John E. "Jack" Sunder

I had Dr. Sunder for a graduate course on the American West, in 1965. Through his readings list I discovered H.H. Bancroft's History of Arizona and New Mexico, which proved crucial to the writing of my book-length poem, Austin (1985). All the books that I read for the course were valuable to me, including especially Philip Durham's The Negro Cowboys (1965), George Catlin's Notes on the North American Tribes, Walter Prescott Webb's The Great Plains, and Cabeza de Vaca's Adventures in the...

Dr. John Sunder provided the world with the biography of Joshua Pilcher, late of the American Fur Trade of the early 1800s. Many thanks to him for this gift to American History.

I just found out this morning about the passing of Dr. Sunder and I'm crushed. We all enjoyed him so much at the YMCA. I would always give him a call to tell him if the water was below his desired temperature because he would get chilled so easily. I knew he was a professor at UT but I didn't know all that other information about his field of work and his birding adventures. I have encountered thousands of members in my 40+ years with the YMCA but he was one that stood out in my mind as...