Robert B. Stobaugh (1947 BACH ENGR) Starting from Arkansas: Four Continents, Four Companies, Four Kids (Robert Stobaugh) – After thirteen books including the best-selling Energy Future, Robert Stobaugh, professor emeritus, Harvard Business School, and member of the LSU Alumni Association 1987 Hall of Distinction, has published a memoir of his life before Harvard. Starting from Arkansas: Four Continents, Four Companies, Four Kids is a lavishly illustrated account of Stobaugh’s rising path from a smalltown boyhood with prosperous but eccentric parents to the expatriate posts he filmed with an 8-mm camera. The book brings to life an LSU where students went on strike over a good night kiss and Stobaugh’s freshman hazing was softened because of his good grades. The book depicts his work at Standard Oil’s Baton Rouge refinery and vividly portrays the Stobaughs abroad dealing with Venezuelan traffic enforcement, wily Bahraini rug dealers, and a London flu epidemic. The narrative relates the family’s return to the U.S. where Stobaugh abandons corporate success for academia. The story ends with their arrival in Massachusetts where their six-year-old informs his parents, “These people talk funny.” Darlyne G. Nemeth (1970 MAST HSS, 1973 PHD HSS) Living in an Environmentally Traumatized World: Healing Ourselves and Our Planet (ABC-CLIO) – When environmental damages are caused by natural or humanmade events, there are long-term effects.
This eye-opening and unprecedented book explains the ongoing turmoil in the environment while presenting ways to alleviate its effect on humankind’s physical and mental health. Darlyne Nemeth’s Living in an Environmentally Traumatized World: Healing Ourselves and Our Planet discusses recent environmental events and examines the reasons why the resulting changes are inevitable. The authors assert that people experience six universal stages when they suffer from environmental trauma: shock, survivor mode, basic needs, awareness of loss, spin and fraud, and resolution. The book presents coping strategies for navigating negative ecological shifts and provides a plan of action for responsibly managing the environment. Profiles of indigenous people who endure under environmental adversity provide real world examples of survival. Contributing authors include LSU Professor Emeritus Robert Muller, retired Associate Professor Robert Hamilton, and Donald Nemeth, (1977 PHD SCI). Hamilton was also a co-editor. Wink Dameron (1942 BACH HSS) Conversations with My Grandfather – In Conversations with My Grandfather Wink Dameron Blair records the words spoken to her as a nine-year-old child living in her grandfather’s three-family home during the Great Depression. Her grandfather, Judge Louis Bingham Claiborne, was a member of Louisiana’s noted Claiborne family (Governor William Charles Cole Claiborne was appointed governor of the Louisiana
Territory in 1803 and first governor of the State of Louisiana in 1812). Judge Claiborne’s words include accounts of the Civil War, his frequent visits to the White House, and many incidents in Louisiana’s history. Christopher E. Cenac, Sr. (attended 1964-66, MD 1971) Eyes of an Eagle: Jean-Pierre Cenac, Patriarch (University Press of Mississippi) – Christopher Cenac’s history of a French family’s founding legacy in the seafood industry of south Louisiana begins in 1860, when JeanPierre Cenac sailed from Bordeaux, France, to begin his new life in the city with the second busiest port of debarkation in the United States. He arrived in New Orleans just as the Civil War began. Neither Creole nor Acadian, Pierre took his chances in the rural Terrebonne Parish, and his resolute nature, unflagging work ethic, steadfast determination, and farsighted vision earned him a place of respect he could never have imagined when he left his native country. How he forged his place in this new landscape echoes the life journeys of countless immigrants yet remains uniquely his own. His and his family’s stories exemplify the experiences of many nineteenth-century immigrants to Louisiana and the experiences of their twentieth-century descendants.
LSU Alumni Magazine | Summer 2012
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