Vernon Carstensen, Ex-Professor At UW, Loved Spirited Discussion

Vernon Carstensen cherished dinner time with his family, when he would update his wife and two sons on the projects his students were tackling and on the latest reading material he had devoured.

But his older son Peter Carstensen recalls the nightly discussions never remained passive and purely informational for long.

The elder Carstensen, a longtime historian and academic, loved to discuss and analyze current events with his family, especially when those events focused on politics and social issues.

"My father loved people and loved to read" the son said.

After a long battle with emphysema, Professor Carstensen died Tuesday. He was 84.

Described by his family and colleagues as an uncompromising man of integrity who believed everyone should have an opinion, the retired history professor at the University of Washington also firmly believed in people and their capacity to reach their goals.

His younger son, Fred Carstensen, an economics professor at the University of Connecticut, remembers at 15 wanting badly to compete in speed skating.

At the time, the family lived in Madison, Wisc., and, knowing there was no local speed-skating club, Professor Carstensen suggested Fred begin one on his own.

The club Fred started eventually attracted young Peter Mueller and Eric Heiden who would both go on to win Olympic gold medals for the United States.

"My father believed strongly that one should shape one's own

life," said Fred Carstensen. "He said you should care about things and do something about them. He was not a passive man . . . Only now as a professor can I appreciate my father's tenacity and perseverance when it came to his demanding teaching standards."

Colleague Joan Ullman, who teaches European history at the UW, described Professor Carstensen as opinionated but not intolerant.

"He loved a good literary fight and thought it was unconscionable not to have a view on critical issues," she recalled, "but he wasn't partisan.

"He believed simply that you should bring learning to bay, that your argument should be theoretical, conceptual and pragmatic."

Professor Carstensen, one of six children, was raised on a farm in Iowa until his father died when Carstensen was 6.

He graduated from the Iowa State Teachers College in 1928, received a master's degree in 1932 and his Ph.D. in 1936 in history from the University of Iowa.

He married his first wife, Mary Hill in 1935. After she died in 1971, Professor Carstensen married Jeannette Davies Sogge Carstensen.

Until 1964, when Professor Carstensen moved to Seattle and became a full-time faculty member at the UW, he spent the majority of his time teaching at the University of Wisconsin, where he also co-authored "The University of Wisconsin: A History."

At the UW, Professor Carstensen taught undergraduate and graduate American-history classes. He also headed the committee that developed the university's African-American studies program.

Professor Carstensen retired from the UW in 1975. Richard White, a former student and now a history professor at the UW, remembered Professor Carstensen as a teacher who boasted of his students' accomplishments to others but when addressing the students themselves he reminded them more of their shortcomings.

"You never felt constant criticism, but you always had the feeling in talking with Vern that you could have done your work better," said White. "And he was right."

The time Professor Carstensen spent pouring over dissertation drafts of his graduate students is something White believes he will never forget. "I appreciate that now in hindsight," he said. "That individual attention to students is unique. He was extraordinarily generous with his time."

Professor Carstensen is survived by his wife, of Seattle; sons Peter, of Madison, Wisc., and Fred, of Bloomfield, Conn; sisters Edna, Elvira and Ruth, and one brother, Louis, who all live near their hometown in Iowa; two stepsons, one stepdaughter and his grandchildren.

Memorial services will be held tomorrow at 2 p.m. at the UW Faculty Club.