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KSU, B.S., 1971

Kansas State University:
B.S., Mechanical Engineering, 1947;
B.S., Business Administration, 1947

Director of Facilities at KSU for many years

Robert O. Blunk, Jr. was born in 1923 to Robert O. Blunk, Sr. (1902-1985), a mechanic, and Opal Blunk (1906-2004). He grew up in Salyards, Kansas during the Great Depression. Blunk, Jr. is the eldest of three children, his two younger sisters, Patricia A. and Nancy J., were born in 1928 and 1937, respectively.
In 1942, Blunk enlisted in the Marine Corps and served during World War II before returning to Kansas, getting married to his wife Katherine, and enrolling in art classes at Kansas State University. He soon enrolled at the Kansas City Art Institute, after turning down an acceptance to study industrial design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and graduated in 1950 with a Bachelor’s in Fine Art. Blunk began teaching art in Chanute, Kansas at local schools and colleges and played a role in the establishment of the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum which opened in Chanute in 1961. He earned his master’s degree from (now) Pittsburg State University in Sculpture and, in 1962, joined the college’s art faculty.
Over the next two decades, Blunk held many art exhibits/shows and focused his work on community art, which was his true passion. This activism led him to Puerto Rico in 1969, where he was a consultant with the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture and working with crafts artists to develop markets for their work. Similarly, in 1995, he worked with street children and adults in Zambia providing them support for their works. Blunk retired from Pittsburg State in 1988, but continued to reside in Pittsburg, KS, and completed many commissioned works in the early nineties and two-thousands. One notable work designed and completed by Blunk was the Wright brothers' kinetic sculpture (nearly 90’ by 30’), which was dedicated in 2003 on Main Street in Chanute, KS, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the invention of flight. At some point between 2003 and 2008, Blunk moved to Denver, Colorado where he currently works in his studio creating primarily miniatures of sculpture, painted still-lifes, and interiors.
He has three children, Scott, Judd, and Rebecca (1953-2014), with his late wife Katherine (1923-2007).

William Binnie was born on June 15, 1886, in Muscatine, Iowa to parents of Scottish descent. His father, Thomas F. Binnie, worked for a Scottish American Mortgage Company based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The family moved back to Scotland in 1890 when William was four years old.

On August 10, 1907, at the age of 21, William Binnie began his journal as he sailed from Scotland to the United States. An avid bird-watcher and naturalist, Binnie recorded on August 19, the ship anchored off Sandy Hook. The next day he sailed up the quay at New York and the following day he arrived at Dunkirk, New York. He noted the weather, birds, and other wildlife. In the evening of August 21, Binnie boarded a train to Chicago. On August 22, he wrote, "In Chicago no birds except sparrows were to be seen, but beautiful large brown butterflies occurred frequently, even in the busy streets." Binnie left Chicago on the evening of August 23 and arrived in Kansas City on August 24, 1907. His journal mentions very little of his work in Kansas City. Instead, it focused on the avian species, flora, and fauna of the Kansas-Missouri countryside.

Binnie left Kansas City on February 9, 1910, and took a job with The Alberta and Great Waterways Railway Company. With this job, he traveled a great deal especially north of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where the company planned to build the railroad. In December the railway project stopped, and Binnie returned to Scotland until April 1911. Being delayed from going north, Binnie spent a few weeks at a summer resort on Lakes Sallie and Morissa [Melissa] at Shoreham, Minnesota. On June 7, 1911, Binnie arrived at New England, North Dakota where he expected to stay fourteen months. His journal ended on April 11, 1912.

By 1913, Binnie was the first banker at the Fallon, Montana, bank and in January 1916, he filed a land patent for 160 acres in Montana. On March 3, 1916, Binnie married his Inez McNaughton, in Chicago. After their marriage, Binnie and Inez traveled to Scotland and visited with family for six months then returned to Montana. Later that year, on December 16, 1916, William's father, Thomas, died.

As soon as the United States entered World War I, Binnie enlisted in the U. S. Army. Stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco, Binnie became a First Lieutenant in Field Artillery. On January 24, 1918, Binnie was aboard the U. S. S. Tuscania when it left Hoboken, New Jersey carrying 2013 American troops. At Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Tuscania joined a convoy to cross the Atlantic Ocean bound for Le Harve, France. On February 5, a German submarine sighted the convoy north of Ireland and fired two torpedoes. The first missed but the second was a direct hit. Two hundred thirty people were lost. Records indicate that two hundred and one were American troops. The U. S. S. Tuscania was the first ship carrying American troops to be sunk, and First Lieutenant William Binnie was one of four officers killed. He is considered the first casualty of World War I in Prairie County, Montana. Even though Binnie's body was not recovered, his name listed on his parents' tombstone at Dean Cemetery in Scotland.

After Binnie's death, Inez made several trips back to Scotland. She eventually remarried a man named Merton Moore. She died in Oregon on October 18, 1989.

William H. Avery was a Kansas politician who served in the U.S. Congress and as Governor of Kansas in the 1960s. Avery received an AB degree in Political Science from the University of Kansas in 1934, after which he worked as a farmer and stockman near his hometown of Wakefield, Kansas for 20 years. In 1950, Avery successfully campaigned to serve in the Kansas House of Representatives, where he served for four years. From 1955 to 1965, he was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Kansas’s First Congressional District. Avery was elected Governor of Kansas in 1964 but lost his re-election bid in 1966; he left the Governor’s office in 1967. In 1968, Avery unsuccessfully ran as a candidate to represent Kansas in the U.S. Senate. After his defeat, Avery left politics and worked in various capacities in the private sector for many years. This includes working for the Clinton Oil Company from 1967 to 1971, as Congressional liaison to the Department of the Interior from 1973 to 1977, and as director of the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Wakefield from 1977 to 1980. Avery died in 2009, having lived to the age of 98.

The American Institute of Baking, now known as AIB International, has been in operation since 1919. The current mission of AIB International reflects their original mission and states to “protect the safety of the food supply chain and grain based production capabilities”. Today, the AIB International School of Baking is closely aligned with the Kansas State University Department of Grain Science and accreditation of AIB is through its affiliation with Kansas State University along with a regional accreditation through the North Central Association of Schools and additional accreditation through the International Association for Continuing Education and Training. Several departments are included at AIB International, the School of Baking is only one of them. Others include, Auditing Services, Food Safety Education, and Research and Technical Options. Two of the most common focus courses at AIB are the baking technologist course (16 weeks) and the maintenance engineering course (11 weeks). AIB International is unique in its offering of the maintenance engineering course, in that the school looks more closely at the technical side of baking, including research, development, and the mechanics of the kitchen rather than solely at baking and baking techniques.
AIB Headquarters was relocated from Chicago, IL in 1978 to Bakers Way in Manhattan, Kansas. This was a large move for the institution and included the movement of their research library that housed this collection prior to its donation. The AIB International research library, originally named the Louis Livingston Library, was founded in 1927 and renamed the Ruth M. Emerson Library in 1984 in honor of Miss Emerson’s 37 years served as its librarian.  Ruth Emerson held degrees in both food science and library science and left an enduring legacy to the baking industry by “…initiating the development of a system that she called her ‘non-electronic computer’, which was a massive author-title-subject card index to articles, formulations, patents, and all types of other baking and food science information…” held within the research library (Wirtz, p.108). In December of 2014, the library’s physical space was downsized and closed to the public. It was at this time that portions of their collection were donated to the Morse Department of Special Collections at Hale Library, Kansas State Libraries. The remainder of the collection is still retained by AIB International for internal staff use.

1952 Colston Warne proposed an idea for "launching a consumer education association"
1953 Planning session for further consideration of the project; committee formed to draw up by-laws; plans made for publishing a newsletter and a series of pamphlets; association named Council on Consumer Information; Eugene Beem, Executive Secretary; CCI located at Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, Michigan
1954 First pamphlet released, Consumer Look at Farm Price Polices; Membership grew from 70 in July to 139 in late November; Warren Nelson, Executive Secretary; CCI located at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
1955 First Annual Conference held in Dayton, Ohio; Fred Archer, Executive Secretary; CCI located at State Teachers College, St. Cloud, Minnesota

1956    Membership reached 640; Ramon Heimerl, Executive Director through 1965; CCI relocated  to Greeley State College, Greeley, Colorado through 1965
1957    The merger of CCI and the National Association of Consumers was approved
1958    Membership grew to 1041
1962    Five members of CCI were appointed to the President's Advisory Council
1963    Tenth Anniversary of the founding of CCI; membership 1200; eight conferences held, 14 published, and 38 editions of the newsletter distributed
1964    CCI joined the International Organization of Consumers Unions
1966    Executive committee approved the publication of the Journal of Consumer Affairs; Edward Metzen, Executive Secretary through
1975; CCI relocated to University of Missouri, Columbia, its present location
1967    First issue of the Journal of Consumer Affairs published; CCI membership directory published
1968    Membership 1531; CCI became a member of the Consumer Federation of America
1969    Name changed to American Council on Consumer Interests
1971    Colston E. Warne Lecture Series was formed
1972    ACCI Board of Directors established the Distinguished Fellow Award
1973    Title of Executive Secretary was changed to Executive Director; Executive Committee was increased from 8 to 10 members
1975    College student internship program began as a joint project with the Conference of Consumer Organizations (National Consumer Affairs Internship Program); Karen Stein, Executive Director through June, 1978
1977    ACCI received a grant from the U.S. Office of Consumer Education to produce a position paper, "Consumer Information Systems and Technical Assistance Services as Viewed by ACCI"
1978    Mel Zelenak, Executive Director through June, 1983
1983     Barbara Slusher became Executive Director through August 1988
1988    Anita Metzen became Executive Director
On November 5, 1952, Colston Warne (President of Consumers Union) inquired by letter whether Ray Price and Henry Harap would be interested in launching a consumer education association. Warne stated that Consumers Union would contribute financial support to bring several persons together for that purpose. Price and Harap met with Warne in Chicago and approved the proposal. Twenty persons accepted an invitation to attend a planning session at the University of Minnesota. These Charter Members were primarily college and university professors. They approved the selection of an executive committee which was given the following charge: prepare a plan for permanent organization, prepare a budget and obtain financial assistance, choose an executive secretary, and define its functions. The following persons served on this Executive Committee: Marguerite Burk, Eugene Beem, G.E. Damon, Henry Harap and Ray Price. Eugene Beem was chosen to act as Executive Secretary. The Executive Committee met in Washington on June 1, 1953, after which the Consumers Union made a grant of $7000. This grant enabled the planning group to proceed with the recruitment of members, publication of newsletters and pamphlets, and the organization of an annual conference. Thus, the American Council on Consumers Interests was formally established in 1953. Initially, the organization was called the Council on Consumer Information and in 1969 it was changed to the American Council on Consumer Interests. ACCI was established for the purpose of stimulating the exchange of ideas among persons interested in the welfare of the consumer and to be non-political, taking no stand on issues of public policy. Its sole purpose was to contribute to more effective fact-finding and dissemination of consumer information. The first annual ACCI conference was held in 1955 in Dayton, Ohio. *Taken from Henry Harap, "A Brief History of the American Council on Consumer Interests," a photocopied paper distributed by Consumers Union of the U.S., March 1981.

Anna Tessie Agan was born in Silver City, Iowa, on October 19, 1897. She earned her bachelor of science degree from the University of Nebraska in 1927. She received her master of science in Food Economics and Nutrition from Kansas State Agricultural College in 1930, the same year she joined the staff of the college. Agan taught Home Economics until 1968.
In 1939, Agan wrote and published a college textbook, The House. She started doing radio talk shows in 1940 and continued until 1959. In 1966 she was invited to join the President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped. Agan was recognized as a Distinguished Older Citizen of Kansas in 1968 and received the State Achievement Award for significant service to Delta Kappa Gamma the following year. In 1971, Agan participated in the White House Conference on Aging and during the same year she was recognized by the Mu chapter of Theta Sigma Phi for Outstanding Contributions to Civic Welfare. She received an honorary doctorate from Kansas State Univerity in 1986.
Tessie Agan passed away on May 11, 1988, in Houston, Texas.

The Aftosa International/Internacional Roundup is a 501(c)(7) nonprofit organization formed by surviving members of the 1946-1954 joint U.S.-Mexican aftosa eradication campaign (the Commission Mexico-Americana para la Erradication de la Fiebre Aftosa), which worked to eliminate aftosa fever (also known as foot and mouth disease, FMD, or hoof and mouth disease, HMD) in livestock.  Annual roundup reunions were held starting in 1984, and continued until at least 2004.
An additional archive of papers relating to their activities is held at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas.

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