Memorial to Esther Aberdeen Holm 1904-1984 9

Memorial to Esther Aberdeen Holm 1904-1984 FRANK C. WHITMORE, JR. Dept, of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D .C. 20560 Like many of her generation, Esther Aberdeen found her career affected in unexpected and fascinating ways by World War II. She was bom in Chicago on January 6, 1904; her father was a trainman for the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul. Esther’s early interest in geology, like that of many of us, probably stemmed from her childhood environment—in her case, from excursions to the beaches of Lake Michigan, where her curiosity was aroused by the sands and water-worn pebbles she found there. Encouraged especially by her mother, Esther entered Northwestern University, where she worked her way through college as a stenographer in an advertising company. After graduating in 1928, she worked for a year as a physical education instructor at the YWCA in St. Joseph, Michigan. She then returned to Northwestern, where she received the M.S. in 1931. She continued at Northwestern as a tutor in geology until the fall of 1933, when she entered graduate school at the University of Chicago. Her studies there were interrupted for a year (1934-1935) when she served as an instructor in geology at Milwaukee-Downer College. She received her Ph.D. from Chicago in 1937, with a major in paleontology. In 1936, Esther was appointed instructor in geology at Wellesley College. Subsequently promoted to assistant professor, she remained there until 1942, when she was recruited by W. H. Bradley for the newly formed Military Geology Unit (later, Military Geology Branch) of the U.S. Geological Survey. This could be called the true beginning of her career because, for most of the rest of her life, she was involved in terrain interpretation and the preparation of applied geologic maps. Esther entered the Military Geology Unit as it began developing methods for producing interpretive maps of inaccessible foreign areas. The maps needed to show sources of construction materials and water supplies, as well as the suitability of the area for road and airfield construction, cross-country movement by tracked and wheeled vehicles, and construction of underground installations. Under the imaginative leadership of Charles B. Hunt, a system was developed using maps and associated tables (actually expanded map legends) that allowed quick interpretation of the map data. Sources were geologic maps and literature and aerial photographs. After World War II, these techniques were applied to the preparation of maps for use in engineering geology, environmental studies, and planetary geology. The wartime years were exciting in the Military Geology Unit. Its staff, mostly recruited from universities, was relatively young. Pressure was great, deadlines were frequent, and esprit de corps was high. Alice Allen, who also worked in Military Geology in the early days, says, “Terrain information was so urgently needed overseas that all waking hours were spent in the ‘dungeon’—the basement quarters for classified work—except for time needed on Sundays to wash enough clothes to get through the next week. The lack of time to celebrate personal joys or grieve over personal crises was more than compensated for by the quality of shared concern that knit the motley group ever more closely together.” The end product of their work, in most cases, was a Strategic Engineering Study—a folio of maps and explanatory tables designed for use at Theater, Army, or Division Headquarters. 9 10 THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA The Strategic Engineering Studies were prepared by teams, usually of four to six geologists and soil scientists, who thus worked together closely for a month or so. For example, the records show that in May 1944, Esther wrote a section on the roads of Mindanao. Although she started out as a paleontologist and had published on diatoms, Esther found her true métier in applied geology and decided to remain with the Military Geology Branch, as it became known after the war. The Corps of Engineers, which was the main supporter of military geology, was interested in field-checking the accuracy of the wartime terrain intelligence reports, and in January 1946, Esther was assigned for this purpose to the Natural Resources Section, General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Tokyo, which was partly staffed by personnel of the U.S. Geological Survey. Although I had worked with Esther in Washington, it was in Japan that I really got to know her. She and I were assigned to field-check the intelligence for Operation Coronet, the invasion of the island of Honshu, Japan, which was to have taken place on March 1, 1946. On that day we were on one of the invasion beaches—Sagami-wan, southeast of Tokyo—early in the morning. Visibility was poor, mixed rain and snow were falling, and waves were about two feet high. The foreshore beach slope was about 15%, the sand loose. Low bluffs at the back of the beach were tunneled to form galleries for artillery; back of the first dune ridge, tanks were dug in as fixed artillery at the crossroads. All this was included in our report (Whitmore and Aberdeen, 1946). While doing our field checks, we were the guests of an Engineer Construction Battalion, recently arrived from the southwest Pacific; they had not seen an American woman in some time so they put on a party in Esther’s honor. She had brought no field clothes to Tokyo, so for this trip I had lent her one of my uniforms (I note in her government records that she was 5' 10" and 170 pounds, so we were a pretty good match). It was the only time I’ve danced with a woman who was wearing my pants. Esther’s assignment to Japan lasted until June 1948. She completed a series of terrain-intelligence field checks and then played a key role in the beginning of the Pacific Island Mapping Program, a 15-year effort carried out by the U.S. Geological Survey with financial and logistical support from the Corps of Engineers. Preparatory to the island mapping, Esther collected maps and air photos, arranged for translation of Japanese geological literature, established a field-equipment pool, and arranged for analytical facilities. She made several trips to Okinawa and one to Palau. In the course of all this, she proved to be a first-class staff officer. Not long after Esther’s return to Washington in the summer of 1948, the Office of the Engineer, U.S. Army Europe, asked the USGS for geological advice similar to what had been given in the Far East. Esther was the obvious choice, and in September 1948 she was dispatched to Heidelberg, where she remained until the following June. There she laid the groundwork for a terrain-mapping program that was carried out over the following several years by a USGS team under the leadership of Frederick Betz, Jr. Returning to Washington, Esther continued work on terrain intelligence in the Military Geology Branch; she also returned to the study of diatoms, collaborating on an annotated bibliography of the group for Harry Ladd’s monumental Treatise on Ecology and Paleoecology (Campbell and Aberdeen, 1957). In 1952, Esther went to the 19th International Geological Congress in Algiers. There she met Donald August Holm, a senior geologist with the Arabian American Oil Company. Don writes: “. we met on the fantail of the French SS Champollon, which was the floating hotel for the pre-Congress excursion along the North African coast. MEMORIAL TO ESTHER ABERDEEN HOLM 11 Friends from the first, we established a warm mutual regard. A year later, we were married on 15 August 1953, in Santa Barbara. She took leave from the Survey [and] came with me to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.” Esther settled in nicely in Dhahran. Several friends from Northwestern were there: Cottie Seager, Aramco exploration manager, and his wife Tot were Esther’s classmates, and Edith McKee, the first woman to work as an Aramco field geologist, was a Northwestern alumna. In Dhahran, Esther also worked with Glen Brown, another Northwestern friend, on the geologic map of Saudi Arabia being made by Aramco in conjunction with the USGS, the State Department, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Among many other activities, she taught an extension course in economic geography to company employees, Arabs from the training school, and G.I.s from the air base. Don says, “Typically, during a period when Arab radicals were stirring up unrest, she laid down the law to her Arab classes and won their total respect. After they finished, the entire group held an Arab-style picnic on the beach for her, with a whole lamb and all the trimmings.” Esther loved the desert, and Don describes one result: “Esther began her love affair with the Arabian horse in June 1958, when she bought an Arab stallion and learned to ride.” Alice Allen suggests that, for Esther, the Arabian horse presented a welcome solution to the frustration of being grounded by the edict against women driving automobiles in Saudi Arabia. Don continues: “We acquired two mares, and on [my] retirement in 1961, Esther supervised shipment of five Arab horses to New York on a German freighter ... a forty-two day journey in early summer. After a thirty-day quarantine in New Jersey, and my arrival by air with four cats, we shipped the horses by Erie Railroad to Tucson, where we retired.” In describing her ocean journey to me, Esther said that she was the only person who had shoveled her way across the Atlantic. In retirement, Don wrote and took graduate courses at the University of Arizona, and Esther spent a lot of time riding.

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