In the late winter of 1976, my mentor, Dr. Richard E. "Dick" Stoiber, asked my wife, Haidee, and me to accompany him on a trip to Montreal to pick up the new economic geologist, Dr. Half Zantop, his wife Susanne, and their two young daughters. We drove to Montreal in two cars because they had a lot of baggage. We arrived at the Port of Montreal about two hours before their ship docked. They arrived as passengers on a Polish freighter that had made Hamburg a port-of-call 10 days earlier.
Stoiber was right; they did have a lot of baggage--22 pieces in all. After clearing customs we discovered that there were no carts or porters due to a work stoppage. We were a couple of hundred meters from the cars. Half, Dick and I moved the pile about 50 meters at a time while Susanne, the children and Haidee stood watch over the migrating piles of suitcases and duffel bags. Stoiber likened it to the stations of the cross.
We loaded the cars in a light, cold drizzle in the middle of the afternoon. The little girls looked cold, bewildered and tired but excited. Haidee and I took most of the baggage and the Zantops rode with Dick. When we arrived at U.S. Customs both girls were sound asleep. The large load of bags in our car aroused little curiosity from the agents on duty. We pulled into the parking lot on the American side and waited for the Zantop's immigration papers to be verified. The whole process went smoothly and we were on our way in half an hour.
The weather grew progressively worse. By the time we reached White River Junction we were in a downpour. We reached Hanover at a crawl and drove just north of town to the home of the other new Earth Science faculty member, Dr. Richard Birnie where we were treated to grilled hamburgers and hot dogs. Stoiber went over to the Zantop girls with a big, juicy burger on a paper plate and said, "This my dears, is the American dream." In reality, that burger was just the start of the American dream for the Zantops at Dartmouth. I am in deep shock that it ended for the parents in such a nightmare last weekend. My heart goes out to the girls who now must live through it.
I never really got to know the Zantops well because my interests in Geology were on a different track from Half's specialty. I knew that he was always there if he were needed, and there were several times during my six years as a graduate student that I needed his advice and counsel. He was a tremendously observant and careful field geologist. On several occasions I showed him areas in which I had been working: in Guatemala, New York, New Hampshire and Quebec. In each place he asked a question which caught me off-guard. He didn't do it out of malice, rather, he found a piece of the geologic puzzle I was describing that didn't seem to fit. Together we worked out a solution to the problem, usually with me modifying my model to accommodate the new evidence he presented. I have always tried to emulate the capacity for acute observation that he shared so freely with his students. I think that is what education is all about.
