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Professor C. Loring Brace: Bringing Physical Anthropology (“Kicking and Screaming”) Into the 21St Century!

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Professor C. Loring Brace: Bringing Physical Anthropology (“Kicking and Screaming”) Into the 21St Century! Professor C. Loring Brace: Bringing Physical Anthropology (“Kicking and Screaming”) Into the 21st Century! Dean Falk Department of Anthropology, Florida State University Noriko Seguchi Department of Anthropology, University of Montana, Missoula On Christmas day, 1945, a fifteen-year-old boy was given a book written by Roy Chapman Andrews that was entitled Meet Your Ancestors. Thus began the career of C. Loring Brace IV who would one day become an internationally respected biological anthropologist. Born on December 19, 1930 in Hanover, New Hampshire to Gerald Warner Brace, a professor of English at Boston University, and Huldah Laird Brace, a trained biologist, Brace was descended from a long line that had deep roots in 17th–century New England. Foreshadowing the intellectual and humanitarian interests of a great-grandson he would never meet, his great-grandfather (the first Charles Loring Brace) read and was fascinated by an early copy of Darwin’s Origin of Species, founded the Children’s Aid Society, and was prominent in fighting against slavery (Ferrie 1997). Eventually Brace earned a B.A. degree in geology from Williams College (1952). In the summer of 1953, Brace met wife-to-be Mary Louise Crozier (Mimi) at the last nickel Coke machine in Cambridge, near the 175 Michigan Discussions in Anthropology entrance to the basement of the Peabody Museum. The daughter of biology professor William J. Crozier, Mimi was spending the summer washing and sorting potsherds, while Brace was spending his measuring chimpanzee teeth. Eventually they married and produced three sons, Charles Loring Brace V, Roger Crozier Brace, and Hudson Hoagland Brace. Based on mutual interests in nature, literature, cooking, science, and family, theirs was a marriage for life, and it is illustrative of their strong bond that until Mimi’s death on August 15, 2005, Loring read to her each evening as she prepared their dinner. Brace went on to earn M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in anthropology from Harvard University (1958, 1962) where he studied with Earnest Albert Hooton and William W. Howells. His first faculty positions were at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). In the 1960s, he decided to leave Santa Barbara because then Governor Ronald Reagan fired the president of the University of California, Clark Kerr, with words to the effect that “the State of California has no business subsidizing intellectual curiosity.” Margaret Hamilton, who was an undergraduate at UCSB at the time, recalls that there was an enormous reaction throughout the UC system when Kerr was fired: Loring was teaching one of those monster Introduction to Physical Anthropology courses used in many schools to meet the general education requirement in the sciences. It just so happened that his class of 800 met at the noon hour on the day when a huge rally convened in support of Kerr. After the announcement of the firing, Loring led his entire class out of the classroom and across campus to join the rally. It was a wonderful moment. Brace’s first doctoral student, Stephen Molnar, also recalls the early days at UCSB: From my first encounters with Loring I was impressed with his scholastic breadth. Within just two years of 176 C. Loring Brace receiving his doctorate, he published theoretical papers on structural reduction, a critical appraisal of the dogmas of racial taxonomy, and a paper evaluating the evolutionary relationship of the classic Neandertals to modern Homo sapiens. While these papers were being written a much needed text, Man’s Evolution: An Introduction to Physical Anthropology, was also in progress. Not a bad output for a new assistant professor! Brace found a perfect haven in 1967 when he moved to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and became colleagues with Frank Livingstone, of “there are no races, there are only clines” fame (Livingstone 1962). Nearly four decades later, he remains at Michigan as Professor of Anthropology and the Curator of Biological Anthropology in the Museum of Anthropology. In addition to his close tie to Frank Livingstone, Brace had a special relationship with another physical anthropologist, Stanley Garn. Karen Rosenberg notes: “Stanley’s wife, Priscilla, and Mimi were half sisters. When I was Loring’s student and, simultaneously, Stanley’s research assistant, they would walk home together very often, Loring usually pushing his bike and the two of them talking animatedly as they walked down Washtenaw together.” Student Recollections Brace also found the perfect home in Ann Arbor. Recalls Alan Ryan: Loring’s home is located on a prestigious block near the University of Michigan. The house is extremely large and ornate, looking like a slightly modern version of the one owned by the Adam’s family. Once inside, there seemed to be several staircases, some leading to everywhere or nowhere. The dining room was magnificent and well lit by a chandelier that was handmade by one of the greatest heroes of the American Revolution and accomplished silversmith of Boston, Paul Revere! Mimi was a gourmet cook, and any dinner at their home was a three-hour affair, involving many courses of food and a large assortment of 177 Michigan Discussions in Anthropology cordials and other beverages. Kindness, a key aspect of Loring’s personality, was evident throughout the meal. Many of the toasts that were made highlighted the few accomplishments of my graduate school career. Of course, the meal was magnificent. Margaret Hamilton (who earned her Ph.D. at Michigan after graduating from UCSB) remembers that when he went home for the day Brace did not “leave his work at the office:” Loring’s interest and delight in all things of natural history formed a bridge between his work and his avocations. It is not possible to mention this without mentioning their beloved parrots. I’m not sure how many they owned, but up until I graduated the house was always filled with them. You may recall that this interest actually resulted in a wonderful paper about the parrot family filling a niche similar to that of primates...Another area of interest overlapping or propelled by research was the topic of diet and food modification techniques. Loring’s early interest in dental evolution fed right into his and Mimi’s shared passion for ethnic cooking. This had as much to do with all of the effort and techniques that went into food preparation as it did with the actual preparation, serving, and consumption of wonderful meals enjoyed at Chez Brace. Loring and Mimi’s luau parties included all kinds of traditional food including a pig cooked in a traditional oven with hot stones in the ground.” Bob Hinton says: “I remember the menagerie at the house. I ate most of a dinner there with a parrot perched on my shoulder. Neither Loring nor Mimi thought anything of it! I will also never forget the VW convertible ‘bug’ that served as a giant planter adjacent to the house.” Alan Ryan adds: Mimi had an incredible menagerie of pets, everything from the smallest snake to the largest bird. As a result, meals were sometimes interrupted by the flight of a bird above the dining room table or a visit from a friendly monkey 178 C. Loring Brace begging for morsels of food. Nevertheless, everyone had a great time. Loring’s students viewed these gatherings as one of the many rites of passage that brought much cheer and comfort to their stressed lives. Ken Weiss also remembers the Braces’ predilection for “pets:” The Braces’ house was like a not-so-miniature zoo, as I’m sure his students well remember. Every vacant spot or chair was occupied by an animal or a dozing young Brace. For a number of weeks, I attended the Ann Arbor Zoo Club for the Brace kids and others from the neighborhood and even led a dissection of a rhesus monkey. Among the fauna was a litter of un-house-trained puppies trapped by a board in the master bedroom, some kind of surprise reptile in the black-lit bathroom to scare the deposits out of half- sloshed attendees at the many Brace parties, a few buried carcasses “maturing” into skeletons by the Braces’ invertebrate and microbial dwellers in the backyard, and the loud, foul-mouthed mynah bird that swore when the phone rang and then mimicked Mimi’s “hello” and shouted “Lorrrrring!!” made every call to contact one’s advisor an adventure. In sum, Brace is a colorful professor who has been described more than once as a “legend on campus.” Says Ken Weiss: An “acknowledgment” to NSF for not supporting his work appeared in at least one paper, and his advocacy of the Probable Mutation Effect (his version of the likely effect of mutation on traits no longer maintained by selection) and of the Competitive Exclusion idea of culture as an ecological niche that guaranteed a single hominid species at any time were forcefully argued. It was never clear that they were mainstream ideas or widely accepted, but controversy energized rather than inhibited Loring, and only he would have the nerve to get up and assert such contentious positions in doggerel at meetings. Always a treat to go to one of his presentations! 179 Michigan Discussions in Anthropology Brace’s doctoral students An EmBracing Trilogette Canto the First Overflowing hair and beard His blackboard writing all obscured Yet when he moved, of what he’d writ One never could decipher it Canto the Second To think of his menagerie of yore Doth make an image nonpareil Unmatched by old and venerated lore: For even mustered all in file The Ark could not have managed any more! Canto the Third This Professor was not at all boring Religion and “races” abhorring One Brace’d for the worst Of opinions well versed No doubt—there is only one Loring! –Ken Weiss Brace supervised 20 doctoral dissertations on various topics including the history of science, dental evolution, living primates, fossil hominids, and prehistoric peoples.1 One of these dissertations echoed Brace’s fascination with the intellectual/historical underpinnings of biological and evolutionary theory; and six others focused on various aspects of dentition, reflecting Brace’s interests in functional morphology, biological variation in primates including humans, and the role of culture in shaping (biological) evolutionary responses.
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