety of subjects and a sharp sense of humor. Frank will be greatly missed by his colleagues and friends in the Psychology Department at KU.
Howard Martin Rosenfeld (1934 - 2012)
Howard Martin Rosenfeld passed away on Wednesday, September 19, 2012.
Howard was born on March 25, 1934, in Portland, Oregon, the son of Benjamin Rosenfeld and Miriam (Dubiver) Rosenfeld. He attended Grant High School and then went to Stanford University where he earned his Bachelor's Degree in Psychology with highest distinction in 1956. From there, he ventured east to attend the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where he received his Masters in Psychology in 1958 and his Doctorate in Social Psychology in 1961.
It was in Ann Arbor where Howard met Beverly Glick who charmed and won his head and heart, and after getting married there and honeymooning in the Bahamas, they moved to Lawrence, Kansas, where he was hired as an Assistant Professor of Psychology and as Research Associate in the Bureau of Child Research at the University of Kansas, and then became a full professor in the Departments of Psychology and Human Development. His honors included Phi Beta Kappa; National Woodrow Wilson Fellowship; National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship; NIMH Special Research Fellowship; and Fellow, American Psychological Association. He was also a member of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, the Society for Research in Child Development, the American Association of University Professors, the KUEA Chancellor's Club and the Lawrence Jewish Community Center. In addition, during his tenure at the University of Kansas, his extensive research was widely published in professional and academic journals.
Howard John Baumgartel Jr. (1920 - 2011)
Howard passed away on Saturday, February 12, 2011.
Howard grew up in western Pennsylvania and attended Yale University and Wabash College, where he earned his bachelor's degree, before joining the US Navy in 1942. While on leave in 1945, Howard married Nancy Taggart in Indianapolis, who became the mother of his three children. They honeymooned in Chicago at the same hotel where Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart were spending their honeymoon. After being mustered out of the Navy, he earned an MBA at Harvard University. After working in investment banking, Howard decided to become an academician and taught at the University of Kansas (KU) for three years before attending graduate school at the University of Michigan, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1955. Howard returned to KU and worked in the Psychology Department and School of Business until he retired in 1988.
Howard made many notable contributions to academic life at KU. The single largest of these was his starting and developing the Human Relations program at the university, a program based on the human potential movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Howard's professional life took him to India six times, twice as a Fulbright Scholar. Each time he worked toward the economic development of the nation and made lifelong friends, especially at the Xavier Labor Relations Institute in Jamshedpur. For four years, Howard served as an assistant dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at KU. Howard married Marguerite Myers Kerfoot, a professor of art education at KU, in 1964 in Calcutta, and they lived together happily in Lawrence, Kansas until she died in October, 2009. In December of 2009, he moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico to live closer to his family and shared with them many wonderful times in the year before he died.
Jack Brehm (1928 - 2009)
Jack Brehm, longtime member of the Department of Psychology faculty and Professor Emeritus at the University of Kansas, died on August 9, 2009 in Lawrence, at age 81.
Born January 16, 1928, in Des Moines, Iowa, Jack served in the U.S. Navy from 1946-1948, attended Harvard on the G.I. Bill, graduating magna cum laude in 1952, and earned a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Minnesota in 1955. Jack served as a faculty member at Yale from 1955 to 1958 and at Duke from 1958 to 1975 before moving to KU. He is best known for his theory of reactance, which predicts that people respond to threats to freedom with efforts to reassert their freedom and choice. Jack is survived by his brother Carl, of Gambier Ohio, nieces Barbara and Susan, and former wife Sharon Stephens Brehm of Bloomington, Indiana. He did not have biological children, but his children are his many noteworthy graduate students. Jack loved to travel and had friends all over the world. But his favorite activity, without doubt, was to entertain at his house, discussing research ideas over drinks with friends, students, and colleagues. Jack’s work was his life’s passion.