public speaking skills developed that summer and, if they occasionally 

 showed a bit of the sideshow barker, we should not have been surprised. 



As a high school student, Jim attended his first ASIH meeting in 

 1939. Even as a teenager, Jim was not bashful. I am certain that there 

 was only a momentary pause before he introduced himself to the professional 

 herpetologists and joined in the herpetological conversations. The favorable 

 impression of this first meeting in Chicago was long lasting, for he devoted 

 much time and energy to the society throughout his entire professional 

 career. Whether serving as its business secretary, a governor, or committee 

 member, he strove to improve the society, and was honored to be its president 

 for the 1970-71 term. A fortunate happenstance, for his contributions would 

 be lost to the society soon thereafter. 



He had begun college in Illinois when the United States entered WW II. 

 He joined the air force and spent the war years in active service. His eye- 

 sight was too poor to pilot planes, but he was right up front as a radio 

 operator. He served in the Asian theatre flying supplies "over the hump" 

 from India to Burma and transporting planes across SW Asia and North Africa 

 for their periodic maintenance. His tour of duty in these areas allowed him 

 to sample the herpetofauna of Africa and Asia and reinforced his desire to 

 become a professional herpetologist. 



With the end of the war, he returned to his studies, not in Illinois but 

 at the University of Michigan. His Michigan sojourn lasted seven years, from 

 1945 to 1952, and encompassed both his undergraduate and graduate training. 

 It was a period of intense herpetological growth and maturation for him. He 

 early captured the highly-desirous research assistantship in the reptile section 

 of the Museum of Zoology and held it for his entire graduate tenure. Here, 

 he learned his curatorial skills and inventoried the herpetological type 

 collection. Here also, he began his first in-depth studies of reptilian 

 taxonomy under the tutelage of Norman Hartweg and was introduced to the 

 Latin American herpetofauna. The museum mammalogists were collecting in 

 Mexico, and Jim accompanied them in the summer of 1949 and 1950. Like other 

 herpetologists who have accompanied mammalogists in the field, Jim complained 

 that the best herp collecting times were spent riding to new collecting 

 localities. 



Jim began his teaching career at Brown University in 1952. The Brown 

 years must have been frustrating ones, for he reminisced little about them. 

 They were not, however, unproductive years, for he completed his dipsadine 

 research, collated the "Classic Papers in Genetics," and compiled his 

 "Dictionary of Herpetology." During this time, his research interest turned 

 to South America, particularly Ecuador. I suspect this was in response to 

 the superabundance of researchers concentrating on the Mexican herpetofauna 

 and his desire to work in a less herpetological ly trampled area. His Fulbright 

 lectureship at the Universidad Central de Ecuador (1958-1959) ended the 

 Brown years and entrenched his interest in Ecuadorian and South American 

 herpetology. He was to return several more times to Ecuador (1962, 1966, 

 1969). 



