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CHARLES C. CARPENTERAuthor(s): Janalee P. Caldwell and Laurie J. VittSource: Copeia, 2004(3):704-708. 2004.Published By: The American Society of Ichthyologists and HerpetologistsDOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1643/OT-04-104URL: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1643/OT-04-104

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q 2004 by the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists

Copeia, 2004(3), pp. 704–708

CHARLES C. CARPENTER

JANALEE P. CALDWELL AND LAURIE J. VITT

CHUCK Carpenter grew up fascinated withsnakes and lizards and with a desire to be-

come a naturalist. Recently, in his modest way,he confessed that he wondered whether hemade it. His numerous students, colleagues,and awards can certainly testify that he made itmany times over! Chuck is now Professor Emer-itus of the Department of Zoology and CuratorEmeritus of Amphibians and Reptiles of theSam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural His-tory at the University of Oklahoma.

Charles Congden Carpenter was born on 2June 1921, in Denison, Iowa. Family lore has itthat at the time of his birth a Baltimore oriolewas singing in the backyard, although appar-ently the bird’s song was not loud enough toattract Chuck to the study of birds rather thanlizards and snakes. Chuck’s parents were HarryAlonzo Carpenter and Myrtle Barber Carpenter.Myrtle Barber was a playwright and a poet whowrote for children, and Chuck has kept a cher-ished scrapbook of her many poems. Chuck de-scribes his father as a ‘‘jack of all trades,’’ work-ing in a series of jobs from selling tires to beinga Fuller Brush man. By Chuck’s fifth birthday,the family had moved north to Marquette,Michigan. Chuck had two older siblings, Doro-thy Kathleen, born 10 July 1912, and HaroldBarber, born 6 June 1917.

Like many herpetologists, Chuck’s fascinationwith reptiles and amphibians began when hewas a child. He remembers catching his first gar-ter snake at about age eight in a beach poolnear Little Presque Isle on Lake Superior innorthern Michigan. A fine artist, he later did anoil painting of that beach pool, which hangs inhis house even today. While growing up, he keptan assortment of live frogs and snakes. One ofhis early projects was building a miniature pondin his back yard. Much to his delight and ex-citement was the appearance of a painted turtlethat laid eggs near the pond. He credits hiseighth grade science and high school biologyteacher, Rollin Thoren, with fostering his inter-est in field biology. They went on field trips thatyielded mud puppies and other fascinating crea-tures, opening up the world of biology, and spe-cifically herpetology, for him. Years later, Chuckwent back for his 55th high school reunion andwas thrilled to see Mr. Thoren again, who waswell into his 80s at the time.

Chuck credits Alexander Ruthven’s ‘‘Herpe-

tology of Michigan,’’ which he found in the lo-cal public library during his high school days,as one of the first books that influenced him.He began collecting similar books and his in-terest in ‘‘herps’’ became solidified. He alsoread Ditmars’ ‘‘Reptiles of the World’’ manytimes through as a child. His teachers came toknow his ‘‘peculiarities’’; once he had a snakein his shirt pocket that escaped during class. Assoon as the teacher saw it on the floor, she said,‘‘Charles, get that snake out of here!’’ ButChuck’s abilities in many areas besides herpe-tology were obvious during high school. In theirwill, his high school class left him a Jitterbug ina bottle, symbolic of his dancing abilities andhis love of animals and natural history. He canalso play many musical instruments ‘‘by ear’’and played with many groups in high schooland later years. One of his graduate students,Neil Ford, noted that Chuck frequently playedthe accordion for campfires at the OklahomaBiological Station. In high school, he won a po-etry reciting contest and also wrote poetry. Oneof his poems, later published in his collegenewspaper, was called ‘‘Ode to a Toad.’’

ODE TO A TOAD

One day when I was walkingAlong a country roadI heard a croak in front of meLooked, and saw a toad.

He was sitting in the tall grassWhere I could hardly seeAnd croaking hoarselyAnd looking up at me.

Suddenly I reached for himBut to no availFor he’d vanished in the tall grassLeaving me no trail.

Now what I’ve often wondered isHas every country roadTall grass and a quiet spotThat harbors a little toad?

For if it has, I knowThat I should go awalkingAlong all the country roadsJust to hear the toads atalking.

Charles C. Carpenter, 1939Marquette, Michigan

705HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

By the time Chuck entered college in 1939 atNorthern Michigan College of Education (nowNorthern Michigan University), his choice ofstudy was definite. During college, he met hisfirst ‘‘real’’ herpetologist, Dr. James A. Oliver,who had just graduated from the University ofMichigan and who taught Chuck comparativeanatomy.

Chuck’s college years coincided with WorldWar II, a time when many were called to service.Chuck received his B.A. degree from NorthernMichigan College of Education in 1943 and,having previously joined the Enlisted ReserveCorps, immediately was inducted into the ArmyMedical Corps at Fort Sheridan near Chicago.He spent three years and 10 days in service, sta-tioned in places all over the country. He wassent to Abilene, Texas, where he took an ex-amination to qualify for the medical program.His ranking qualified him for the Army Spe-cialized Training Program at Stephensville, Tex-as, and then at Stanford University. After com-pleting premedical training there, he was sentto Vaughan General Hospital (now Hines Gen-eral Hospital) in Chicago, where he worked asa medical technician, doing blood counts andother related work. Near the end of the war,Chuck was sent to medical school at Wayne Uni-versity College of Medicine in Detroit, where hetook human anatomy and other medical cours-es. Chuck was there when VJ (Victory over Ja-pan) Day arrived, and Chuck noted that mobsof people swarmed the streets of Detroit in awild celebration, everyone kissing everyoneelse.

As the war ended, Chuck was in MedicalSchool, but he knew that profession was not forhim and he wanted out. However, he was firstsent to South Carolina, which provided the op-portunity to get out in the field again to lookfor ‘‘herps.’’ He was eventually sent back to Chi-cago, where he got his discharge from the Armyand joined the 52–20 Club, that is, when dis-charged from the Army with no job, a personwas given $52 a week for 20 weeks. This moneywas Chuck’s only income until he went back tocollege.

Chuck then applied for and was accepted tograduate school at the University of Michigan(UM). He received both his master’s degree(1947) and his Ph.D. (1951) from UM. He tookcourses at the University of Michigan BiologicalStation, specifically herpetology, mammalogy,and ornithology. Most important, he notes, ona blind date on a Saturday night he met theyoung woman who would become his wife. Thatyoung woman was Mary Frances Pitynski. Mary’smother and father were born in Poland. She

recently visited Poland and traced her extendedfamily in Europe, where many of them are bio-chemists and teachers.

Chuck and Mary were married in the fall of1947, while they were both in graduate school.Their honeymoon to northern Michigan wasfull of unusual mishaps, not the least of whichwas when Chuck put all their luggage on thetrain in Chicago, went back to get Mary, andreturned to find that the train had alreadypulled out. They waited for the next train, butwhen they arrived back in Ann Arbor in a pour-ing rain, they were dismayed to find that theirluggage had been tossed out on the side of thetrack in the rain and was completely soaked!

Both Chuck’s and Mary’s studies were in thefield of zoology. Chuck received his Ph.D. in1951 and Mary received hers in 1952. Chuck’sadvisor at Michigan was Frederick H. Test. Someof Chuck’s fellow graduate students at the timeincluded Herndon Dowling, George Rabb, JimPeters, Bernard Martof, and Owen Sexton, allsuccessful herpetologists. Chuck remembersmaking a personal appointment to see Alexan-der Ruthven, who was president of the Univer-sity of Michigan at the time, and inviting himto his doctoral defense seminar. He told Presi-dent Ruthven that his book, Herpetology of Mich-igan, had been a great source of information onherpetology during his high school years.

One of Chuck’s fondest memories while atMichigan was spending the summer of 1947 asan assistant on a paleontology field expeditionin southern Kansas and eastern Colorado withClaude Hibbard, the famous Michigan paleon-tologist. He had taken courses in paleontologyfrom Hibbard and worked for him. One ofChuck’s jobs was to separate and catalog Hib-bard’s collection of reprints. Hibbard gaveChuck all the duplicates, including papers byEd Taylor, Joe Tihen, and Hobart Smith. Thesepapers were the first reprints in Chuck’s even-tually extensive library. (Chuck generously do-nated his reprint library in 2001 to the CharlesC. Carpenter Library of the Division of Herpe-tology at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum ofNatural History).

After graduation, Chuck stayed on at the Uni-versity of Michigan for a year as an instructor.A fortuitous encounter with Carl Riggs, then atMichigan as a graduate student but teaching atOklahoma, led to an offer of a position to teachat the Oklahoma Biological Station on LakeTexoma. Riggs had been instrumental in estab-lishing the biological station, which opened in1950. Chuck knew that teaching at the stationwould be a great opportunity for him, so in thesummer of 1952, he headed to Oklahoma. He

706 COPEIA, 2004, NO. 3

Fig. 1. Charles C. Carpenter in his office in Rich-ards Hall at the University of Oklahoma in 1962, hold-ing a Great Plains Rat Snake, Elaphe guttata.

taught natural history of the vertebrates and or-nithology. The latter course was normally taughtby the well-known Oklahoma ornithologist,George Miksch Sutton, but Sutton was workingon paintings for a book that summer.

Mary, also very successful in her own career,made some early concessions to Chuck’s career.Raised in Detroit, she was not enthusiastic aboutmoving to Oklahoma. Mary did accompanyChuck to Oklahoma, thankfully. Mary joinedthe staff at the Oklahoma Medical ResearchFoundation where she became a member, anda professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Bi-ology in the College of Medicine at theOklahoma University Health Science Center.She had her own successful career for 35 years,making many discoveries in her field. As testi-mony to her fine work, Mary was elected a Fel-low of the American Society of Nutritional Sci-ence in 1994.

Chuck and Mary have three children: JanetEleanor, born in 1953, Caryn Sue, born in 1955,and Geoffrey Congden, born in 1960. All havebeen successful in their own right. Janet strug-gled with diabetes as a child and lost her sightas a result, but went on to attain her master’sdegree in zoology and anthropology. Carynearned a Ph.D. in zoology and is now a profes-sor in the Department of Zoology at the Uni-versity of Oklahoma and Director of theOklahoma Biological Survey. Geoff also earneda Ph.D. in zoology and has an environmentalconsulting firm in New Mexico. Chuck now hasthree grandchildren, ranging in ages from sev-en to 20.

Chuck became a member of ASIH in 1946and published the first paper of his career, oncopulation in the Fox Snake, in a 1947 issue ofCopeia. This paper was to foretell many otherpapers of his that would appear in Copeia andother journals on behavior of reptiles. The firstannual meeting of the society that he attendedwas at Houghton Lake in Michigan in 1947. Hereminisces that the early meetings were small(100–150 people), and everyone knew everyoneelse. Many close friendships were forged inthose early days.

At the 1978 joint meeting of ASIH, the Soci-ety for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles,and the Herpetologists’ League in Tempe, Ari-zona, Chuck was invited to be the Master of Cer-emonies at the banquet. This meeting coincid-ed with Chuck’s 57th birthday, and his graduatestudents that came to the meeting, Beth Leuck,Mike Morton, Dan Fong, Jim Gillingham, TomJenssen, Neil Ford, Bill Preston, and Dale Mar-cellini, threw a surprise birthday party for him,giving him a cake and a walking cane. This

meeting also provided an interesting experi-ence in that Chuck’s dorm mate was Dirk Par-vus from Johannesburg, South Africa. Dirk hadbrought to the meeting with him a large collec-tion of live reptiles and amphibians, which hekept in the closet in their room. He apparentlycaused the president of ASIH at the time,George Rabb, considerable consternation whenhe exercised a live cobra on the lawn next tothe dorm.

Chuck served on the faculty of the Depart-ment of Zoology at the University of Oklahomauntil his retirement on 31 December 1987 (Fig.1). During his tenure he served as curator ofamphibians and reptiles at the Stovall Museumof Natural History (now the Sam NobleOklahoma Museum of Natural History). As tes-timony to Chuck’s broad background and inter-ests in biology, over the years he taught coursesin general zoology, comparative anatomy, ecol-ogy, animal behavior, herpetology, vertebrateembryology, human anatomy, anatomy andphysiology, and zoogeography, among others.He taught at the Oklahoma Biological Stationat Lake Texoma for 35 summers. He had nu-merous graduate students over the years. Heproduced 26 Ph.D. students, 22 master’s stu-

707HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

Fig. 2. Charles C. Carpenter examining a landiguana on Fernandina Island in the Galapagos Islandsin January 1964.

dents, and three Master of Natural Science stu-dents.

Chuck’s philosophy was that students learnbest in the field, and over his career, he has ledor participated in 16 field expeditions. Amongthem were two trips to the Galapagos Islands tostudy behavior of lava lizards, marine iguanas,and land iguanas, one in 1962 and the other in1964 (Fig. 2). The 1964 trip involved 60 scien-tists and was sponsored by the Galapagos Inter-national Scientific Project of the Extension Di-vision of the University of California, Berkeley.On one of the trips, a close encounter with aland iguana resulted in the end of his thumbbeing bitten off. His thumb was treated on thehospital ship Hope in Guayaquil, where the doc-tors used a teflon bandage to patch him up.

Chuck notes how his career in biology beganwith making observations on lizards, and fur-ther, how fortuitous events can change thecourse of many plans. When he first arrived atthe Oklahoma Biological Station, he foundlarge populations of Sceloporus undulatus andCnemidophorus sexlineatus living in similar habi-tats. He began studying the comparative ecologyof these populations. This project was goingvery well, and he thought this would be the fo-cus of his research for many years to come.However, in the spring of 1957, heavy rainscame and resulted in floods that completelywiped out the lizard populations at his studysites. This event forced him to reassess his re-search. He thought about those long hours ev-ery day in the hot sun, watching the behaviorof individual lizards in their natural habitat. Hehad noticed that the lizards maintained terri-tories using head-bobbing behavior and push-ups, and he had timed them with a stopwatch

to see whether patterns could be discerned. Hisinitial work led him to realize that there werepatterns and that each species was different. Herealized that this was a fascinating but unstudiedarea in lizard biology, so his new research direc-tion was set. This work eventually led to numer-ous studies of many species, several of whichwere published in Copeia (1963:406–412; 1970:497–505; 1977:754–756). Many graduate stu-dents were involved in this work and many ex-peditions to faraway places were undertaken tostudy other species. The National Science Foun-dation and other funding agencies enabledChuck to invest in cameras and other sophisti-cated equipment to use in his work. The exten-sive collection of original films made by Chuckand his students, now deposited at the Sam No-ble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, hasbeen digitized by Dr. Emı́lia Martins at IndianaUniversity in Bloomington.

When asked what were the changes he hadobserved in his area of research during the past50 years, Chuck noted especially the rapid ad-vances in technology, such as computers forhandling and storing data and producing man-uscripts and graphics, and other instrumentsused in fieldwork such as pit tags, radio trans-mitters, and GPS units. Even though these ad-vances have increased the sophistication ofgathering and handling of data, Chuck pointedout that knowing the animals one is studyingand making detailed observations are still themost critical parts of the research process.

Chuck developed close relationships with hisgraduate students over the years; all affection-ately call him ‘‘Doc.’’ They note what an inspi-ration he was to them. His knowledge of naturalhistory is legendary, and one of his major les-sons to his students was to learn as much as pos-sible about the biology of the organisms theyworked on, not just by reading about them, butby going in the field and observing them. Healways had ideas for student projects and in-stilled his curiosity solidly in those who workedwith him.

From 1956 to 1982, Chuck led 11 field ex-peditions to the southwest United States andMexico, always accompanied by numerous un-dergraduate and graduate students. These ex-peditions were called ‘‘safaris,’’ and each onewas given a special name (Fig. 3). One of Doc’sstudents, Jim Gillingham, noted that these ex-peditions were by no means boring, sleepy treksdown miles of highway. Instead, Doc constantlyquizzed his students about plants and animalsthey expected to see in the field, and he appar-ently did not stop there. Jim noted that Docdidn’t hesitate to correct everyone’s English

708 COPEIA, 2004, NO. 3

Fig. 3. Charles C. Carpenter noosing a lizard dur-ing the Spiny Desert Safari in Coahuila, Mexico, on28 March 1969.

Fig. 4. Charles and Mary Carpenter at ASIH meet-ings in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1990. Photo byM. M. Stewart.

grammar, especially his pet peeve, the danglingpreposition! Another of Doc’s students, Ste-phen Secor, recalled how he was driving downa back road on one of these expeditions whenDoc, sitting on the passenger’s side, began yell-ing ‘‘Oh, no; oh, no!’’ Stephen was expecting amajor collision, but, too late to stop, he realizedhe’d run over a 6-foot bullsnake stretchedacross the road. Doc yelled at Stephen, ‘‘Youkilled it! You killed it!’’ Chuck’s son, Geoff,jumped out of the van and ran back to thesnake and found that it had escaped injury.That helped to cool tempers, but Doc contin-ued to chide Stephen about his observationalskills, while Stephen mumbled about Doc’scommunication skills.

Both Jim and Stephen reminisced about thehours they and Doc’s other graduate studentsspent chatting with Doc in his laboratory. Docwould sit back over a cup of fresh-brewed teasmoking his corncob pipe and recount his ex-periences about past expeditions, his Galapagosfieldwork, his first encounter with a new reptile,or his youthful days in Marquette, Michigan.Chuck and Mary considered the graduate stu-dents as part of their family; the students werealways invited to join the Carpenters for Thanks-giving and other holidays (Fig. 4).

Over the years, Chuck has received manyawards for his work. He was recognized as Sci-entist of the Year in 1991 by the OklahomaAcademy of Science. He was the first recipientof the W. Frank Blair Eminent Naturalist award

given by the Southwestern Association of Natu-ralists, and he received the Distinguished Alum-ni Award from Northern Michigan University in1972. In 1980, he received the Regents’ Awardfor Superior Accomplishment in Research andCreative Activity from the University ofOklahoma.

By 2000, Chuck had published 142 papers,and several others are in preparation. His workis frequently cited by many current researchers.Chuck has left his mark on the field of biologyin many ways, including his family of successfulbiologists, his graduate students, and hisground-breaking work in the field of behavior.He definitely accomplished the main goal he setfor himself, to be a naturalist, but he also ac-complished so much more.

Postscript.—Chuck was interviewed by Janalee P.Caldwell and Laurie J. Vitt in June 2002 in theCharles C. Carpenter Library of the Division ofHerpetology at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Mu-seum of Natural History. For providing stories,fond memories, and other information, the au-thors would like to thank Caryn C. Vaughn,James Gillingham, Stephen Secor, and NeilFord.

SAM NOBLE OKLAHOMA MUSEUM OF NATURAL

HISTORY AND DEPARTMENT OF ZOOLOGY, UNI-VERSITY OF OKLAHOMA, NORMAN, OKLAHOMA

73072–7029. E-mail: ( JLC) caldwell@ou.edu;and (LJV) vitt@ou.edu. Send reprint requeststo JLC.