Bruce A. Adams was a K-State graduate and veteran of the U.S. Army. Adams came from a family of K-State graduates and military veterans, including both his father, George Adams Jr., and grandfather, George Adams Sr. Bruce Adams earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from K-State in 1969, while also being commissioned to the Army as a Distinguished Military Graduate. In 1970, Adams received his Master’s degree in Business Administration from K-State. From 1970 to 1971, he attended the U.S. Army Adjutant General School at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana. Adams was on active duty from 1970 to 1978. He was promoted to 1st Lieutenant in 1971 and to Captain in 1974, before being reassigned to the U.S. Army Reserve in 1978. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel of the U.S. Army Reserve in 1987, to Colonel in 1992, and to Brigadier General in 1998. Adams retired from the Army Reserve in 2003.
Donald J. (Adam) Adamchak, 48, died of cancer at his home in Manhattan, Kansas, on March 16, 2000. Adam was born in Bayonne, New Jersey on February 27, 1952. After graduating high school in Jersey City, he attended Ohio University (BGS) before going to Western Kentucky University (MA) and Bowling Green State University (PhD, Sociology, 1978). In the fall of 1978 he joined the sociology faculty at Kansas State University. He remained an active and productive member of the graduate and undergraduate programs in sociology up until a few days before his death.
At KSU, Adam anchored the concentration in social demography, preparing scores of graduate students, many of them international, for careers in research and teaching in social demography. He was exceptionally active in the graduate program through both his formal and his informal mentoring of many students in addition to his teaching. Adam, an active member of sixty-one MA and PhD committees and major professor for 17 masters and 12 doctoral degrees, was ever alert to opportunities that would help students’ careers, and he encouraged and nurtured them into their professions. He always involved students in his research, collaborating with many students and former students. (His last vita listed current or recent departmental graduate students as co-authors of eight 1999 and 2000 publications.) Adam’s students always “hit the ground running” in terms of their research and academic careers after KSU. New graduate students in the program quickly realized that he was an invaluable source of practical, career-related information and he was eager to share this information one-on-one, helping them to navigate through their programs and into their careers. Adam’s concern for, and his commitment to his students was all consuming. During his last days, he was reading theses and preparing students for employment interviews. In recognition, at the spring commencement in 2000 Adam was awarded a Graduate School Distinguished Service Award for his outstanding contributions to graduate education at KSU.
Adam’s research concerned the role of population factors in development; fertility transitions; family and family planning; the status of women/gender relations; ageing and intergenerational support; and the social demographic aspects of AIDS/HIV in developing countries. He was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Social Science Research Fellowship in Population Science for 1987-88, and he served as a visiting professor at the University of Zimbabwe and, in 1995, as senior Fulbright scholar at the University of Namibia. Adam was a prolific contributor to several important bodies of research. Indicative are his forthcoming publications which include work on the effects of age structure on the labor force in China, the relationship between HIV and socioeconomic status in Uganda, the effects of gender relations on family planning decisions in Kenya, the determinants of contraceptive use in Nepal, women’s status and fertility outcomes in Kazakhstan. His research holds policy development implications for the coming decades. Adam’s recent work appeared in such journals as Rural Sociology, The Sociological Quarterly, Journal of Biosocial Sciences, International Sociology, Age and Ageing, and the Southern African Journal of Gerontology. Adam also worked tirelessly in departmental, university, and professional service (e.g., on editorial boards for Rural Sociology, the Southern African Journal of Gerontology, and the Rural Studies Series of the Rural Sociological Society). Adam worked in Nigeria, Kenya, Namibia and Zimbabwe as a consultant for international organizations, including the Rockefeller Foundation, the Population Council, UNICEF, and the United Nations Population Fund. Last year, by invitation of the United Nations, he was a key participant in an International Conference on Population and Development meeting on Population and Ageing in Belgium. In early March, 2000, he taught a course on social gerontology in Malta for the United Nations Institute on Ageing.
He is survived by his wife, Susan Enea Adamchak in Manhattan, KS, his son, Nikolai Adamchak in Louisville, KY, and his father, two sisters, and two nieces, all in New York/New Jersey. Adam will be missed by his colleagues and students at Kansas State University. We will miss his quick sense of humor, his working class, New Jersey directness, his professionalism, and his contributions to our individual lives and to the collective life of the department. He will also be missed by his former students, many of whom he remained in close contact, and by his professional colleagues around the world. An endowed award, the Donald J. and Susan E. Adamchak Graduate Student Award in Demography, has been established in his memory at Bowling Green State University. Michael Timberlake and Leonard Bloomquist, Kansas State University; Gary Foster, University of Eastern Illinois; John Wade, Southeast Missouri State University
Duane Calvin Acker was born in Atlantic, Iowa on March 13, 1931. He graduated from Iowa State University with an M.S. in 1953. He then moved to Oklahoma State University where he instructed in Animal Husbandry until 1955 when he returned to Iowa State University as an Assistant Professor of Animal Science. In 1957 he received his Ph.D. in animal nutrition from Oklahoma State University. Acker was hired as the Associate Dean of the College of Agriculture at Kansas State University from 1962-1966. From 1974 to 1975 he became Vice Chancellor for Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Then he returned to KSU filling the office of president until 1986. During Acker’s term construction on campus was a major focus and many new buildings were built on campus. He supported the building of Bramlage and constructed halls like Durland and Bluemont. A controversial point in Acker’s presidency lies in his support of razing Nichols Gym, which now stands as the rededicated Nichols Hall. Acker received status as President Emeritus before departing the K-State presidency. After leaving KSU he moved to many state positions until settling down near his hometown in 1993. Acker later published a novel in 2010 about his life in the KSU presidency, “Two at a Time”.
Lucille Edith Byarlay Abel was born July 5, 1909 in Green, Clay County, Kansas. She was the middle daughter of Guy Hamilton and (Maria) Anna (Heinen) Byarlay, and graduated from Leonardville High School in Leonardville, Kansas. She taught at Kansas county schools in Clay and Riley counties until her marriage to Orval Jack Abel in 1935. Lucille Byarlay Abel died May 21, 1993, in Clay Center, Kansas.
Guy Byarlay’s family traced their origins to the arrival of Michael Beyerle, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from Rotterdam, Netherlands, on September 5, 1730. Anna Heinen’s father came to the United States from Germany in 1853 and her mother arrived from Germany in 1855. They met in Illinois and were married in 1868. They came to central Kansas in 1872.
Lucille Byarlay was born with an eye birth defect and was blind in one eye. She suffered from frequent migraines and took the train often to Kansas City, Missouri, for eye doctor appointments. She graduated from Leonardville High School, and taught in Kansas county schools in Clay and Riley counties until her marriage to Orval Jack Abel in 1935. Orval J. Abel was born April 21, 1909 in Emmett, Kansas, and died May 1, 1966 in Clay Center, Kansas. Byarlay attended summer sessions at Kansas State Agricultural College during the summer break in the late 1920s. In the 1930s she enrolled in summer school at Kansas State College, and met Orval during that time while he also was attending school.
<emph render='underline'>Chronology</emph>
1909 April 21, Orval Jack Abel born in Emmett, Kansas
1909 July 5, Lucille Edith Byarlay born in Green, Kansas
1927 Lucille Byarlay graduated high school in Leonardville, Kansas
1927 Orval Abel graduated from high school in Silver Lake, Kansas
1928 Lucille Byarlay taught at Union School, Riley County, Kansas
1928 Summer, Lucille Byarlay attended classes at Kansas State Agricultural College
1930 Lucille Byarlay taught at “Q” (Pleasant Valley), Clay County, Kansas
1930 Summer, Lucille Byarlay attended classes at Kansas State Agricultural College
1935 Lucille Byarlay married Orval Abel
1935 Orval Abel graduated from Kansas State College
1966 May 1, Orval Abel died in Clay Center, Kansas
1993 May 21, Lucille Byarlay died in Clay Center, Kansas