In Memoriam

John Alexander Carroll

John A. Carroll. Courtesy Office of University Relations, University of Dallas.
The Western History Association owes its formation to a handful of founding members who gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in October 1961. Among those who worked on behalf of the first conference, none had more influence than John Alexander Carroll. Indeed, it was Carroll who defined the organizing concepts of the Western History Association, which he saw as the means for harnessing the many voices of regional scholarship. In an era long be-fore the currency of diversity and inclusion, Carroll articulated an identity for the new Western History Association, predicated on embracing the academic and the non-academic.	1
Jack, as he was known to friends, however, could not be described as a mild or even tolerant personality. Opinionated and outspoken, Carroll, gifted with a rapier use of language peppered with historical allusions and laced with razor-like wit, acquired a reputation as a flamboyant and decidedly unique individual. He never cared much for convention, and many of his old friends in the WHA fondly recall Jack's wardrobe--fit for an elegant evening at the poker table of a western saloon--his splendid array of body tattoos, and his astonishing adventures with such Hollywood glitterati as Mae West, Adolph Menjou, and Lana Turner.	2
Yet, amidst these amusing and colorful memories, it should never be overlooked that he was an innovative thinker, eloquent writer, and superb classroom teacher. Following several years in the U. S. Navy that saw him awarded a Purple Heart for action on December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor, he earned his doctorate at Georgetown University, where he studied with C. C. Tansill. In 1958, he shared the Pulitzer Prize with Mary Wells Ashworth for George Washington: First in Peace (Scribner, 1957). His teaching career, as a member of the faculties of Del Mar College, Texas Christian University, and the University of Arizona brought this son of a western rancher back to his intellectual center. After forty years, his students remembered him as a stunning lecturer and an excruciating taskmaster, with a bril-liant command of the historical literature. In 1959, he designed and mounted a new scholarly magazine, Arizona and the West. Stymied in his efforts to implement all his plans for that journal, however, Carroll adapted some of his ideas to the fledgling WHA.	. . .