To the Editor:
I've been thinking a lot about Half Zantop in the past few weeks. As a 2000 graduate and an earth sciences major, I was fortunate to get to know Half both academically and personally. As a professor, Half was as good as they come. Some friends and I enrolled in a small seminar with Half in our senior year. Flashing an only partially focused slide of a brown mountainside up on the wall, Half would fix his steady gaze on whichever one of us was trying hardest to avoid eye contact. "So, Julia, what is going on here?" he would ask, with his classy German accent and slight smile. The response was often punctuated by "uhhh ..." and "well ..." as we tried to figure out what this particular non-descript pile of rocks could possibly signify. Then, somehow, Half would ask just the right questions so that suddenly we'd all realize the precise answer he was seeking.
Some of my fondest memories of Half are from traveling with him throughout Mexico on the 1998 Stretch. The most incredible thing we all learned about Half on the trip was his unbelievable stamina. At the age of about 60, Half was routinely the first one awake, the most eager to stay in the field until sunset, and the last one awake at night. And, he never ate lunch. My fellow students and I could barely keep up. In the evenings, we would sometimes filter into Half's hotel room for cocktails and discussion, sometimes academically related but sometimes just for fun. Then, somehow, while we were all groaning at the 6:30 wakeup, Half was already downstairs completing his leisurely breakfast. On that trip, Half took us up a 15,000 foot volcano and down 1000 foot mine shafts. He taught us everything from the best places to shop in Guadalajara to the inner workings of the earth. And he did it all with class, kindness, and humor.
How Half never became annoyed by our group of 20, sometimes obnoxious students is beyond me. One especially early morning, after a night-long celebration of a student's 21st birthday, Half approached the birthday girl who was calmly snoozing off her hangover below a rock outcrop. Upon her awakening, the dazed girl wearily mumbled a rather rude four-letter obscenity at our beloved professor, and went back to sleep. (She later claimed no memory of the incident.) Instead of becoming infuriated, Half registered an amused look of shock, and began to laugh. "In all my years as a professor, no student has ever said that to me before!" he exclaimed.
One day, Half took us all to a day off at the beach. He ordered us all "Coco Locos," a fruity punch in a coconut that he insisted we try. Then, with all of his 20-year-old students, he ran into the water and bobbed in the waves with the rest of us. This was a man who seemed very content with his life's work.
I remember the last night of our time in Mexico, when Half took us all out to a nice restaurant. Soon we were all laughing and joking together for our last time as a group. I sat next to Half that night, and as the restaurant photographer came by, Half and I grinned and posed for the camera in the midst of our discussion. Half bought an 8x10 and a keychain of the photo, both of which he gave to me. I kept the keychain, but on the frame of the 8x10 I wrote "My Prize Student" as a joke, and gave it back to Half with a note kidding that he should hang it on the wall of his office in Fairchild, which he actually did. I hope he knew that what I really meant was, "My Prize Professor." We all will miss him very much.
