Dr. Hartmann

Sad Farewell

(photo from UALR website)

1961-2009

How can you begin to describe the feeling of loss when someone so influential in your life has gone? Dr. Hartmann taught my first class in anthropology. It was cultural anthropology. His energy and fire was what hooked me into continuing even though I felt very out of place being thirty + years of age surrounded by teenagers.

He taught probably 80% of my classes while getting this B. A.

There is just no way to explain how much I learned from him. From forensics to egyptology to primatology. He was a wealth of knowledge and the department will not be the same without him.

He was an atheist and and evolutionist and he really made you think hard about your own religious beliefs. One of the real inner conflicts that I had was being from an overwhelmingly Christian background and now studying evolution and really learning what is was all about (which had nothing in common with the "facts" about evolution that I learned in church/school). No wonder he though creationists were crazy!

Over the last few years I have resolved some of that conflict. I believe in evolution to some extent. I have studied it from both sides and I have come to this conclusion because of the evidence that I see.

Do I believe that humans came from a tiny microbe in the murky sea?

OK, you got me there. No, I just can't quite wrap my mind around that, BUT I am willing to study the evidence and I am able to understand how they come to that conclusion. Because you know what, if I say that it could not have happened that way-----then I am putting a limit on God's power.

Thank you Dr. Hartmann for pushing me to study everything. Everything I believed in all my life and everything that I thought was wrong. Because of that, I understand my world much better than before.

Thank you Dr. H for pushing UALR to get a second scholarship for the anthropology department so that another student could go to Jordan for an archaeological field school. You really, really worked hard to get the money and then you gave me that scholarship.

For whoever finds his bones a 1000 years from now, excavate them with great care and respect. For those are the bones of a great teacher, a mentor and a friend.

And just in case you don't know----Dr. H's # 1 tip: If you can't decide if it is bone or a rock, touch it to your tongue. If it sticky, it's bone!