To the Editor:
In the hurried pace of our lives, how often do we stop to thank or even think about the many people responsible for shaping our careers, values, and ways of life? It is doubly tragic to consider that it often takes a terrible event to focus our attention on that which is most important.
Despite my distance from the campus in years and miles, I have been deeply affected by the loss of the Zantops. I was one of Half's first undergraduate earth science students, though not a stellar one by any measure. I had enrolled in his first ore deposits class, unaware that he and it were destined to propel me into a career in exploration geology, filled with travel and treasures. Although I struggled to decipher his lectures for those first few days, I was immediately struck by his wit and patience, and by his obvious peace with his chosen lifestyle. Quick to see through my feeble excuses for not completing an assignment, he would retain his gentle humor, yet I would feel his disappointment.
Through the end of that first season, as my eyes strayed out the classroom window to signs of spring, Half made potentially boring topics come alive with anecdotes of international exploration, tales of glittering deposits of copper, silver, gold and zinc, stories of bandits and native guides, of far-off cities and mine disasters. The following summer, I landed a job drilling for gold in the Pacific northwest, and experienced the truths of Half's stories first hand. He was eager to hear my adventures upon my return, and in the years that followed, and his continual interest echoed my excitement.
As I moved into graduate school, and then advanced in the field he had so recently departed, our communication was infrequent but efficient. There is a shorthand in such careers; like a secret society, we shared a knowledge of special places and unique discoveries, and he offered insights and cautions that served me for years to come.
In what turned out to be his most important gift to me, he also shared his reasons for leaving the field of exploration and coming to Dartmouth. That decision, to place his family and friends before all else, stood as an example I measured myself against in the years that followed. It influenced my decision to do the same thing a decade later, to abandon a migrant path in favor of family and roots. I have never regretted that move, and I know who helped make it possible.
I only wish I had thanked him more clearly, and more often.
Let me start now.
