Robert
Bouse McNee (August 20, 1922 - January 8, 1992) was a prominent geography professor who once headed the American Geographical Society.Queer Places:
University of Cincinnati, 45 W University Ave, Cincinnati, OH 45219
Robert
Bouse McNee (August 20, 1922 - January 8, 1992) was a prominent geography professor who once headed the American Geographical Society.
Dr. McNee helped expand the location theory of geography, which holds that things are where they are because of natural and manmade factors alike, including climate, topography, natural resources, transportation services and population. His research focused on international corporations' economic influence on the development of third-world nations. He also studied urban development and in that role was a consultant to the Ford Foundation. He wrote numerous articles and several books, including "A Primer on Economic Geography" (Random House, 1971).
Born in Big Timber, Mont., he grew up there and in Spring Valley, Minn. He earned a bachelor's degree at Wayne State University and master's and doctoral degrees in geography at Syracuse University. He won a Fulbright fellowship. He taught geography at City College in Manhattan from 1952 to 1963 and then went to the University of Cincinnati, where he was chairman of the geography department from 1963 to 1973, chairman of the faculty senate and faculty representative on the board of trustees. He returned to Manhattan as director of the American Geographical Society from 1973 to 1976, a period of financial stress for the organization. Under a restructuring that he helped to plan, the society sold its headquarters on Audubon Terrace, closed its map department and transferred its library, considered one of the most important of its kind, to the University of Wisconsin. After leaving the society, he went back to the University of Cincinnati where he taught until retiring in 1987. He volunteered for years as a civil rights advocate for blacks, the homeless, women, the people of Appalachia and homosexuals. Late in his career he publicly acknowledged his own bisexuality, and some called him the honorary mayor of Cincinnati's gay and lesbian community.
McNee died on January 8, 1992, at the U.C.L.A. Medical Center. He was 69 years old and lived in Los Angeles. He died of complications of lung cancer, his family said. Surviving are his wife, Doris Smithers, of Worthington, Ohio, from whom he was separated; two sons, Robert McNee of Westport, Conn., and William McNee of Old Greenwich, Conn.; a daughter, Margaret McNee Trikoupis of Worthington, Ohio.
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