Russell Planck

RUSSELL PLANCK:


RENAISSANCE MAN

Let me tell you about my better half, Dr. Russell E. Planck. Russ is the most compassionate, loving, kind, intelligent, witty, charming, ATTRACTIVE man I've ever met. Of course......I'm VERY biased, but I speak with great confidence that others who know him will support my comments 100%. He has had a terribly interesting life.

Russell Everett Planck was born in Paterson, New Jersey on July 11th, 1919 to the late Mr. and Mrs. Russell (born 9-10-1896/died 4-27-1954) and Lillie Johnson Planck (born 12-07-1897/died 12-11-1982). His parents married April 2nd, 1918. The family name is Dutch, originally known as Ver Planck. There is a village on the Hudson River known as Ver Planck's Landing (settled in the mid-17th century). His paternal grandmother, Christina West, came from a family which immigrated from Germany to the U.S. in the mid-19th century and founded the towns of Westwood and Demarest, New Jersey. His maternal grandparents were born in Birmingham (grandfather) and Bradford (grandmother), England and immigrated here in the late 19th century.

Russell began his schooling in Hornell, New York, where the family lived for several years. After returning to Paterson, around 1925, he attended several public elementary schools, graduating in January 1932. After one term at Eastside High School , he transferred to Clifton High School, from where he graduated in January 1936 as salutatorian, President of his class and editor of the school yearbook. During summers, while in high school, Russ had several jobs. He sold encyclopedias and served as a waiter in a resort hotel in Ocean Grove, NJ. After graduation, he was employed at the headquarters of the Chase National Bank in New York City.

At this time, Russell was very active in religious, social and civic activities in the Episcopal parish of St. Peter's in Clifton. He was also the youngest layreader in the Diocese of Newark and was preparing to study for the Episcopal priesthood. By the spring of 1937, he had received several scholarships from various colleges, but by this time his religious beliefs were leaning more toward Roman Catholicism. Toward that end, he approached the president of Seton Hall College, who after discussion with him, granted him a full scholarship for his studies there. Later, he was received into the Catholic church and was adopted by the Bishop of Paterson as a student for the priesthood.

In the autumn of 1937, Russ began commuting from Clifton to the Seton Hall campus in South Orange, New Jersey. Majoring in Classics, he consistently received the highest grades of any student. In the summer of 1939, he began his Philosophy study as a junior at the Immaculate Conception Seminary in Darlington, New Jersey where he spent the next two years completing his Bachelor of Arts degree. He received his degree from Seton Hall in June of 1941. At this time, he began his theological studies at the seminary, which was affiliated with Catholic University in Washington D.C.

In the spring of 1942, he was hospitalized with a sepsis, which interrupted his studies, requiring a lenghty recovery period. During this time, he came to reassess the basis of his vocation and some of the dogmas of the Catholic church. By the summer of that year, he had decided to leave the seminary and to abandon his deferred status as draft material. Failing in his efforts to be accepted by the Navy and Merchant Marine due to poor vision, he accepted a job as a research assistant in a manufacturing plant. Having served for a short time in this capacity, he was offered a job teaching freshman European History at Seton Hall, replacing someone who had been drafted. He accepted this position most happily and served enthusiastically.

Meanwhile, he was reclassified by the Army as Limited Service. At the beginning of December 1942, Russell was drafted. He was shipped to Fort Dix, New Jersey for processing after which he was assigned to a Coast Artillery Anti-Aircraft Regiment in Newport News, Virginia. There he went through basic training and in the spring of 1943 he was sent to the University of Mississippi in Oxford to the Army Administration School from which he graduated as a Technician 5th grade. Returning to his regiment in Virginia, he served in various administrative capacities and was within a few months promoted to Technical Sergeant in charge of Plans and Training. Subsequently, the regiment was disbanded and he was assigned to an AAA Battalion which moved to Camp Rucker, Alabama. Not long thereafter, he was promoted to Master Sergeant and became Sergeant Major of the battalion.

Late in 1944, the battalion was shipped overseas on the "Nieuw Amsterdam" via Greenock, Scotland to Andoversford, near Cheltenham, England where it remained until the early spring of 1945. At that time, he sailed from Weymouth to Le Havre, France to begin service on the continent. He traveled in an open truck in a semi-triumphal procession to Deidesheim, Germany, in the Pfalz, where they established themselves. They remained there until after V-E Day, after which, the battalion was scheduled to be deployed to the Far East. In accordance with an agreement with his commanding officer, he was transferred as an Information and Education Lecturer to a staging area in Calas, France near Marseilles. During the next six months, while at Calas, he lectured on contemporary issues to troops preparing for overseas shipment. Not long after his assignment to the I & E Office, he was sent for orientation sessions at the University of Paris and in December of 1945 he was sent to Glasgow, Scotland as an observer of Scottish secondary education. After this stint, he spent another Christmas with friends in England. In March of 1946, he returned to the United States on the "Sea Perch". Soon after his return, he was discharged from the Army.

In reorienting himself to civilian life, he applied to several universities for graduate study in European History, deciding to accept admission to Columbia University in New York City. Taking advantage of the G.I. Bill of Rights, he pursued studies in Modern Western Continental European History with a minor in Sociology-Public Opinion. His Masters essay on Public Opinion and political life in post- WWII France brought recogntion from the Social Science Research Council, which granted him a fellowship for a year's research work in France. In May of 1948, he sailed for France on the "S.S. Washington". In Paris, he established himself in a pension on the Left Bank and conducted his research at the French Institute of Public Opinion. He attended classes in the Sorbonne and interviewed many leading political officials and educators. While in Europe, he traveled extensively to Great Britain, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy; sometimes for professional purposes and sometimes for pleasure. Meanwhile, his fellowship was renewed for another year.

On returning to the United States in August of 1949, having received several offers of college teaching posts, he accepted appointment as Assistant Professor of History at Seton Hall and as lecturer in history at the Graduate School of Education at City College in New York. At Seton Hall, he taught an array of undergraduate and graduate history courses and was appointed administrator of the graduate section of the Department of Social Studies and served on the board of the Seton Review. In the early 1950's, his summer holidays were devoted to travel to Canada, the Caribbean islands, Mexico and Central America, South America and Europe. He received his doctorate in the spring of 1953 and his father died of a heart attack in 1954.

In 1956, he accepted employment as Education Adviser at the headquarters of the 3rd U.S. Air Force in London. He served in that capacity until he was promoted to be Director of Education and Libraries for the 3rd U.S. Air Force and the 7th Strategic Air Command. On resigning that post in the autumn of 1958 he was made an advisor of the Commanding General of the 3rd Air Force. During his service with the government in London he lived in Bayswater and then Chelsea and traveled extensively on business in the United Kingdom and in Germany. He enjoyed vacation trips to the European continent and to Madeira and the Canary Islands, as well as a sojourn in the United States.

In December of 1958, he received appointment as the assistant to the Director of USAFI (United States Armed Forces Institute) for special projects in Madison, Wisconsin. Having sailed on the "Liberte", he took up residence in Madison in January 1959 and served at USAFI and the University of Wisconsin Extension Division until the autumn of 1962. While at Madison, he was the coordinator of two international education conferences and he frequently represented USAFI at conferences in various parts of the United States.

Late in 1962, he was made Deputy Chief Historian of the Office of Aerospace Research with the U.S. Air Force in Washington D.C., where he remained until he accepted appointment early in 1963 as Educational Program Specialist for the Department of Education. Russ got to travel much of the U.S. at this time, working with the Civil Defense Education staff in many states. In the summer of that year he decided to take a year off as a personal sabbatical and traveled on the "S.S. France" to Great Britain where he headquartered. Chief among his travel destinations were Austria, Greece, Spain, Morocco, Egypt, Israel and Jordan. He came back to the U.S. in the spring of 1964 and entertained several offers for teaching posts, settling on the Chairmanship of the Department of History at Rockford College; Rockford, Illinois. In addition to his teaching and administrative duties at Rockford, he helped to organize and conduct a highly commended Festival of the Negro. Additionally, he served for several years as a reader for the Advanced Placement Tests in history conducted by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey. In the spring of 1967, he coordinated and led a study tour of Greece for students and faculty at Rockford. Other travel consisted of regular trips to New York, Florida and California and an extended tour of South American countries including: Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. His next position was on the history faculty at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where he served from September 1967 to his retirement in July 1982. During this period he traveled widely. By freighter, he traveled to the South Pacific islands, Australia and New Zealand in 1968. On returning to North America, he crossed Canada by train, stopping in Montreal to visit family. In the early 70's he attended international conferences in Leningrad and Moscow after visiting France, Hungary, Poland and Germany. Another summer he spent largely in Portugal after a stay in Great Britain. In 1974, he spent the summer in the Philippines. In 1975, he crossed the Pacific by ship to Japan (which he toured extensively), with visits to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Okinawa. Other regular trips were to New York, Florida and California.

On December 11th, 1982 his mother, Lillie Johnson Planck, passed into the spirit world. She had lived with Russ for some years before having to be admitted to a nursing home due to declining health. After her death, Russ traveled back and forth from Washington D.C. and L.A. visiting friends. He also toured Costa Rica (where he was thinking of moving to), Austria, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Alaska (for his 65th birthday-which he celebrated in Nome), the United Kingdom, the Costa del Sol of Spain, Morocco, and a cruise on a Russian ship to Spitsbergen, Svalbard!

In late 1986, after touring China, Russ saw an ad in the Personals section of a local Greensboro weekly that caught his eye. Impressed by the simple sincerity of the ad, without the usual embroidery most entail, Russ responded to it. He began a correspondence and telephone communication with that young man, Anthony "Tony" L. Dickerson that was to last into the new year, 1987.

On February 5th, 1987 Russ and Tony met for the first time. They have been together ever since. Soulmates. They each feel very blessed to have found an everlasting love.

Russ and Tony lived in San Diego during the summers and winters from May 1997 to April 1999. Sadly, Russ suffered an embolic stroke on May 23rd, 1999. The first three years Tony did not need help caring for Russ, but in May of 2002 part-time help was hired and later, as the years went by, more help was needed. From April to December of 2006 Hospice supervised Russ' care.

In the early hours of December 26th, 2006 Russ passed on to the spirit world. Though Tony is obviously happy Russ is not suffering anymore, he is sad to have to live life alone now without his soulmate.

E-Me

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