[ photograph of David Horneck in his CSUN office ]       

DAVID HORNBECK

A Festschrift
and Memorial

Reflections by
Former Students and
Current Colleagues and Associates
On his retirement (2009) and
On his passing (2020)

      [ diseno for Rancho Vega del Rio de Pajaro, Monterey County, Online Archive of California, California Digital Library, altered from original by C.M. Rodrigue ]
[ David Hornbeck's photograph ] [ David Hornbeck's photograph ] [ David Hornbeck's photograph ] [ David Hornbeck's photograph ]
Debbie Alegrete

Dave,

Congratulations on successfully negotiating so many of life's challenges in order to get to this point. Although I can't see you totally retiring, I'm sure you're ready to slow the pace down a bit.

I never took any of your classes during my stay at CSUN but I know you've been part of a quirky group of characters occupying Sierra Hall South. It was a good experience for me to learn geography there and be supported by that environment (and I did feel supported).

ALS was also a quirky group of characters and a good experience for me to learn in. The core cast of characters there were good and close-knit. I think I actually prefer that small setting where you have loads of responsibility except for the economic frailty. We all seemed to work together well to get projects done and out the door. Thank you for being the only boss who remembered what kind of doughnut I like and specifically included that kind.

What I learned at ALS was how to focus and work smart to accomplish deadlines that seemed to move but were outrageous at first. I learned I could handle more stress and responsibility than I thought I could. Within that stress-filled environment I did learn project management and became proficient at multi-tasking. I will always remember Dennis sticking his head out the door and saying, "Debbie can you read to me?", because he needed data verification. What about those all-nighters that Dennis and Michael had to pull?

My life lesson from Dave came during the hostile take-over where you told me about the perspective your dad or uncle gave to you. What's the worst thing that can happen to you? They can kill you and eat you. If that hasn't happened yet, then it's not that bad. I do think about that in times of high stress.

I've carried my relationship with Brandi away from ALS: She gets me my jobs :). Bruce and I still email from time to time.

I wish you only good things in the future and thank you for influencing my life and giving me an open door (and a supportive work environment to learn in).

Debbie Alegrete

Tetra Tech

(Hi, to Ginny, Mike, Scooter, Ricky, Dennis, and Eric)
Brandi Devore

Hi, Dave, and Congratulations! You've come a long way, baby!!

I cannot count how many times I have thought about wanting to tell you, somehow, how grateful I am to you (and Ginny, too!)..

It all began when I decided not to take the advice of some other students from Sierra Hall to not take Economic Geography with Hornbeck. "His class is too hard and he makes you write 20 page papers!" Well, I loved that class and actually understood a lot of it from the way you explained things and ended up doing well with it. I even got an internship offer out of it!! Your class was where my career life started and my enjoyment for GIS began. I will always remember to place my ice cream cart not too far from another ice cream cart!

Dave, you helped give me my own two feet to stand on, first, by offering me a job and, second, teaching me a skill that would last my lifetime and help me to support myself and now my wonderful family. I'll never forget ALS and the whole family there that played a big part in my life back then as well. I thank you often in my thoughts as I go through the years.

After San Diego, I got the job at Countrywide (one of your clients). Since I was always drawn to the environmental side of things, I hoped I would not stay there long and, eventually, I got hired at Tetra Tech where I have stayed for the last 10 years! It is a large environmental company and yes, I still make maps and databases.

I'll never forget when we first started to talk after I'd been in your class for a bit. You asked me what I wanted to do in life. I said I was going to be an environmental lawyer. Your reply went something like, "Oh, no, why would you want to do something like that???" with a look of disgust and horror on your face. You said, "You come work for me." You gave me the address and time to be there. I went, a little nervous and skeptical, and that ended up being one of the best choices I have ever made in my life, next to marrying my wonderful husband, Matthew.

My wish for you and your lovely wife is to live extra long, healthy lives and ENJOY some stillness, enjoy some travel, enjoy each other and family. I owe so much thanks to you and you are always a part of me and in my thoughts.

Gratefully and Sincerely,

Brandi DeVore (Scaramella)

Tetra Tech

CSUN Graduate 1996 - Geography Major
Dina Fenton (Hahn)

First, I'd like to congratulate Dave on his retirement. I can't imagine that he will slow down much but he's full of surprises.

I first met Dave in 1995 after becoming a recent Geography major. I had been completely lost for the first two years of college and changed my major six times before falling in love with geography. Dave opened my eyes to the beautiful world of GIS and economic geography. For the first time in my life, I felt that I had finally found something that I would be really good at. I took every class he offered in addition to an independent study course. I was enamored with gravity models, location theory, GIS. Dave showed me how education can prepare you for the professional world and helped me to understand the connection between passion and success.

Dave helped launch my career and for that I will be forever grateful. He recommended me for a summer internship at Wells Fargo in San Francisco (Wells Fargo had been a client of ALS's for several years). After graduation I landed a job at Deloitte & Touche, thanks to another one of Dave's students (Brandi Scaramella referred me to Deloitte) and then returned to Wells Fargo several years later. I just celebrated my ten year anniversary at Wells Fargo and have achieved a level of professional success that I never anticipated. During my time at WF, I built the Distribution Strategies team responsible for optimizing the physical store and ATM distribution network. I am grateful to Dave for helping me find something that I love and excel at.

Over the years, I studied under Dave, worked for him at ALS, and later hired him as a consultant at Wells Fargo. He has greatly influenced the direction my life has taken. He encouraged me to chase my dreams and gave me opportunities that I never would have had without him. I am grateful to him for his encouragement, sense of humor, and the way he challenges people to be better. Some of my favorite memories of him are sipping coffee and talking.

I wish Dave a happy retirement. He has had a significant impact on many people and should be proud of his contributions.

Dina H. Fenton

Wells Fargo

(now Chevron Federal Credit Union)

Bruce Grouse

It all started back in 1972. My family relocated from a nice comfortable single family house in North Hollywood, California to Balboa Village, a 300 unit apartment complex in Northridge. Moving during mid school year while in the 4th grade is no fun, when leaving all your friends behind and knowing absolutely nobody. One of my first new friends would you believe was David Hornbeck, the son of Professor Hornbeck. Not only did he live at Balboa Village, we would both sit next to each other in the same 4th grade class.

At first we were friends, but if my memory serves me well, we started to fight. My mother says she used to talk with this man who liked to read books by the pool at Balboa Village, named David Hornbeck, about our fighting, but he believed kids would be kids. Our friendship did not last very long because, I believe, the Hornbecks moved away.

Fast forward to the early 1980's, I have graduated high school, enlisted for a six year stint in the Van Nuys Air National Guard, with little direction, with the exception my parents say I should be an accountant because it is steady work and I was always good with numbers.

I enrolled at Pierce College and started to take accounting classes. While I did well, I just did not see doing this for life. I took several general education classes including Economic Geography with Professor Dewey and California Geography with Professor Mark Powell. Something clicked inside me, excitement, and Professor Dewey, who at the time must have been in his 70's, discussed with me careers in Geography. Good bye Accounting, hello Geography.

After completing my lower division requirement at Pierce, I transferred to CSUN. I declared myself a Geography major and was on my way to what has been a fantastic decision in my life. Within a short time, I was enrolled in a Geography field lab class taught by Professor David Hornbeck. After many years, we had reunited.

While majoring in Geography, Professor Hornbeck was a great teacher and mentor. He was always demanding, but fair, taught me to think for myself, and not be afraid to try new things.

After graduating from CSUN more than 20 years ago, I have earned my master's degree in Geography at California State University, Long Beach, and established a successful career in commercial real estate research, retail site location, and geographic consulting. No matter what company I have worked for, I have always incorporated GIS, spatial analysis, and the enjoyment of going to the field.

Several years ago, I traveled to India for work to visit a team of computer programmers that were doing work for our company. Most of the programmers were very young, and curious about my background. When I explained to them that my background was in geography, they were amazed. But when I further explained that geography is more than memorizing where places are, and that it involved the study of such things as demographics, economies, geometry, maps, statistics, and urban planning, they quickly got it. I felt Dave was with me that day, and would have been proud.

In conclusion, Professor Hornbeck helped provide me establish the vision and drive to succeed in geography. Whenever I travel on business or for personal reasons, Dave is always with me, asking me why is this located where it is!

Play lots of golf!

Bruce Grouse

ESRI



PS: Some funny Dave stories:

  1. Was in Pittsburgh with Dave to visit PNC bank to discuss a geographic consulting project. Unlike the rest of us, Dave traveled with his fancy pens, because he is a collector of pens I learned. Well during the meeting with PNC, Dave had his fancy pen in in his shirt pocket and it exploded. Very embarrasing moment, and we did do business with PNC at a later date.

  2. I was in Portland, Oregon with Dave to visit with USBancorp to discuss a mapping project. We arrived a little early at the meeting, so Dave decided to go outside and have a smoke. Keep in mind that this is a non smoking building. Dave took one last drag on his Benson & Hedges, than walked into the high-rise non-smoking building, and blew out his smoke. Well, within seconds, the fire alarm went off, and they started the evacation of the building.

Classic Dave!

Vince Gutowski here

I see we are prepping for Dave Hornbeck's retirement event. Although my concentration was Geomorphology and Cartography, I did have Dave for a California Geography class and there was interaction during what we should simply call "social events." Goodness, what a socializing group of faculty and students we had!

I do have one vivid memory of Dave that has stuck with me over the years. Many times I have related a short version of this story to students and colleagues (I have been teaching Geography/Earth Science at Eastern Illinois University for the past 26 years, and I retire in August 2010). The story is simply about student-teacher interaction.

It was the summer of 1973, and I was a student in the GEG 431 California Geography course. The only reason I know this is because I just pulled, from my office files, the dusty manila folder containing my notes, papers and handouts from the course .. I can't believe I have kept this stuff around!!! I guess there is that thought that, after my career is over, I'll go through hundreds of files just for the memories ... Back to the story ... From the back page of the "Blue Book" used for the mid-term exam, I see that Dave gave me a C+ for content, a C for organization, and a C for style... with a -15 scribbled below. From the front page of the Blue Book, there is the expected -15, but another -1 (unexplained; perhaps he needed more coffee), for a total of 84%. Not bad, but I had hoped for better. In the folder I see a ditto copy of the reading list: 44 articles, of which I have "x's" marked in front of 32 articles, with a penciled note that X means "already read" ... I guess I was planning to, or did read, the other 1/4th of the list. I was still feeling OK about the class. Additional requirements for the class included an evaluation of a book. I retrieved my paper .. from the brittle, almost waxy paper, with text done on a manual typewriter, with inked ribbon, I see that the subject of my evaluation was The Conflict Between the California Indians and White Civilization, Volume 1, by Sherburne Friend Cook. I see I received an "80??" for the paper. After distributing the papers back to the class, Dave asked me to step into his office. Until that day, I had never set foot in Dave's office, or any professor's office, except for my advisor's, the infamous Phil Kane. I had already read what Dave had written on the back page, you know the page .. located behind all the other pages that have comments in every available space in the margins. On that last page he wrote "1st part of paper poorly written, with little creativity. 2nd part of paper improves significantly. What happen(d)? 80??". Somewhere in the middle of the paper he writes "Why does the writing improve from this point?" In the office Dave explained to me that he thought that the second half of the paper was either plagiarized or written by someone else. I knew that I wrote the whole thing and related that to him. He stood his ground and I stood mine. I knew I was right, he thought he was right. I left his office in the mindset that I was scarred for life, but scars heal. I'm looking at the paper right now, for the first time in 36 years.

Dave, I can almost see what you were talking about. It mystified me for years but I think I have solved the point of contention.

On page 1, where I described the contents of Cook's book, you circled every "the" I had written on the page. I still remember my initial reaction to this .. horror!! I have used it ever since, when grading papers. Thanks, Dave!! That first part of my essay was descriptive of Cook's book, and the second part was my personal evaluation of the work (much smoother reading). Over the years, I have seen a similar disjunct in student papers, where in an introduction or background part of a paper, the style is a bit choppy, but later, in a discussion or analysis section, writing improves a bit. I'm glad I dug this up because although I tell stories about the incident, I have never returned to the source for a re-evaluation. It feels good to look at it again, but from a professor's perspective.

The last item in the dusty folder is a reprint, from the California Geographer, of "A Population Map of California, 1798" by David Hornbeck. In his handwriting, in blue ink, there is a note "To Vince, with love, Dave." Note... I received a "B" in the course. To this day, I put a "love" note on some student papers .. when appropriate. Thanks, Dave!!

At this point, if Dave is reading, he is thinking "organization, C; style, C; content, ??". OK, here is the point. All academics are affected, in many ways, by mentors of varying degrees. The interaction between Dave and me, over a very contentious point, went very smoothly. Subsequently, during my graduate studies at CSUN, Dave was a go-to guy when it came to advice about anything academic or personal. He encouraged students to do more than take classes .. he encouraged research. He took us to meetings, to field trips, to social gatherings. He made us feel important. He would take those who had a zeal for learning and showed us how to do it properly. He appreciated student scholarship at the undergraduate level and steered many of us into graduate school. I have been fortunate to have been mentored by Dave and others at CSUN.

In my career at Eastern, I have followed examples of excellence provided by my teachers and used these examples to make my students better human beings. I have received numerous University awards for my teaching, research, and service, and with each opportunity to speak, I give always give credit to those professors who have provided mentoring in various ways. I'm sure many of my students have been affected by what I have handed down from my professors.

Because of Dave, I always give students the benefit of any doubt, and have been a friend, confidant, and advocate of students, while performing my duties in a laid-back, but academically responsible manner. Thanks, Dave!!!!

Vince Gutowski

Professor of Geography, Eastern Illinois University

P.S. I'm keeping this folder after I retire.

Note: Dr. Gutowski retired in 2010 and passed away in 2015
Recollections from Jan Harwell, M.A., M.P.A., Olympia, WA

I was Dave Hornbeck's first Master's Thesis student, CSUN, 1972-1974. Hornbeck made sure that I did a good job on the thesis and also got me through the Geography program unscathed with what he called a "halo effect." I still know Hornbeck and still think that he is one of the good guys.

(Jan's thesis was Culture, Congressional Images, and Decision Making: The Case of California from 1840 to 1850")

Jan Harwell

Olympia, WA
Bob Hoover

I would be happy to do this. I am finding ceramic evidence in Spanish sites in California that verify Dave's statements on the evolution of the economy of that period. ... ceramic studies have verified Dave's ideas about changing mission economies and the world economic system at the time.

Ceramic wars: Style and marketing in Mexican California, 1810-1846

Robert Hoover, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
Social Sciences Department
California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo
Samanthe Kadar

It is sad indeed to lose Dave to this disease. Thank you for the tribute.

I was mentored by him when I started teaching at CSUN and had an office next door to his for several years. Our shared love of historical geography brought us together, as did his request I help write a simple music score to round out the melody he composed for his grandson to play.

He made sure I understood the needs of all students and to find a way to enable them to succeed, which wasn’t based on a letter grade. With his encouragement, I created a mapping project for lower division students to express their grasp of space, quantity, location, etc., and in turn it brought several students into the geography major program. After several had signed on and went on to earn MA’s, etc., he said the department owed me a good bottle of a single malt scotch. I agreed, as long as he would have a shot with me to celebrate the winner of “Best of the Top Ten Maps.”

My husband, an engineer at Walt Disney Imagineering, contributed a prize every semester. David was right, with this kind of encouragement, often outside the box, many of my students went on to fantastic careers - “come to class, make a map and win a prize” - as Steve Graves and David touted. I always encouraged my students to have a “Hornbeck Experience” before they graduated.

I am retired now and, of the people I look back on, David Hornbeck is right up there at the top of my list.

Sincerely,

Samanthe Kadar
Lecturer for nearly two decades at CSUN, Dept. of Geography
Martin Kenzer

"HELLO, YOUNG MAN"

I first met Dave in the latter part of 1975. I was thinking about applying to the CSU-Northridge geography graduate program, and I was told to go speak with a Dr. Hornbeck, and that he'd tell me what deficiencies I might be required to make up. Since I was applying to the graduate program with a B.A. (1974) in Latin American Studies -- and I was coming to CSUN with a degree from a then-outlying institution like CSU-Chico -- I was fully expecting that I'd most likely need to take a few "remedial" geography courses; the only college-level geography I had taken as an undergraduate were a couple of cultural and environmental courses, and mostly ones focused on the region I had been studying, in Chico. I walked into Dr. Hornbeck's office and the very first thing he said to me was, "Hello, young man." I had always despised that expression-it seemed to be the thing people say when they have nothing else to say, and it always rang of condescension to me -- but it didn't sound that way coming from this guy. It sounded upbeat and sincere, and, as I would come to find out, it was simply his way of greeting people, especially students, and particularly those he cared about and took an interest in.

We spoke for only a short while that day, but I remember being impressed that he had already perused my file before I had arrived, and was thus familiar with my academic preparation. I told him that I was working full-time for a pharmaceutical distributing company, and that I was in no hurry to start and/or finish the M.A. in geography; I just wanted to return to school and take some courses again before jumping into a new degree program. Much to my surprise, Dave told me that I probably wouldn't need to take much in the way of background courses to enter the graduate program. He asked me how I thought I'd do in a geomorphology course, and, after I said I thought I'd do "okay" but remarked that I hadn't taken anything like that in quite some time, he suggested that I might wish to take an introductory physical geography course (at a community college, in order to save some money), and that the department's geomorphology course would then be a breeze. He next asked me what I thought I might write my thesis on! I gave him some foolhardy, prearranged spiel about plants and urban landscapes, to which he said nothing, just sitting there staring at me and rubbing his moustache for a minute or so, after which he quipped, "Based on your transcripts, that just doesn't sound like something you seem to be interested in. I'm going to recommend that you take that intro physical course at a community college in the spring, and then the geomorphology course along with my course on California, here, in the fall semester." I thought about it for a moment, and thought about him, looked around at some of the many books on his shelves -- most of which had something to do with California or economics, and I thought about what a course on the geography of California might be like, wondering, yet never asking, what purpose such a course might serve for me -- and all of a sudden I realized just how comfortable I felt sitting there talking to this guy I had just met. I next heard myself saying, "Okay, I'll try that," and I then stood up, thanked him, and left. Upon leaving his office, I distinctly recall thinking that Dave -- he had asked me to just call him Dave -- was a most beguiling fellow. He was short in stature -- a "plus" in my book -- and he clearly exuded that enviable, intangible professorial quality of being a well-read, erudite scholar, and yet he was likewise decidedly affable and made me feel at ease immediately. I had no way of realizing it at the time, but our initial meeting would have a profound and enduring impact on my life and career -- and, indeed, on the lives and futures of many of my own students.

After that first conversation, it quickly became apparent to me that my feeling of being "at ease" was in no way circumstantial. Without a doubt, speaking for myself, Dave's most estimable quality is indeed his natural ability to not only provide a setting where (his) students instantly feel relaxed, but to also make them feel worthy and vastly capable of doing quite literally anything -- sometimes embarking upon things indubitably beyond their own internal sense of what's doable. The one thing I always remember him telling me, over and over again, after we had finished discussing an article or a book or anything at all, was that I could have written or done that -- sometimes noting that I could have done a better job than the author in question -- or that I could readily become a prominent geographer, or that I had just as much, if not more, talent than a given writer had. And it wasn't mere encouragement, either. It was an acutely thoughtful and terribly effective gift for making a person -- viz., his students -- feel secure and self-confident hugely beyond all the more familiar, pep-talk-like, motivational, self-affirming techniques others use. Each and every time I spoke with Dave I left feeling that I was someone, and that there was no impediment too great and no hurdle too high to overcome. I recall walking into his office one evening a few years later and valiantly announcing, "Okay, I've decided to write my thesis on the geography of John Steinbeck," expecting him to wheel around, lean his head to the side and stare at length at me as he so frequently did, and say something such as, "What in the world have you been smoking, young man?" Instead, without so much as a nanosecond of hesitation, his eyes widened, a discerning, broad, approving smile unexpectedly appeared, and he exclaims, "That's outstanding. How do you envision it?" On another occasion, he invited me to (then-department chairperson) Ralph Vicero's house for, what I later would come to discover, was a faculty get-together. I was the only student there, but I didn't feel strange or out of place because Dave spent the entire time talking to me about my research, an approaching academic conference he had convinced me to participate in, and other scholarly matters, as if I was someone important, someone worth conversing with despite the fact that the house was full of his colleagues. Then, toward the end of the evening, wholly out of the blue, Dave turns and asks, "So, what do you think? Could you see yourself doing this [being a faculty member] as a career?" Much akin to Carl Sauer, who was known for asking undergraduates what they were planning to study in graduate school -- i.e., declaring that the student was indeed now ready to advance to that level -- this was Dave's extraordinary way of telling me yet again that I have what it takes to "make it" in that vocation. I was both stunned and flattered, and, following that brief yet weighty question, I began to envision what it might actually be like to become a college professor. He had planted yet another seed.

Just one additional example of what I'll dub here as Dave's "continually-building-self-esteem-in-his-students" attribute should suffice. I shall always remember one occasion, sitting in his office, where we had been discussing several of David Ward's articles following a marathon evening seminar. By any measure, David Ward is one of the preeminent historical geographers of the 20th Century, and his published works have been of great consequence in the evolution of the discipline. I had said something to Dave about how I thought that David Ward had an admirable writing style and that he was plainly a clear thinker with a good head on his shoulders. No sooner had I let those words roll off my tongue when Dave says to me, "Let me tell you something extremely important. I know David Ward pretty well. I've spoken to him at length, and I've seen him debate and converse with many other geographers at conferences. Yes, he's very sharp and he definitely has a first-class mind, and I would agree that he's also a good writer. But, you, young man, have an even quicker, sharper mind, and you can write circles around him. I have no doubt whatsoever that you'll be more influential than David Ward." Needless to say, I was elated, floating about in some proverbial "seventh heaven" daydream, and I doubtless left his office that day feeling a foot taller and altogether primed to receive a MacArthur Fellowship by week's end! As I reflect back on that and myriad other, analogous occasions, I now of course appreciate that I'm not the gifted person Dave had me believe I was, but I`m also very conscious of the fact that, had he not been there to knowingly prod me in his inimitable, ever-selfless way, I'd most likely never have gone on to tackle even a small percentage of the challenges and projects I have completed since that time. To a certain extent, he was a proxy for the cheerleading, ever-excited, always encouraging father figure I never grew up with, and it just came so effortlessly for Dave, and I was of course more than eager to receive his unrelenting validation.

What may be most revealing about all of this, however, is that I doubt that Dave is even aware of this fact to this day -- viz., that he does this and thereby has this astonishing affect on his students; it just seems to flow with absolute and utter ease out of him. And I know it isn't just something he does in my presence; to varying degrees, I've seen him do this for all his students. It's just his way. In fact, one characteristic I've noticed of all of Dave's students is how self-assured they are, how well they all seem to relate to one another, and the strong connections that exist between them, even amongst his former students of different eras and even those who were separated by decades. On the face of it, they're all seemingly united by his ability to inspire them all first to envisage and then to produce well beyond their normal abilities, and they all seem to share a bond because of it; to some extent, they're like siblings with one common, central denominator -- Dave.

On the other hand -- and here I'm most certainly speaking only for myself -- I wonder if any of them feel, as I do, that they've somehow let Dave down in some small way, never fully able to live-up to his larger-than-life expectations of them? I did not go on to become a shining beacon within historical geography, and, for a series of personal reasons, I even left the profession early. And there's not a month that passes that I don't wonder whether Dave's not perhaps disappointed that I didn't turn out to be the rising star he always told me I'd surely become. But, then, when all the self-deprecation has passed, I know that that cannot be true because, at bottom, when you dig beneath his enduring accolades and all the praise he inherently lavishes upon his students, it's strikingly evident that what Dave truly cares about is that they do whatever they genuinely wish to do, without any limitations or boundaries, to the very best of their respective abilities. So, in the final analysis, Dave's relationship with his students isn't one of teacher and student, mentor and apprentice; it is a relationship of true equals, colleagues with unconditional friendship, which is consequently the way he treats his students -- as equals and as friends. And what more could any student ever hope to ask of any mentor? I have done my best to pass this quality on to my own students, but I am positive I have fallen far short. Dave has a genuine affection and concern for students, so it simply ushers forth naturally and without effort. For me, however -- and I suspect for most people -- it's a great amount of struggle. There's only one David Hornbeck, and all of us -- all who have been fortunate enough to identify ourselves as one of his students and, in so doing, his good friend -- we have been forever and unequivocally enriched as a result. And to that, all I can possibly add is, "Thank you, young man."

Martin S. Kenzer, Ph.D.

Professor of Geography (retired)
Florida Atlantic University
Mike McDaniel

I met David Hornbeck in 2005 at Chrys Rodrigue's suggestion, to go over my proposed thesis topic on the persistence of Mexican land grant boundaries on today's land use patterns.? It turned out that we had a number of interests in common, in particular, the use of GIS for site selection decisions in business and the history of California's rancho period. We ended up spending nearly two hours discussing a range of subjects including my proposal -- and Dave gave me some very good advice, advice that was instrumental in turning my rough outline into a very successful project.

The two key pieces of advice I took from the meeting were to expand the topic of my thesis to include the American Public Land Survey System and to focus on a key question: What makes the Mexican land grant pattern persist in some areas and be replaced in others by the American system?

To make a long story short, the final result was that my thesis, The Persistence of the Mexican Land Tenure System in Los Angeles and Orange County, received the Best Thesis Award for CSULB's College of Liberal Arts in 2006 -- the first received by the Department of Geography in 50 years. I owe a great debt to Dave for his advice, which was instrumental in getting this award and am glad to have this opportunity to express it. Thank you, Professor Hornbeck!

Michael McDaniel, M.A., J.D.

Lecturer, Department of Geography, CSULB
Carolyn G. McGovern-Bowen

"Professor David Hornbeck, Ph.D.: Keeper of the Light: Early Years, 1976-1978"

David Hornbeck had been teaching/advising students at CSUN for nearly four years when our paths crossed in 1976. By then I was doggedly determined to finish what had become, for me, that elusive basic university degree. Having already re-structured my personal/work life, I was at liberty to focus entirely upon the completion of needed studies. My renaissance phase of acquiring a higher education involved treading many a pleasurable, if thorny, path: mathematics, chemistry, geology, art history and so very much more. When I finally drifted into my first geography class at UC Santa Barbara (Arthur Strahler's, Introduction to Physical Geography) in 1974, I felt like The Prodigal Daughter Returned (your forbearance please, Rembrandt). In answering this clarion call, the then vastly superior geography program offered at San Fernando Valley State College beckoned. Given my solid foundation in general science/math and geology, I was naturally drawn to adopting physical geography as "home" when I enrolled in an economic geography course offered by, yours truly, David Hornbeck. With my trajectory thus altered, I became fully immersed in the fascinating world of human/cultural geography. Checking groceries to stay financially afloat, I soon completed both BA (1976) and MA (1978) degrees in geography at the newly christened CSUN (see appended note). Thereafter, and with Hornbeck's guidance, I promptly entered, and eventually completed, a doctoral program in geography at Syracuse University, New York. So much for finishing that basic university degree.

Simply put, David Hornbeck is a true "Keeper of the Light." As a dedicated scholar, formidable work ethic adherent, committed educator and compassionate human being, Hornbeck has illumined the path of many a wandering student, and colleague, for more than three decades. Down-to-earth, yet mercurial and scrappy, his engaging mix of arrogance and vulnerability was like a breath of fresh air in the oftentimes stodgy and stale world of academia. If Hornbeck adjudged you a worthy apprentice, an exhilarating intellectual growth cycle awaited. He brought to the lecture hall and seminar room the full range of requisite academic tools: fertile reading lists, seasoned lectures replete with incisive analyses, a commanding yet patient Socratic mode of instruction. Yes, Hornbeck challenged one to think, to think boldly, and to question, question, question. Critical thinking, exacting data collection/analysis/evaluation, fastidious documentation, and surgical synthesis - these are the tools a receptive student could expect to sharpen under his keen tutelage. Whether one was dissecting the components of economic geography, spatial analysis, historical geography, or field/research methodologies, Hornbeck galvanized his students with a priceless sense of intellectual adventure that would endure a lifetime. No finer legacy exists.

No question that Hornbeck held his lantern high for those willing to make the climb. His holistic mentoring approach extended beyond the lecture hall/seminar room, beyond learning to produce scholarly term reports/presentations/theses, to reach those uncharted waters of "The Other." Indeed, one learned just as much from a Hornbeck group fieldtrip: the skill of applied landscape analysis, so fundamental to any worthy geographer, was honed from both the roadway and good old-fashioned gumshoe effort. Who could forget learning to identify crop patterns in the Salinas Valley while speeding by at sixty mph? And what about that tell-tale transition from field crops, to truck crops, to the changing density of human settlement patterns? Better be quick recognizing all those patterns and processes! And when the exhausting day was done, a group crash at the local Motel 6 followed, along with a robust round of Yukon Jack or Mexican beer with tequila chasers (for whom the worm turns? - indulge me, Hemingway), and lively intellectual blathering that predictably dovetailed into utter silliness and blessed sleep - eventually. Ah, yes, the simple joy of acquiring basic social skills so sorely lacking in a lower middle-class diamante de bruta como yo.

Of the many recollections of Hornbeck, another outstanding one is his emphasis on quality data collection, evaluation and interpretation. Archival worlds of wonder were opened for those pursuing historical questions - from the department's own Sanbourn map collection, to the Santa Barbara Mission archives, to the vast holdings of the Bancroft Library at UC Berkley. The value of developing systematic research habits and fastidious documentation practices was demonstrated by observing Hornbeck's own scholarly regimen. He practiced what he preached in all areas of academic pursuit. Data processing and graphing, mapping and map interpretation, the honing of hypothesis testing and synthesis, or making every single comma count in an abstract for professional presentation - each step was to be carefully tended.

Ah yes, the task of professional conference training was mastered as well. Hornbeck not only encouraged students to generate term papers/seminar reports/theses of professional quality, but also guided them through the entire process of participating with "The Big Guns" at local, regional and national conferences. Talk about opening new doors, building confidence, and basking in the glow of all that creative, albeit highly competitive, energy. One quickly recognized how it all "fit together" after being freed to wander and wonder at this beckoning world of geographic heavy hitters like David Harvey, David Ward, and David Hornbeck ;-) ! To witness such freewheeling intellectual exchange while acquiring academic contacts, and later painting the town red at day's end, was terrific hands-on experience. Let us overlook the trials and tribulations of being crammed into a hotel room with a bunch of fired-up grad students - where the joys of group dynamics were predictably stretched uncomfortably thin (who gets to shower first?!).

Perhaps the most transformative influence Hornbeck had was in his role as advisor to students seeking entry into advanced graduate programs. His encouragement and guidance was crucial, to say the least, in navigating the labyrinthine doctoral program application process. It was all good. We learned the dance: the selection of potential leading universities, the review of resident faculty and programs, and the establishment of direct contact with specialists of interest. It was all so earth-shaking at the time, and even more so when a shortlist materialized, followed by solid offers for teaching/research assistantships and fellowships. That cross-country journey in August of 1978, by way of obscure "Blue Highways" (we still hear you, William Least Heatmoon!) whenever possible, was an especially gratifying appetizer to all that temptingly exotic terra incognita waiting me at road's end in Syracuse, New York. Not to mention that this transition to advanced graduate training was of heightened personal significance as I found myself in the novel position of being paid (however nominally) to do what I loved. What a gift that was! And do never mind those cruelly bitter, minus-forty-degree Syracuse winters! Alas, it was, occasionally difficult to abide by Hornbeck's parting admonition: "Always stay at least two weeks ahead!" for the intellectual stimulation I received at Syracuse triggered an utter metamorphosis of my evolving world view. That, too, was all good.

While the arc of my life path ultimately positioned my event horizon in worlds far beyond, I gratefully acknowledge the collective imprint upon my geographer/social scientist's mind of the likes of David Hornbeck, I-Shou Wang, John Agnew, David Harvey, Joseph E. Spencer, Don W. Meinig, John B. Jackson, William Mangin, and David Robinson. Substantial portions of my subsequent writings are clearly reflective of said abiding influence, as demonstrated, for example, in my first novel, Evil Seed: Gaia versus the Human Race.

Thank you, David Hornbeck. And may your world continue to be filled with "The Light" you so graciously shared with generations of wayward ones!

Masters Thesis (August, 1978), Hispanic Population in Alta California: 1790 and the 1830s Areas of Specialization: Historical Geography, Population Geography, Data Retrieval /Storage Systems

Doctoral Thesis (May, 1986), Colonial Pátzcuaro, Michoacán: A Population Study Areas of Specialization: Urban-Historical Geography, Latin American Studies, World-Systems Development, Global Demographics

Carolyn G. McGovern-Bowen, Ph.D.

Author, Seeker, Globe Trotter
Santa Rosa Valley, California
http://www.authorsden.com/cgmb
Patrick "Mike" Maloney

My office worked with Dave Hornbeck for the last ten years. My office has used Dave as a multifaceted expert. These are the areas in which my office has used him:
  1. California history,
  2. Historical and prospective mappings with GIS overlays and
  3. development of a sophisticated Water Exchange Program.

As lawyers we are used to working with all kinds of experts in all types of fields. What is most fascinating about Dave is that it does not make any difference the level of sophistication of the people with whom he has dealt. Whether they be in United States or Europe, the individuals and experts with whom he has worked immediately recognized Dave's competence and consequently have created a better product. Dave has the unique ability to bring out the best in the people with whom he works and causes the creation of a better product.

The scope of David's skills is shown by the work he has done for our office on a variety of issues:
  1. Historical research in Imperial, Riverside, Monterey, and San Luis Obispco counties and northern Mexico.
  2. Computer simulation of the Salton Sea in the past and the future.
  3. Development of a Water Exchange for Imperial County, which has the potential to solve Statewide water problems.
  4. Thorough review of the Dutch Water Development and its application to Salton Sea Restoration
  5. Projections of the demographics of Imperial County over the next 75 years.

Dave's work product in these areas will have a significant impact on the future of these areas over the next 100 years.

One of the pleasures in my life was addressing one of Dave's classes at the San Antonio Mission and explaining to the class that Dave was teaching them how to use computer tools so they be would be as sophisticated and knowledgeable as the most successful agricultural managers in California.

For what it's worth, the only time that Dave was hesitant on objectively reporting on his research was when I suggested his research showed that the United States had done the same thing to northern Mexico that Saddam Hussein was doing to parts of Iraq -- draining the marshes and using the water in other politically important places. We were both concerned about the political ramifications of the research but the analogy was perfect. We carefully reviewed the undisputed data, and he made the analogy in his presentation to the Department of Interior.

Good luck to Dave in his retirement, and I am sure his skills will continue to of use to the nation and world in the future.

Patrick J. Maloney

Law Office of Patrick J. Maloney
2425 Webb Avenue, Suite 100
Alameda, CA 94501
Richard L. Nostrand

Dear Dave:

On the eve of your retirement from a long career at CSUN, it is fun for me to reflect on your accomplishments and on my contact with you. After all, we go back almost four decades -- a long time for two people to share strong common interests in Spanish people in the Borderlands.

Your own original contributions to our knowledge about Indians, Spaniards, and Mexicans in California have been nothing short of awesome. Through literally hundreds of professional papers, journal articles, books, and field trips, not to mention good old classroom teaching, you have informed both academics and the general public with your scholarship about such things as missions and ranchos and population change in an earlier California. You are THE scholar in geography when it comes to Hispanic California. Everyone in cultural/historical geography knows of your publications. And many of us are especially impressed by your innovative cartographic work.

All this said, let me ramble on a bit about us. My records show that we started to correspond in February 1972 when you were an Instructor at Nebraska and I was temporarily with the Center for Mexican American Studies in Austin. After that we interacted over many projects: your editing of the Historical Geography Newsletter, when you skillfully worked in among other things my map supplement of Mexicans in 1850 in the fall 1975 issue; your editorship of Frontera for the Association of Borderlands Scholars when you greatly helped me out during my president years in 1979-81 and before you took over that job in 1981-83; our getting together at numerous AAG and WSSA meetings in the late 1970s and early 1980s; and your coming to Oklahoma to give a lecture and talk with my graduate students in 1980. I still have the flyer: "David Hornbeck is to lecture on 'Conflict and Resolution: Frontier Settlement in California, 1770-1880,' on February 29, 1980." How I wished OU could have hired you to be another Borderlands person given your ideas, foresight, and level of energy. We would have been a dynamite duo, I think.

Two occasions that we shared were especially memorable. We attended the AAG and WSSA back-to-back in April 1981. At the WSSA, David Weber came to our ABS business meeting because he (THE guru of Borderlands historians) wanted to ask YOU (the innovative cartographer) over a beer about how you made your excellent maps. I was so pleased for you. And the second occasion happened in Toronto that same year at CUKANZUS '81. We walked "Philosophers Row" every evening to reach the Duke of York Pub with all its red velvet décor. On one of those walks that August, we observed some eye-brow-lifting behavior -- do you remember? You and I laughed over this many times.

Our correspondence tapers off in the mid-1980s. You kept on publishing gems about Hispanic nineteenth-century California, but my understanding is that you began to wear a second professional hat in the applied world of business geography. So the days of our considerable contact ended, and you will now join me in the ranks of the retired. Since I retired in August 2004, I have decided to write that textbook I never had time to write. The book's working title is America's Changing Geography. I am fitting this project in around my many trips to Seattle to help Mom, now 99, in the old family home. And you should know that when I get around to my chapter on California in the Mexican era, your thick folder of reprints and your nicely inscribed and award-winning copy of California Patterns will be front and center for me to draw upon.

Congratulations -- you earned a happy retirement!

Richard L. Nostrand, Ph.D.

David Ross Boyd Professor Emeritus
University of Oklahoma
Erick Posner

My favorite memory of Dave is when I first took his Economic Geography class back in 1995. It was a period of upheaval in my life. I was stressed with large class load. Economics was not my forte. At the end of the first class, I approached Dave and asked him whether I should drop the class. After asking me several questions and mulling over my responses, he proclaimed that I should be OK if I show up in class. On his advice, I stayed in his class. Over the time, I ended being one of his top students. This surprised me. I recall vividly that, if there were a concept that I did not understand, Dave would pause for a minute and figure out how to explain the concept in a different way. One time, he asked a student to stand and act as a counterweight while he pushed the student back. Dave was trying to illustrate the value of resistance variable in a weighted spatial distribution. Not many professors do that. Dave is indeed a rare professor.

A testy and abrasive professor, Dave has the uncanny ability to engage the students in his teachings. He is the only "take no prisoner" professor that I know of. He recognizes each promising student and nurtures him or her to his or her full potential.

One action that Dave tends to take, which is very uncommon for university professors, was to cancel the entire class session for the day if the sign language interpreter for the deaf did not show up at all.

I remember the first time he did that was when I sat down and my interpreter was nowhere to be found. It was during a semester where there was a severe shortage of sign language interpreters. Dave would then ask me where my interpreter was. I shrugged my shoulders. He then said, "Okay, fine. Class canceled. See you next week!" amidst a sea of protest and the grumblings of hearing students. He would then place a call to the National Center on Deafness to inform them that he was forced to cancel class because of the center's inability to provide equal service for deaf students. That put the center on the spot. He would respond to hearing students' complaints about the action: It was not fair for the deaf students, who paid for education, to sit and not get education, while their hearing peers got the same education with no problems.

Dave's actions earned my deepest respect for him.

Another memory I have of Dave is of taking an experimental graduate geography class under him. We started off with about 8 students. We were to learn Spatial SQL Geography Database programming for use with MapInfo. By the end of the second week, I was the only student in the class. The Geography Department wanted to cut the class. Dave refused to let them do that. I ended up acing the spatial geography course in just a month flat.

Those who have worked in the geography computer lab in the past ten years may recall fading marks on the white dry erase board. That was Dave's handwork. During a class session back in 2000, he picked up a black permanent marker and proceeded to write on the dry erase board. We stopped him and told him that he had the wrong marker. His response: "Really? Who cares!" with a shrug and proceeded to write on the board. I was astounded with his veracity and chutzpah. That's Dave to us all!

As I progressed into my graduate education, Dave and I became close and he ended up being my thesis chair. He was extremely tough on me, particularly with my writing skills. Through him, I refined my writing skills.

Both Dave and I shared a common affection for fountain pens. With the fountain pen Dave gave me, he signed my thesis.

I often enjoyed his abrasive sense of humor and bantering.

To this day, I still fondly think of him and thank him for his guidance into who I am. He was thrilled to find out that I was offered jobs with several government agencies and a school district. I presently am working for an agency within the Department of Defense, along with another one of Dave's students. I also write for a monthly newspaper serving the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community across the nation.

Erick H. Posner
Geography
BA '98 and MA '01
Chrys Rodrigue

I first met David Hornbeck in 1972 at a departmental party held at his then- house out in Simi Valley: I was 19, and he was an outrageous assistant prof embarrassing one of the senior faculty in a push-the-envelope holiday skit. Naturally, I thought that was pretty cool!

I managed never to take a class from him as an undergraduate, since my main interests then were in biogeography. I entered the graduate program in the Fall of 1974 and, in the first week of Spring, 1975, he buttonholed me and said I "had" to take his seminar, "Migration Theory." I told him I wasn't even dimly interested in migration theory or human geography and he replied, "it doesn't make any difference what the topic of the seminar is -- I just want to get all the really smart graduate students in one room to debate important ideas -- can you imagine how great that would be?" Flattered silly, I fell for it and agreed to sign up. It turned out to be the best graduate seminar I ever took anywhere, filled with a heavy reading load from the then-research frontier in migration geography! Dave basically kicked us into becoming good critical readers, discussion facilitators, and, most of all, people who could handle critical feedback without falling apart and apply it dispassionately.

My own good swift kick happened about in the middle of the seminar. I was supposed to summarize an article and, so, I sped-read it a couple hours before the seminar in time-honored graduate student fashion, jotted down a few notes, and trusted that the nearly eidetic recall that got me through my undergraduate courses would carry me through this evening as well. So, when he turned the stage over to me, I dutifully went through my points, summarizing the article, and adding little concrete bits as they flashed by the inside of my forehead. Piece of cake. The first sign of trouble was the non-start of the discussion I was supposed to facilitate. I became increasingly uncomfortable as my colleagues sat there and looked uncomfortable, and I just didn't know how to evoke the kind of discussion we'd been having in the weeks before. In the squirming mass of discomfort, Dave started asking questions. No-one could answer, and no-one was more tongue-tied and brain-dead than I. Dave slammed down his articles and started chewing us out for not having done the work and me especially for not having really thought through the article I was responsible for. He stormed out of the room, and I slunk into the women's room and sat there almost in tears, wondering what the hell had just happened and why I hadn't been able to wing an article I had in fact read. I don't think I ever felt quite so small in my collegiate career. After our "break," the seminar resumed on a calmer note, Dave explaining and re-iterating the standards he expected us to meet. The next week, and every week to the end of the seminar, I read articles much more closely and analytically, and took a lot more notes, and, to my surprise, got a lot more out of them.

One of the articles was a piece by Curtis Roseman, which differentiated long distance from short distance migration, not in terms of arbitrary differences in distance, but in terms of behavioral responses to the move (retention or non-retention of previous daily or weekly "activity nodes"). That article led me to identify a conceptual nook I could fill with a thesis and so was started "Partial and Total Displacement Migration in Northridge, California: An Evaluation of the Roseman Theory." This thesis began my application of and growing interest in statistical methods, which is a large part of what I now teach at CSULB. It also moved my work into critical social geography, which my subsequent stay at Clark only deepened and turned toward a risk and hazards framework. My dissertation explored the risk ramifications of the sedentarization of gathering and hunting peoples in the pre-Neolithic Near East and how those ramifications eventually led to animal domestication and agriculture, an interest I picked up from Robert Hoffpauir here. This dissertation brought statistical methodology into a topic area where it had not been used before and essentially upended the classic Hahn-Sauer-Isaac-Simoonses approach to that subject.

My work since my doctorate has largely concentrated on hazards, typically blending together physical geography, human geography, and statistics. So, even though I never became an historical geographer nor stayed in the migration field, I am still very much a Hornbeck product. My work typically consists of meticulous, sometimes over-the-top database construction and statistical analysis, mixed with archival and sometimes even qualitative methods, very much like Dave's own work and the consulting work we all did at Area Location Systems and ALST. Like him, I am comfortable working by myself or collaborating with others, which has allowed both of us to take on smaller scale "labors of love" by ourselves and ambitious projects that require a lot of shared resources and division of labor. Like him, I have tended to "migrate" into different areas, sometimes far from my original training (e.g., the geography of Mars!), even as Dave the historical geographer of mission and rancho California went into applied historical and then economic geography, business consulting, cartography, GIS development, and spatial modelling. You see that kind of flexibility and conceptual grounding in a bunch of the "Hornbeck School" people, whether they went into academia like Howard Botts, Bob Rundstrom, Martin Kenzer, and myself, into business like Jon Voorhees, David Larson, Bruce Grouse, or Brandi DeVore, or into government service like Erick Posner and Isaiah Bashan.

One of the most important aspects of Dave's work as a mentor was his knack for finding smart working-class kids and turning these "diamonds in the rough" into professionals comfortable in any kind of social and working milieu, professors and teachers, analysts, and consultants, able to move easily in the highest levels of the business, scientific, governmental, and academic worlds. He identified and fostered what Antonio Gramsci called "working class intellectuals." Basically, he recognized students who came from backgrounds much like his and, like a seasoned older brother, showed us the ropes and helped us climb them. Like all the others whose comments are shared here, I am profoundly grateful for the leg up he gave me. Few professors ever evoke the level of gratitude and genuine affection that all of us in the "Hornbeck School of Thought" feel for him, and it is rare to see professors with such close, decades-long ties with students. All of us in academia might take a second look at what he does and emulate it!

I am including here a paper I did at a conference held at CSUN in 1996, which I co-authored with Eugenie Rovai of CSU Chico (another "Clarkie"). It brings together my interest in natural hazards, here drought, with Eugenie's interest in water resource policy. It also is perhaps the work in which I come the closest to Dave's interest in historical geography, as this paper draws on archival analysis to reconstruct the development of water management case law in California and its implications for the evolution of the San Fernando Valley landscape from 1797 to 1923.

Weaving the Water Web

Christine M. Rodrigue, Ph.D.

Professor of Geography
Affiliate faculty in Environmental Science and Policy
Affiliate faculty in Emergency Services Administration
California State University, Long Beach
Bob Rundstrom

In honor of Dave Hornbeck and his retirement...

"Stepping Up and Completing a Circle"

I took a cartography class from Ted Oberlander at Cal in 1974. When I asked him where I could go to get an M.A. degree emphasizing the subject, he told me about CSUN's great cart. lab and classes where students could use all the facilities. So I came to Northridge in 1977 about as unaware of David Hornbeck as one could be. But since he was teaching the required introductory seminar, every graduate student could not avoid running into him. And once you ran into Dave, well...

My most vivid memory of Dave comes to life when I think about that introductory seminar. It seems like there were approximately 20 students in the course in the Fall of 1977. Dave had instructed us to come every week prepared to summarize the assigned reading. The job involved clearly articulating the purpose of an article, summarizing the crucial points, checking to see if the introduction and conclusion matched, and defining the method used by the author(s). As I recall, we had to do it in five minutes or less. And we definitely never knew who he was going to call on, or when. But that was only the beginning of it. After the summation, Dave would ask....no....interrogate....the poor student for details about this or that aspect of the reported research. He wouldn't let you skate, and he didn't let himself skate either. He always knew the piece backwards and forwards. And for a few minutes, he'd poke around inside your brain, looking for a hole, a gap in your understanding of the article. He'd let you stutter, fumble, or sit frozen in silence for a bit, and then quickly shift his question to the whole class. The spotlight....no....heat-lamp....was turned off. And that would be the end of your ten little minutes of hell. Sometime during the next few days, Dave would most likely come find you or ask you to come into his office (always very dark, mellow music sometimes playing softly, a writing project splayed out on his canted drafting table, the smell of pipe tobacco in the air, a bottle of "jack" stashed somewhere...). Then, he'd carefully and cheerfully re-build you. He'd get you to think about how you could do better. Get you to realize that he was asking you to step up, to become a better reader, a better speaker, a better researcher...a graduate student.

Well, my time under the heat-lamp came early that semester. Dave called on me out of the blue. I thought I was prepared. Soon after I started speaking, he started walking around the room holding a coffee pot. (This part is still quite vivid even after 32 years.) In a louder-than-normal voice, he asked each student if they wanted coffee. "Can I pour you some more coffee?" "Would you like me to get you a cup?" "Hey, would someone please get her a cup?" I quickly lost focus, my voice trailed off into oblivion, and I was so totally distracted that I just fell silent as I watched Dave cruise around the room serving coffee. After a bit, Dave turned around, still holding the coffee pot, and put it to the entire class, "Alright now, what just happened?" Oh, hell, here was another lesson coming, I realized. And at my expense. Everybody knew what had happened, but no one answered his question. So, Dave launched into his MIO (my term for a Manufactured Instructional Opportunity). "What do you think is going to happen when you have to make a research presentation in a seminar or at an academic conference?" he asked. He said something about goats walking through Prof. Gordon Lewthwaite's living-room and distracting students while they're talking about the history of geographic thought in Lewthwaite's companion seminar that was always offered the following semester. I remember thinking, "Goats?" Dave also asked what we were going to do if we were giving a conference paper and in the middle of our presentation a baby started screaming in the front row, and then someone in the back of the room yells, `Fire!" and everyone rushes out. "You're up there giving your paper," he said. "What are you gonna do? You keep going, that's what you do. You've got to learn to concentrate and stay mentally focused. That's what good graduate students do."

Then, he turned back to me and said he wanted me to do the same thing again with a different article next week. I'd be on the spot again, but at least this time he'd given me plenty of notice. That next week, Dave didn't pull any stunts. And after I'd finished my article summary, he praised what I'd said in front of the class. I doubt I really deserved it, but I really can't remember because I was so fogged with anxiety at the time. But that moment...that recovery that he allowed me...gave me the self-confidence I needed to get through the rest of my first semester in graduate school, as well as the knowledge that graduate work placed a different kind of demand on a student. It required me to step up. Coincidentally, I found myself teaching the same kind of introductory seminar here at the University of Oklahoma from 1994 to 2007. I didn't wander around with a coffee pot, but I sometimes pulled other kinds of stunts. And I always pushed students to step up, to learn how to ask good questions, to realize that graduate school is different, and I tried to be there for those new graduate students when they fell. In short, Dave's influence is everywhere when I teach.

A second memory also comes easily to mind. In 1979, Dave coached me through preparations for my first conference paper, which I presented at the always-safe Western Social Science Association. Dave used their annual meetings as another kind of testing-ground for students. He helped me learn how to organize the paper I would present. Then he held dry-runs where students would practice their presentations to ensure they were clear and articulate about the subject, under the time limit, and that the graphics meshed smoothly with the talk. Dave attended my session at the WSSA meeting (I don't think he ever missed a student's conference paper), and when I'd finished and the audience had no questions, Dave raised his hand from his position standing in the back of the room and asked two questions at once that immediately poked holes in what I thought I knew about my topic. When I flubbed the answers, he then cast his safety net, shrugging off his own questions by saying they probably didn't matter much anyway. Later, Dave introduced me and the other CSUN grad. students in attendance to other prominent geographers. He was always there showing us how it was done, shepherding us through a kind of maturation process in becoming what in his terms and, later, mine is "a good graduate student." And bear in mind that I was not one of his graduate students. I was studying cartography primarily, not historical geography. But that kind of academic "turf" mattered little to Dave in those days. He wanted to help graduate students succeed and to become better students, pure and simple.

One last vignette from three decades ago. By 1979, Dave was pushing me to think about getting a Ph.D. He knew it would probably be in cartography, but again, that didn't matter. And I was never cut out for the private sector or government. So, at his urging, I decided to make application to the three best cartography programs in the country. Now, sometimes in the late afternoon or evenings in those days, Dave and some students would go over to a bar on Reseda Blvd. It was on the southeast corner of Reseda. Dearborn or Prairie was the cross-street, I can't remember which. It was inside a restaurant. I think it was a HoJo's. Dave and I would sometimes have a couple of bourbons there along with the others. One day in 1980, as we were sort of lurching our way from there back toward the department, I told Dave I'd accepted an offer to go work on a Ph.D. at the University of Kansas. He suddenly stood still in the parking lot there west of Sierra Hall, got a big grin on his face, let out a shout, and I remember him actually lifting off the ground with happiness for me. He actually got air! I shouldn't have been, but I was stunned that he would care that much to get so excited about a cartography student going somewhere to pursue more of the same.

I also have to admit that Dave is the primary reason I became annoyed when I first heard the phrase "K through 19." It began to be used a few years ago to describe the part of our lives we spend trying to get an education in institutions. The executive director of the AAG promotes it as some kind of grand, unifying concept. Many of the recent presidents of the AAG have touted it, too. It seems to me, though, that the phrase has several shortcomings. To me, it implies there's little difference between one "grade" and the next. With each passing year, the subjects just get treated a little more deeply, the methods just get a little more advanced. But it's all of a single piece. And after four years of undergraduate studies, the first year of graduate school is supposed to be...what...17th grade? Please. Dave taught me the bogusness of such ideas, that there's a big and important difference between being a graduate student and being anything else, and that pushing students to leap across that difference, and being there to catch them when they fall, is what it's all about.

For us graduate students, Dave was a model of research productivity and quality. But he was a thoughtful, demanding, and caring teacher who spent time with students, too. He set the bar high for anyone aspiring to excel in both research and teaching as a university professor. I've been trying to clear that bar since I left Northridge. I still feel him pushing, trying to help me get up to it.

Coda:

Oddly, in 2005, twenty-five years after I left CSUN, I found myself beginning work on this ridiculously big book project about the massive resettlement schemes here in Indian and Oklahoma territories in the 19th and early-20th centuries. It will be a kind of historical geography of Oklahoma prior to statehood, one loaded with maps; that is, if it ever gets finished. And last month, I checked Dave's vita online for the first time. It says he was born in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. That's in Boktuklo County in the Apukshunnubbee District of the Choctaw Nation (part of McCurtain County, Oklahoma). So, I've recently begun to feel that maybe a kind of circle is being completed.

Robert Rundstrom, Ph.D.

University of Oklahoma
(CSUN-Geography M.A. 1980)
Musings from Barbara Stabnow Snyder
former student and Horbeckian class of 1979

To "Teach" (noun not verb)
From "Dots" (nicknamed this due to poor performance in 205 with dot mapping)

So many of the best things in my life came into my life while attending public colleges in Los Angeles. At CSUN's Geography Department one of the very best things came in the person of "Teach," Dr. David Hornbeck (hereafter DH). I had not had academic successes in my earlier life at all -- I was not a particularly good learner and school never seemed relevant. But, at West LA College, my California History instructor struck a chord. All of a sudden, learning became fun. At CSUN it became really fun. Being in DH's California History class was almost too fun. I had wonderful classmates and despite the fact that I was not 18 (I was OLD), I realized that school wasn't irrelevant at all and I could learn as long as it was something I loved -- I loved geography and I was hooked.

I took as many of DH's classes as possible. I complained bitterly about Economic Geography. In the class room, DH's classes were a kick. He may have let us get away with more than he should have, but it was clear that he never asked more of us than he was giving himself. It was clear that he enjoyed teaching and he had fun making it fun for us. In my view, as a teacher he was tops.

DH was a man of vision and as such I remember him saying "some day every desk in America will have a computer on it." In the late 1970s, such a thing was unthinkable. I was puzzled by this prediction having only once seen an "electronic brain" which took up an entire room in 1967. Today, I sit at my desk writing this on one of three computers on the property. To this day, I wonder, how did he predict this?

He was always available to us, sitting in his office in the department nerve center, smoking a pipe (it was the 70s) and playing mausoleum music on tape. He welcomed our questions and shared his knowledge. Often, the venue changed as the great one and his followers retired to the bar at the Howard Johnsons. I cringe to think I drove the 405 south over the hill to West L.A. in a not entirely sober state more than once.

The one thing that he insisted upon was that we THINK! Somehow, in my former life, I hadn't really focused on how few people actually think. Poor learners often are thinkers -- having been a poor learner for so long, I actually did think before becoming a Horbeckian. However, following my time at CSUN, I did a better job of organizing my thoughts. I learned later that not all teachers want you to think.

DH was an individual who could size up virtually any situation and figure out how to handle it. This, I found impressive. I realized that he like Kenny Rogers " knew when to hold `em, knew when to fold `em. knew when to walk away, knew when to run." Did he learn this in graduate school or from POKER?

He allowed us to know his human side, not just his teacher side. Some classes had a very attractive, smart hard working graduate student who took a lot of DH's classes. I knew right away, Virginia Oliver and DH were seriously in love. How did I know this? Like I said, I was old -- I knew despite all of their efforts to hide it that this was the real thing. His zooming around in his Porsche looking for babes days were quickly coming to an end.

The details are fuzzy now, but somehow, DH accepted an absolutely outrageous proposal. I believe it was my idea (always thinking) that our little gang of Hornbeckians go on a field trip over Easter Break around California. He agreed to make the arrangements with the school if I promised to map out the trip and make the necessary reservations and other arrangements. To my amazement, a Proseminar Geog 490B was listed in the Spring Schedule of Classes. To the chagrin of a number of geography students, this class was closed before it ever opened. Five students (including Miss Oliver) and DH were heading north in a state car to the far north east of California, the Modoc Plateau. Each of us did research on a chosen place so we did actually work for our two units. A few pictures from this most memorable trip can be found on this site. For me, it was the trip of a lifetime, and ironically, my later life sometimes feels like a continuation of 490B. But I get ahead of myself.

Virginia Oliver went off to the University of Illinois where she truly missed her best friend and mentor. Tired of long distance phone bills, she returned home to California to marry Teach in a beautiful ceremony in Glendale. These two worked together at business and always shared a lovely home. Having met a single DH in the 1970s, there were still things yet to amaze me about him. This guy will cook dinner! He'll clean the house (I think)! He will feed the dogs! He's a loving father and grandfather and he's a wonderful husband to Ginny. I know that in retirement, he will continue to do things that he loves and have fun doing them. His future looks bright.

I fear that DH is probably disappointed that I bombed out of graduate school which was the worst experience ever. I'm married, retired, and living in Ojai. I do and have done many things (like writing up one Osmiroid pen from Geog. 205 and selling it on eBay). Of the many things that I do, my #1 favorite thing is planning trips in our motorhome and this is something I've done a lot. I often send cards or e-mails to the Hornbecks from out of the way places in California, fondly remembering our wonderful time on the road during Easter break 1979.

With that, let me say, I wish you DH all the best in your retirement. You were the greatest "Teach" ever. Thanks for the memories.

. . .'s
Jon Voorhees

In the summer of '75 a young man, confused about his career and academic opportunities after a disheartening freshman year, walked into the Geography Department office and asked to speak with the undergraduate advisor... and so began a 30+ year relationship.

Over those 33 years, our relationship has evolved as have our individual situations. We have been student/teacher, client/vendor, vendor/vendor, and full bore business partners. Some of these relationships panned out better than others but all were operated with two objectives - how do we develop a better solution to the business problem and how do we profit from the solution? The latter was always more difficult to achieve than the former. Today, I lead a team of about 100+ associates who work together to maintain and improve Bank of America's store and ATM network, one of the largest in our industry. In my role, I am primarily a teacher, coach, problem solver, and story teller. I must rely on my training and collective 30+ years of professional experiences to face each situation. Even today, I rely on five core things Dave Hornbeck taught me all those years ago.

  1. Make sure you know how things work. Dave pounded into our heads the need to truly understand how things work. By that, I mean how consumers make choices, how they make trade-off decisions, how competition impacts your business, and how transportation systems work (or often times don't work). The importance of this "foundational" training, which involved studying theories/models of society, retail structures and consumer cognitive behavior, ensured that I had the proper emphasis on a data-rich factual representation of the environment under study.

    Over the years, the data has gotten better (richer, more detailed, longer time horizon) and the modeling has gotten better (more predictive and more actionable) yet the basic theories continue to hold. Dave's emphasis on building a strong technical foundation ensured that I was equipped to attack the analytical challenges presented over time.

  2. Make sure you understand a region's history. Whether we were studying the California Missions or the spread of agriculture in the Salinas Valley, Dave always insisted on us learning the history of the region. Simply having a good technical foundation is never adequate enough. It is critical to be able to see a market in "context". Technical skills can help you break down how something happened but having an historical frame of reference can help you better understand why something happened.

    Knowing the history (demographic, economic, social, etc.) of a market is critical to my current work as we evaluate investment opportunities across the country. Bank of America operates physical distribution in over 700 counties nationwide and every year we invest some $500MM-$900MM in our network based on long-term strategies. The decision of where to invest is driven by a multitude of factors that reflect the long-term opportunity of each market. Size, affluence, competitive conditions are important but only in the longer-term context of how those factors longer-term changes to the market.

  3. Make sure you can identify crops passing by at 70 miles per hour on the highway. Sounds pretty silly. Many of us who were tested on these criteria certainly thought so back in the day, but this "test" was all about paying attention to details. To determine differences in lettuce types you learned to focus on variations in leaf size, shape and color. Learning how to do all that at 70 miles per hour dealt with sharpening focus and operating under pressure. Those same skills apply today as we drive or walk markets looking at new real estate opportunities. Unearthing and leveraging the patterns in market behaviors and interactions between your customers and your distribution network is the key to success. You need to see beyond the data to see the patterns of behavior. I still tell the story of driving the Salinas Valley at 70 and being challenged to identify crops as I teach associates how to evaluate a market.

  4. Simplify your story/messaging. I remember clearly Dave setting up a special class for me (one lousy unit) where I read a book and wrote a report about my thoughts of the book. Pretty straight-forward assignment. The initial report was something like eight pages. Dave critiqued the report then asked me to redo it, but in only four pages. We repeated the process again as two pages, then one page, then one paragraph.

    That one exercise taught me the benefit of brevity and clarity of communications -- a very valuable skill. Even today, I find myself wanting to give too much information and have to remind myself that my readers don't care how I solved the problem; the reader just wants to know that I solved the problem. I still encounter too many people that still don't get the value of brevity. At the Bank we often rely on a "four blocker" to present a problem, plan, or strategy. These one page documents force the writer to distill the message into four major points. That's what Dave was teaching me to write - again ahead of his time.

  5. The need for a stiff drink at the end of the day. Perhaps my favorite lesson. The reality is that anyone that went on one of Dave's famous road trips or pulled an all-nighter with him knows that he can work relentlessly hard when needed, but he never loses sight of the need to have some fun, too. This "work hard/play hard" balance was instilled right from the beginning, with drinks after class at HoJos in my sophomore year. No, not morning classes. Alright, sometimes morning classes. Yes, I was only 19 but that didn't appear to be an issue back then, either. In fact I remember Dave getting "carded" at a bar when he was 30-something and I, sitting next to him, didn't at age 20.

    Today, we talk about work/life balance, which is pretty much the same thing. Whatever you are doing, whether it is work, or reading, or mowing the lawn, find a way to enjoy it. Dave would work hard but he would also recognize the importance of having a drink and socialize just to recharge for the next push. I remember fondly some of those nights (well I remember some parts of them at least) and there was great camaraderie among the students and Dave. I am proud of the education I received at CSUN and proud to still be a geographer. Who knows what would have happened if the undergraduate advisor was out of the office that day?

Jon Voorhees
SVP, Retail Distribution Executive
Bank of America
CSUN Geographer, class of 1979

Note: now a consultant/advisor for Peak Performance Consulting Group, Inc.
Susan White

My thoughts on David...

Dave Hornbeck was really good to me -- he's a nutty sweetheart.

Dr. Hornbeck is quite literally a positive energy vortex graduate students find themselves drawn to. He asks you a few questions then tells you exactly what you need to reach your goals. Your ideas are valued and with his gentle guidance, if you so choose to follow it, most of us reach success. He undoubtedly had a major impact on my experiences as a geography graduate. Thank you Dr. Hornbeck! Sincerely,

Susan White, Ph.D.

Geography Instructor
Central Michigan University
[ David Hornbeck's photograph ] [ David Hornbeck's photograph ] [ David Hornbeck's photograph ] [ David Hornbeck's photograph ]

This document is maintained by C.M. Rodrigue
First placed on the web: 02/08/09
Last Updated: 05/02/09
Last updated after Dave's death: 04/30/20