Dr. Thomas Curtright, BS and MS '70, Physics and Astronomy

Q: What personal and professional accomplishments are you most proud of?

I am particularly pleased to have returned to a project that began over 40 years ago while I was a postdoc at the University of Chicago, in a collaboration with the late Professor Peter Freund.  I completed some unfinished parts of that research and published the results as a tribute to Peter following his passing in 2018.  I was surprised to see that no one else had finished the analysis in the four decades since Peter and I had initiated the work, even though our paper was well-cited.  I only wish I had gone back to those problems while Peter was still with us.  I think he would have appreciated fully the new results, and I suspect he could have improved them considerably.

Q: What are two of your fondest memories of your time at Mizzou?

I have to admit that all my fondest memories as a student involve my wife Jo Ann. While  most of those memories are too personal to describe here, suffice it to say we were married in September between our sophomore and junior years, and we spent two fantastic years living happily (and studying diligently!) in an apartment on Rosemary Lane, before packing up and driving to Pasadena California in the summer of 1970. Both of us received degrees from Mizzou.  

 However, one Mizzou physics event does stand out in my memory.  On March 7, 1970, there was a solar eclipse.  Many students and faculty gathered on the roof of the Physics Building to see projected images of the sun using a telescope set up by Professor Terry Edwards.  The eclipse was only partial, as seen in Columbia, with the path of totality along the east coast.  So it was natural for someone to ask Dr Edwards, when would the next total eclipse be visible in Missouri?  Not for 47 years, he told us, on 21 August 2017.   I easily remembered the date.  It would be my 69th birthday.  I kept that in mind, and subsequently, on that date in 2017 I attended a small meeting at the Mizzou Physics Department to commemorate both events.  Of all the conferences and workshops in which I have participated during my career, that meeting is my favorite.

Q: What does receiving this award mean to you?

So too (my. favorites) are the awards given to me by the College of Arts and Sciences and by the Department of Physics and Astronomy.  I will always deeply appreciate your recognition as one of your Distinguished Alumni.

Terri Speiser, BS '83, Department of Textiles and Apparel Management

Q: What professional accomplishments have you achieved most recently? 

I am most proud professionally of navigating a very large team for two divisions of a publicly traded company throughout the pandemic. Even though the infection rate has dropped here in the US, the effects of the virus worldwide have had profound effects on supply chain that have led to major changes in how we do business.  The entire calendar has accelerated, and our work load has increased as a result.  Having the right people working at the highest level of productivity to get ahead of the shift has been the biggest challenge I have faced.  Now that we can see on the horizon the corrections in supply and demand in the near future, I am proud of both myself and the  team.  I also hope we will never experience this again and will be thrilled to know its’s really over!

Q: What personal and professional accomplishments are you most proud of? 

Professionally and personally I enjoy mentoring young women in our industry.  It has always been an industry where women can achieve and thrive at the highest ranks.  I enjoy being a mentor and advisor even to those who no longer work for me.  There are several women who are now in big jobs or even Presidents in their own right, who began in entry level positions reporting to me.  I have great relationships with so many young women at all levels, and enjoy watching them grow in their personal and professional lives.  I see this as both an accomplishment and a privilege. In part, hosting the students from Mizzou who visit my office in New York, and hiring interns from the TAM program has been another way of helping young women who wish to be a part of our industry.

Q: How have your degree and education from the College of Arts and Science helped you in your career:  

My time at Mizzou laid the groundwork for my entire career.  Our industry is very specialized and those who try to enter without the proper foundation usually struggle in their early years in the business.

Q: What are two of your fondest memories of your time at Mizzou?

It’s impossible to narrow down my memories of Mizzou to just two examples.  It was all great!  I didn’t want to leave when it was over, even though I was walking into my first real job in the industry.  I enjoyed the day to day life on campus and being with other students, specifically in the this college, who were interested in the same career path and curriculum  that was interesting to me.  I also enjoyed serving on the Homecoming Planning committee, and living with five other girls slightly off campus.  We studied hard and played hard, balancing Library time with Harpos time.

Q: What does receiving this award mean to you?

I was surprised and humbled to receive this award. I wish to thank all of the faculty who nominated me, especially Dr. Jung Ha-Brookshire who always manages a way to keep me connected. I wish to take this opportunity to honor Kitty Dickerson, and wish she was here with us today. I also wish to thank my parents for coming with me to the event, and sending me here in the first place. Thank you again for this honor, I greatly appreciate it!

Wilma King, Arvarh E. Strickland Black Studies Professor Emerita

Q: What professional accomplishments have you achieved recently?

My chapter, “Outside the Lines: Black Girls and Boys Learn About the Interconnected Worlds of Slavery and Freedom in 19-th Century North America,” based upon original research appeared in Hoda Mahmoudi and Steven Mintz, eds., Children and Globalization: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2019), 52-74. “Outside the Lines,” unlike general studies examining slavery and freedom as separate entities, focuses specifically on interconnections among black children, enslaved and emancipated, and attempts to answer questions about how and when they recognized legal differences among themselves and their contemporaries, black and white. The chapter looks at children grappling with tensions associated with the interconnected worlds of slavery and freedom, especially in states where gradual abolition laws promised liberty to those born after a specific date while their parents and older siblings were destined to remain enslaved in perpetuity. Finally, “Outside the Lines” promises to consider the questions, “To what extent did girls and boys seek to replace bondage with liberty?”, “What were the emotional costs of liberating oneself while loved ones remained unfree?” and, “What inroads did stressors associated with the absence of freedom and uneven opportunities for liberty make upon the physical growth and mental development of black boys and girls in 19th-century North America?”

And the August 26, 2021, lecture, “African American Children in Civil War America,” presented upon the request of the Peninsula Foundation, Peninsula, Ohio, through the Organization of American Historians’ Distinguished Lecture Series, focused on actions and reactions of Black children, enslaved and emancipated, as the Civil War became a part of their experiences. The lecture is available at https://www.facebook.com/GARCivilWarLecture

Q: What Personal and professional accomplishments are you most proud of?

The publication of Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth I Nineteenth-Century America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011, 1995). After earning the Ph.D in recent American History at Indiana University, I spent a decade conducting research and writing about millions of boys and girls born into slavery primarily in the 19th-century South. The results, Stolen Childhood (1995), earned the distinction of being the first monograph about unfree children published in the United States. It attempted to extricate children from an amorphous mass of “slaves”, without distinction, to answer specific questions about their lives, health, work, play, education, and responses to the perpetual state of thralldom. See the expanded second edition of Stolen Childhood (2011) includes slave-born, emancipated, and free -born children of African descent in states north of Delaware for a more comprehensive presentation of childhood slavery throughout North America.

In addition to Stolen Childhood (2011, 1995), I count The Essence of Liberty: Free Black Women during the Slave Era (Columbia: University of Missouri, 2006) among the publications in which I take  pride. The Essence of Liberty, the first monograph on free-born and freed black women across geographical boundaries and classes before 1865, highlights sources of freedom and the extent to which the women struggled to protect it.

Q: How has your work at College of Arts and Science helped you in your career?

As a faculty member with a joint appointment in the Departments of History and Black Studies I benefited from much the college offered. I was a participant in the University of Missouri-University of the Western Cape initiative in 2011 and 2014. The travel to and research while in South Africa made it possible to design a comparative history course showing differences and similarities in dismantling apartheid in South America and segregation in the United States. Resources housed at Ellis Library and the Western Historical Society served as a laboratory for students to conduct primary research required for class assignments. My students were not the sole beneficiaries of resources on deposit at the University of Missouri. When working on Stolen Childhood (2011) and The Essence of Liberty (2006), I counted myself fortunate to have ready access to government depository sources at Ellis Library, legal journals housed in the law school library, medical publications found in the medical school library, and print sources in journalism’s library. This is what one expects to find at a research institution, and Mizzou delivered.

Q: What are two of your fondest memories of your time at Mizzou?

Seeing the Black Studies Program become a department, the fulfillment of a long held ideal. Certainly, that would not have been possible without the dedication of Black Studies faculty and staff along with support from the offices of Richard Wallace, Brady Deaton, and Michael Middleton.

The endowment of a scholarship in the name of my parents, Louis and Mary Crawford King,  to support student travel abroad to study Africans in the diaspora.

Q: What does receiving this award mean to you?

It is an honor to be selected to receive the Arts and Science Honorary Alumni Award at the University of Missouri where I interacted with students, faculty, staff, and administrators as we attempted to move our work toward its greatest height of excellence.  The award, especially at this moment in American history, is most meaningful and suggests an appreciation for my work. Even so, the question, “Have I done justice to the historical subject?” is a constant refrain. It keeps me grounded while knowing if something else is needed, the task is not impossible.