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D: It was very good for the children.
R: What time did you come to the University of Florida?
D: We had come to Florida in forty-one. John had done this research on mangroves
in the everglades and it was really beginning to be published. Dr.
Herman Gunter, who was the state geologist, asked him to come down on a year's
leave of absence to work on the ecological aspects of the everglades.
I think it was. He got a leave of absence to come down here. By then my
parents were living in St. Petersburg, so the plan was that the children and
I stayed in St. Petersburg while he did his research in southern Florida to
come back and forth. It worked out beautifully until the war came, of
course, and then it was a whole different story. The Geological Survey got
very involved in many things, particularly oil, and then John got interested
in the peat deposit with the idea that it could be used for fuel.
R: John had so many original ideas and so many interests.
D: Yes he did. I frequently said that he could keep a whole class of graduate
students working for a hundred years on all of the projects that he could
think up. He did a lot of them himself.
R: We had not called them environmentalists in those days, but he...
D: He was not an environmentalist. He would resent that. He was an ecologist.
He got his degree in ecology from [the University of] Chicago when people
didn't even know what ecology was.
R: Make the distinction between those two words Emma, I had never realized that
there was a distinction.
D: Well, ecology is the whole environment; the reaction of everything. It
includes the plants, animals, water tables, the whole business. It's done
scientifically. I think the environmentalist does it emotionally.
R: I see, it has become a political pressure group, hasn't it?
D: Exactly, and they use the word "ecology" that way too, which is too bad.
I frequently told John that nobody can just say that I'm a dentist and
set up shop without having an examination and a degree. People can say I'm
an ecologist without even knowing what the term means.
R: And he became interested in all of these measures which would have some
significance for the war efforts, is that it?
D: Well, not necessarily. He was still completely a scientist; it was a spin-
off for the war effort which was good.
R: Did he finally dome to this university in 1946? Where did you first live?
D: We lived on what was called College Court then, it's Twentieth Terrace now;
right near the University.