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Carl Couch, 1925-1994

It has been said that great thinkers have one or two basic insights that escape others. Carl's was simple. We always have to study people doing things together--interacting symbolically. We don't study people. We study interaction.

And so here today we honor, together, through our interactions, Carl and his legacy. We will do this together and it is to Carl's credit, and to the efforts of Dee Dee, Becky, Sue, Steve, Mike, Topsy and all of Carl's family, that we are doing it so effortlessly, with so much love.

And so I know that Carl, to invoke Dylan Thomas's poem, didn't go gently into the good night. He never went gently anywhere. He's out there, Still ahead of us, smiling, calling us forward. Let's get on with it.

Thank you Carl.
Norman K. Denzin


Obituary
by
Stephen G Wieting

Carl J. Couch died September 15, 1994 following complications associated with a medical procedure. He had retired this summer and was planning to travel and complete several writing projects at the time of his death.

Professor Couch was born June 9, 1925 in Blencoe, Iowa. He received his degrees from the University of Iowa: BA in 1951, MA in 1954, PhD in 1955. He served in the U.S. Air Corps during WWII and returned to military duty during the Korean Conflict as a Captain in the U.S. Air Force. He taught at Montana State University in Bozeman (1955-1957), Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant (1957-1962), Michigan State University (1962-1965), and the University of Iowa (1965-1994). He was a founder and past president of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction and just recently president of the Midwest Sociological Society.

Professor Couch worked consistently within the symbolic interactionist tradition throughout his career. He combined a firmness in retaining SI's essential principles with a never-disguised impatience with efforts of hagiography of past successes and distant representatives within the tradition. His own body of work shows his persistent and express desire to expand the implications of symbolic interaction to sociology generally and to perplexing social issues. These novel expansions included work on the family, collective behavior, a productive alignment of George Herbert Mead and Georg Simmel, an inventive use of video recordings and laboratory settings to study interactionist principles, aligning Mead with Innes and McLuhan to study social change, and his recent studies of the place of information technologies within civilizations and nation-states. In addition to providing the research and theoretical articles and books that mark these substantive turns and provocative integrations, fortuitously, as well, he wrote two books describing his general theoretical orientation and methodological commitments (Researching Social Processes in the Laboratory, 1987; and Social Processes and Relationships: a Formal Approach, 1989) and produced a very useful instructional video on his laboratory work. 

Professor Couch's personal and professional style was to entice and incorporate those whom he taught and worked with into the sociological venture he eagerly pursued. Doggedly independent in his views, he worked prodigiously to involve others. Undergraduates designed and conducted research projects in his classes; he advised many, many graduate students and co-authored numerous papers with them; he sought funding for and organized symposia of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in Iowa City and facilitated these often intellectually-electric fora at other sites; and he organized dozens of special topic sessions at Midwest Sociological Society meetings and American Sociological Association meetings.

Carl treated sociological work with passion and utter seriousness. If interlocutors were not persuaded to his positions, they were duty-bound to rethink and clarify their own with commensurate intensity and probity. Carl taught often and well and was infinitely patient, in his way, with all students. He was hardly indifferent to whether someone comprehended what he taught. He may have been incredulous and eventually bemusedly growl if the positions taught were contested. But he was unrequitedly dismayed and discouraged if a student would not define some sociological position and commit heart and vigorous argument to its defense.

Professor Couch is survived by his wife, four children, one brother and one sister, three grandchildren, and two great grandchildren.

Stephen G. Wieting

Courtesy of American Sociological Association, Footnotes, November 1994.

 
Carl J. Couch

 
Eulogy
19 September 1994

(Donohue-Lensing Funeral Home, Iowa City, Iowa)
by Norman K. Denzin

I don't think Carl would want to be here. I think he'd rather be someplace else. But since we're all here, he'd say, "Now God Dammit don't get maudlin. Lets get on with what we're supposed to do. You know people need to do these things."

Dee Dee asked me to speak for 10-15 minutes, or only five, "whatever you want to say about Carl, whatever you remember."

Carl lived long enough to receive the honors he deserved: the George Herbert Mead Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction; the Presidency of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction; the Presidency of the Midwest Sociological Society.

He leaves a rich legacy: a loving family, a family any person would be proud to be a member of; a lifetime of love, compassion, adventures; a Society of Symbolic Interactionism that he founded, that his family will help honor and keep alive in his memory.

He leaves generations of outstanding students who have become leaders in the field he established.

He leaves a vision, a dream--a science for humanity-for human beings.

He leaves a set of principles: tough love, honesty, truth, courage, integrity.

Your harshest critic, he was always your friend.

Principles before personalities

No gossip. No petty talk. No criticism of a friend or student, or family member or colleague. You were maybe a "dumb shit" but he loved you anyway.

He leaves a way of living life:

  • Full out, always, "a fire in your belly is what he called it." Take chances, take risks.
  • share your love with others; -- No shame, or regrets about the past.
  • Move forward.
  • County music: Anne Murray, Gordon Lightfoot, Waylon and Willie.

He was a man of contradictions:

  • He could be a harsh critic, but hated journal editors who asked him to revise.
  • He could be loud and profane and yet gentle, tender, and caring to a friend in need.
  • He had a big ego and he had no ego. He was selfless, always giving and sharing.

He was the model colleague, critic and comrade, all in one. We'd fight and yell at each other, make-up, and have dinner together.

He and Dee Dee brought Kathy and I back to nature, to the outdoors, to fishing, taught us to love the mountains, rivers and valleys of Montana, to get outside ourselves and go back to a more basic self. He loved competition and liked to win.

He saw himself as an outsider to the establishment, yet created his own establishment--his own way of dealing with the world and converting it to his vision.

He cared about people's projects, took them seriously. He engaged people's ideas, helped them make them better.

*****

It has been said that great thinkers have one or two basic insights that escape others. Carl's was simple. We always have to study people doing things together--interacting symbolically. We don't study people. We study interaction.

And so here today we honor, together, through our interactions, Carl and his legacy. We will do this together and it is to Carl's credit, and to the efforts of Dee Dee, Becky, Sue, Steve, Mike, Topsy and all of Carl's family, that we are doing it so effortlessly, with so much love.

And so I know that Carl, to invoke Dylan Thomas's poem, didn't go gently into the good night. He never went gently anywhere. He's out there, Still ahead of us, smiling, calling us forward. Let's get on with it.

 

Thank you Carl.
Norman K. Denzin

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