James R. Shortridge

My roots are six generations deep in the "burnt district" of western Missouri. Two family lines derive from upper Southerners of English ancestry, a third from Ireland and Norway, and a fourth from southern Germany and adjacent Switzerland. Half of my ancestors favored the Confederate cause, half the Union. I was raised as a soda jerk and had aspirations to follow the pharmacist life of my father and grandfather. Then came college and the discovery of new possibilities in the study of place and place meaning. Fellow geographer Barbara Gimla and I married in 1967 and we have two daughters: Amy and Katherine.