In Memoriam

by thomas g. alexanderJim Allen joined the Brigham Young University History Department in September 1964, the same month that I did. Our friend, the late Ted Warner, had joined the department the year before. Shortly after Jim and I joined the department, the three of us decided to drive to the Western History Association conference in Oklahoma City. We rode there in Jim's old Plymouth station wagon. Jim, who was a moderate Republican, had a “Goldwater for President” sticker on the rear bumper, and Ted and I, who are both moderate Democrats, were a bit embarrassed. After that, we frequently traveled to the Western History Association conference together. Our families and some others called us the Three Musketeers.In 1965 the three of us decided that we ought to celebrate New Year's together with our wives, Renée, Doris, and Marilyn. We began by inviting other couples to join us in welcoming in the New Year. After the three of us became older and feebler, we stopped inviting the other couples, and the three couples celebrated the New Year together. We did that every year except when Jim and Renée or Marilyn and I were on missions until Ted and Doris moved into assisted living at Jamestown.Because of our interest in Latter-day Saint history, Jim and I worked together in writing and collaborating on a number of important projects. When BYU sent Jim to Grenoble, France, to teach on the semester abroad project, he had just finished writing his first book: The Company Town in the American West (1966). He knew that the book needed an index and that he could not do that in France, so he asked me to index it for him. I was pleased to do that. It was an excellent book.1Afterward, the two of us coauthored a number of publications. We edited the diaries that William Clayton had kept in England shortly after his conversion to the church. We called the book that came out of this project Manchester Mormons (1974). The work we did on that diary helped Jim to write an excellent biography of William Clayton. We also coauthored a history of Salt Lake City that we titled Mormons and Gentiles (1984).Jim and Renée, along with Marilyn and I, and Doris and Ted were involved in the inauguration of two of the most important developments in the fields of Latter-day Saint and Western historical studies. Jim and Renée, Ted and Doris, and Marilyn and I participated in the organization of the Mormon History Association in December 1965. We organized the Mormon History Association in the Monterey Room of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. At the inaugural meeting Jim collaborated with Richard Bushman in organizing a program. Jim served as president of the MHA in 1972–1973, and he was always an active member. He also served for several years as associate editor of the Journal of Mormon History.A second important contribution was Jim's work in helping to organize the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies and to serve on its board from the organization in 1972 to his passing this year. He helped convince Ernest Wilkinson that BYU should obtain an endowment to fund the Redd Center. Jim also held the Lemuel Hardison Redd Jr. Chair in Western American History from 1988 to 1992. The Redd Center has been a significant force in promoting the study of, research in, and publication in the field of Western American history. Jim's collaboration and recommendations contributed immeasurably to the Redd Center's success.In 1972, the same year as the organization of the Redd Center, the presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints called Leonard J. Arrington as Church Historian and Recorder. Leonard asked the First Presidency to call Jim Allen and Davis Bitton as Assistant Church Historians. This was the first and only time in the church's history that three professional historians with PhDs have served in these positions. Davis Bitton called these the Camelot Years. They accomplished an incalculable service to the church during the eight years that Jim served as Assistant Church Historian, including the publication of The Story of the Latter-day Saints (1976) that Jim coauthored with Glen Leonard.In addition to traveling to conventions, Jim and Renée and Marilyn and I toured together. On one memorable occasion, in 1987 we traveled to Ireland and England together. We flew to Dublin, Ireland, and set out to drive north to Belfast. This was the first time to my knowledge that Jim or I had to drive on the left (that is the wrong) side of the road. Our wives declined to drive, so Jim and I had to do all of the driving. To make matters worse, it was raining heavily and there was a bicycle race on the road. Fortunately, we arrived in Belfast and we made the entire trip including Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic, and England, Wales, and Scotland without an accident. In Manchester, England, Jim searched diligently to find places in which William Clayton had lived and worked.Three other trips we took together took us to Asia, the Near East, and the Baltic. In 2014 we actually visited the Hanoi Hilton and saw the memorial to John McCain, who was incarcerated there after the Vietnamese shot down the airplane he was piloting. On one in 2010 we saw the terracotta warriors in Xian, the Forbidden City in Beijing, and we walked the Great Wall of China. Unfortunately, Renée was injured in Beijing. On the Baltic Cruise we visited the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia.Now let me say a few things about Jim's personality. Jim was always kind to others. He told me of his experience teaching at BYU–Hawaii. Many of the students had inadequate educational backgrounds, so they were not well prepared for college life. Instead of writing them off, he worked with them, gave some tasks for extra credit, and helped them in every way that he could. At BYU he also worked with faculty members instead of writing them off during the six years he served as History Department chair. That kindness shined through during the two times he served as bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some men report that they have a terrible relationship with their mothers-in-law. By contrast, Jim loved both his mother and his mother-in-law, and his mother-in-law became an ally in his courting of Renée. She wanted him as her son-in-law.Through sixty years of friendship, I certainly got to know Jim well, and I would judge that of anyone I know, no one deserves to be in heaven with his beloved wife, Renée, more than James Brown Allen.by roger roperIt would be impossible to exaggerate the impact Peter Goss has had on our understanding of Utah's historic architecture and on historic preservation efforts in the state. In 1970, Peter Lee Goss (1943–2025) was hired as the first architectural historian at the University of Utah's Graduate School of Architecture—the first such position in Utah. He continued as an active teacher, mentor, and academic leader beyond his professorial tenure until his death. It's hard to imagine going forward without his contributions.But Peter's legacy will live on through the students and the projects to which he devoted his career. As a fresh-faced professor and newcomer to Utah in 1970, he threw himself into expanding his understanding of Utah's built environment and how it fits into a national context. Over his fifty-plus-year career, he educated thousands of college students. Some were one-course students who simply needed a humanities credit. Others went on to achieve graduate degrees and become outstanding professionals in the historic preservation and architectural communities. But the subject matter and Dr. Goss's teachings had a long-lasting impact, even on casual students.Peter grew up on Long Island, New York, then obtained degrees from Fairfield University (Connecticut; BA in English), Syracuse University (New York; MA in library science), and Ohio University (PhD in comparative arts). History, architecture, and photography were his mingled passions. These interests coalesced into a longtime career focused on architectural history and historic preservation in Utah.Dr. Goss had many roles in the academic and public history arenas. Beyond his decades as professor at the University of Utah, he served on various boards and community-outreach efforts. Though teaching was at the core of his career, he also held a variety of significant administrative positions at the University of Utah. Throughout the 1990s, he was a member and chair of both the Utah Board of State History and the Utah Historic and Cultural Sites Review Committee, which oversaw the admission of hundreds of historic structures to the National Register of Historic Places. Peter's insights were invaluable. Over the years, he was also closely associated with the nonprofit Preservation Utah (formerly Utah Heritage Foundation).At the local level, he was heavily involved in the Friends of Historic Spring City, the small, historic town in central Utah where he and his wife, Inge-Lise, have owned a historic house for more than thirty years. Together, they helped the Friends obtain official nonprofit status (Inge-Lise taking the lead, because of her expertise in that area). This opened the door to important fundraising efforts for restoring the old Spring City School, which reopened in 2017 as the city hall and community center after a thirty-five-year, $2 million–plus campaign. In later years, he also served as a director of the Historic Murray First Foundation and as a docent at Spring Mountain Ranch State Park, Nevada, near their winter home.One of Peter's lasting achievements is the book Utah's Historic Architecture, coauthored with his longtime colleague, Thomas Carter. Since the late 1980s, it has been the “bible” on that subject. Everyone who gets serious about studying historic buildings in Utah relies on this foundational publication. It has stood the test of time and will probably do so for years to come.As a professor, Peter implemented some innovative teaching methods. In the late 1980s or early 1990s, he recorded an architectural history course that was available in weekly installments on the local PBS television station. Students and nonstudents alike could tune in to learn about Utah's historic architecture. This predated online courses by more than a decade. He also provided options for students in his Arts & Crafts Style course completing their final projects. Instead of writing a well-researched paper, students could opt to construct a piece of Arts & Crafts Style furniture, a stimulating and tactile way to connect with the ethos of that style's emphasis on handmade craftsmanship.Though Peter is perhaps best known for his architectural history contributions, he is also acclaimed for his photography. Starting as a high-school photographer documenting surfers off the Long Island coast, he moved on to college and professional work. Ohio University, where he earned his PhD, curated an online exhibition of his work in recent years. It included evocative photos ranging from peaceful local community scenes to incendiary protest images taken in the wake of the 1970 Kent State killings in Ohio.In Utah, Peter photographed thousands of buildings, structures, and events, including the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, where he had a press pass to get many behind-the-scenes images. This visual record of Utah will be a go-to source for scholars and others for years to come.One of his local photography projects was documenting the sheep industry, which was the heart of the economy in Spring City and Sanpete County for many years—and still is. This project demonstrates Peter's ability to see beyond just the architecture of a place, and his images provide a window into the world of a working livestock industry that has shaped a significant way of life in this part of the state and elsewhere. Exhibits of this work have been featured in various venues.Peter's most durable impact has been with his thousands of students. The following are short remembrances from a few students and a colleague.On a personal note, Peter was an incredibly important part of my own career in historic preservation. Fresh out of college, I was fortunate to get a job with an architectural/planning firm that had a contract to conduct an architectural and historical survey in Salt Lake City. Peter was responsible for guiding the architectural-history component of that project. I was the day-to-day functionary. There were very few college historic preservation programs at that time, and I definitely needed more guidance than my single college class in historic preservation had provided me with.So beginning in January 1981, Peter and I went bombing around in his old-style VW van in all the neighborhoods between South Temple and Sugar House, from about 200 East to 1300 East. (By the way, VWs at that time didn't have great heating systems—and this was in the winter.) As the assistant, I took copious notes about the buildings he identified so I could go back and photograph them and try to capture his comments about each one. Peter also took some notes, which he tore from his lined yellow pad at the end of each survey session, written in his distinctive lefthanded script.Later, he helped guide me through my graduate work in history and architectural history. And Peter has been an ongoing mentor ever since. He even graciously agreed to come up to Oregon in 2009, where I was working at the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office, to give a lecture about a Frank Lloyd Wright–designed house there that was similar to one in Bountiful, with which he was well acquainted.We will all miss Peter's expertise and genial countenance. He's been a stalwart to all of us for so many years, and his impact will ripple on for many years. And, as historians of one type or another, we should remember and be grateful for all that he has contributed to Utah's historic and architectural legacy. I'm honored to have known him and worked with him over the years.