Dorothy Drummond
1928 - 2018
It is with sadness that we note the passing of geography professor and advocate Dorothy Drummond on November 30, 2018. At the age of 89, she was traveling on her seventh trip to China to conduct research when she fell at the museum for the Three Gorges Project. After surgery in Hong Kong, she sustained severe head trauma and passed away peacefully with her friend and daughter by her side.
Drummond began her career as an editorial assistant for the Geographical Review, the flagship journal of the American Geographical Society. She then went on to live in Terre Haute, Indiana where she was an affiliate faculty member of Indiana State University and an adjunct at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. In 1983 she founded the geography non-profit, Geography Educators’ Network of Indiana, following her husband’s death in 1982, and remained a long standing board member of the organization.
Born in San Diego in 1928, she held an undergraduate degree from Valparaiso University (1949) and a masters degree in geography from Northwestern University (1951). A world traveler, she lived in Burma during 1957 while both her and her husband were Fulbright Scholars. She also traveled widely in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East, and had visited large parts of Central and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and China. She used this experience and her geographical expertise to author and co-author four World Cultures textbooks. She was included as a GeoInspiration in Directions Magazine in 2016.
In addition to her work with the Geography Educators’ Network of Indiana, Dorothy was active in service to several non-profit organizations including United Campus Ministries and Citizens for Better Government and a respected member of the Terre Haute community. She was scheduled to present a paper at the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting on the historical settlement of ancient Israel as well as appear on a panel sponsored by the Bible Geography Specialty Group on curbing violence in the Middle East.
The information above is courtesy of the Terre Haute Tribune Star