Editor’s Note: The message below comes from the Symposium on AA History, which will be hosting its next meeting in January 2021. Click the link for more info about the group.
On July 27, 2020 one of our fellowship’s finest historians, Glenn C. passed away in his sleep. Glenn was integral in the formation and success of the Symposium on A.A. History. He presented at three out of the six conferences and the Symposium will not be the same without his steadfast presence.
A message from Scott C. Martin, Professor of History and American Culture Studies and History Department Chair at Bowling Green State University: With great sadness, I report that our friend and colleague, Bill Rorabaugh, has passed away. Bill has been a consistent supporter of ADHS, and a fixture at our biennial meeting. Bill took his …
Editor’s Note: Points welcomes Paul Roman’s warmhearted reflections and commentary on fellow sociologist Harold Mulford’s life and work. Mulford was a pioneer in the application of sociological thought and methods to alcoholism and alcohol as public problems. As Paul’s commentary amply suggests, Hal was also a passionate and respected scholar.
This memorial for Harold A. Mulford, Jr. will neither begin nor end with the standard statement about how much we have lost with Hal’s passing on June 28, 2012 just short of “four score and ten” at age 89. Tapping a perhaps less common tradition, let us celebrate some of the unique gifts that alcohol social science gained by his travels with us.
Hal Mulford’s life has both storybook qualities but as a scholar, features that are absolutely unique. Born on an Iowa farm and growing into a strapping handsome man, Hal was a hero in the Good War, with a medal-producing record of laying down the enemy with major artillery during D-Day and then fighting on through the Pacific Theater to nearly the end of the War. After marriage and the beginning of his family, and a GI Bill bachelor’s degree from Morningside College in 1947, his eventual education at the University of Iowa led him to a doctorate in sociology in 1955. Here he was substantially influenced by Manfred Kuhn, founder of what is known as “The Iowa School of Symbolic Interaction” wherein the somewhat elusive tenets of this perspective are put to hard-nosed empirical test. Hal’s work continually reflected this perspective; my attempted summary of the core of his life’s work would center on his efforts to construct the symbolic and interactional world of the deviant drinker and alcoholic through scale construction.