Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2008 - (Page 32)

Left, Dave Amidon greets well-wishers. Above, Amidon, right, talks with Robert Cole and his wife, Nancy. Right, Amidon and his wife, Ann, enjoy the festivities. Over the next eight years, while he and Ann had all of their four children, Amidon earned a master’s degree in history from Penn State, taught at the university’s Hazelton campus, attended graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh, then worked in Philadelphia. In April of 1965, while teaching at the University of Cincinnati, Amidon received a call from Lehigh President W. Deming Lewis offering him a position in the university’s history department. For the second time in his life, Amidon moved to Moravian country, this time to Bethlehem. From the start, Amidon plunged into the life of the Lehigh campus, and the lives of his students. He taught four courses a semester, loading students with ambitious reading lists and fueling his classes with anecdotes from the lives of people like the industrialist Andrew Carnegie or the urban planner Robert Moses. “Classes with Dave Amidon often began late,” said the film, “as Dave was held up in his office next door talking to a student or two. But they took off fast. When the bell sounded, Dave, having occurred when students ﬁlled out a mandatory survey required for class or for a work-study job. Amidon seldom missed a detail in a form, and delighted in connecting the spelling of a last name with a country of origin, a region of a country, a pattern of migration, or a thread of urban history. “Before our first class, Dave handed out a questionnaire asking us where we were from, a little bit about our family background,” said Jarred McBride ’05. “Of all my professors, Dave was the only one who actually read every single one of those forms. If he saw something interesting, he made a point of asking you about it. He got to know you, inside and outside the classroom.” “Dave Amidon,” said Smerconish, “could tell you more than you yourself knew about your hometown, even your own family history.” Robert Parker ’73 thought he had Amidon stumped. “I’ve been mistaken for Italian, Syrian, Egyptian, Native American, and even Jamaican,” Parker said. “When Dave looked at me for the first time, he was like a contestant on a name-that-tune show who “Dave Amidon could tell you more than you yourself knew about your hometown, even your own family history.” provoked discussion and dialogue, was not one to rush out of the classroom, and instead often lingered with a small group of students wanting to continue the debate.” A favorite feature of a class with Amidon was a ﬁeld trip, usually to a part of a city overlooked in history books or news reports. “Urban Studies 363 was very special,” said Smerconish after the conclusion of the DVD. “It culminated with a trip to Philadelphia in a van that Dave rented. Did we go to Independence Hall or the Liberty Bell? No. We toured the ethnic neighborhoods, the cemeteries, the little restaurants. We met one old Italian guy who mesmerized us with stories of what it took to run a restaurant in big-city America.” Several alumni said it was their initial meeting with Amidon that drew them to the professor. Often these introductions 32 lehigh alumni bulletin was suddenly unable to recognize the National Anthem. When I finally told him that my ancestors came from Odessa, Russia, and that their original name—Pekarov—was changed at Ellis Island, Dave had something to sink his teeth into and he was off and running.” Amidon took a special relish in counseling students. He and his wife hosted groups of students for dinner at their home in Bethlehem and more than once bailed from jail a student whose judgment had been temporarily clouded by an overdose of partying. In 1970, said Miles, when students conducted a demonstration and a three-day strike to protest their lack of representation on the campus governing body, Amidon acted as informal liaison between students and faculty, spending hours listening to students and helping to diffuse and rechannel much of their anger.

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2008

Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2008 Contents From the President's Desk Mailbox On Campus Research Arts & Culture Sports Ugly is in the Eye of the Beholder Fitch's Law of Motion A Blessing to the Community The Amidonian Acclamation China Trip Bridges Cultures, Generations From the Publisher's Desk Alumni News The Last Word

Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2008

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