James Davidson Fawcett

Fawcett, James Davidson

January 10, 1933 - January 25, 2020



James D. Fawcett was born in New Plymouth, New Zealand, the only child of James and Edna (Catterick) Fawcett. He attended primary schools in Napier, Palmerston North, and Auckland, and secondary schools in Wellington and Auckland. His initial college education was at the University of Auckland (B.Sc. and M.Sc.). He served in the Royal New Zealand Corps of Signals in 1953 and with the Reserves for a period of years. From the late 1940s to the early 1950s, Jim studied clarinet under George Hopkins and played clarinet with several ensembles and orchestras. Concurrently, he taught clarinet privately and in several secondary schools, and he also instructed biology at Kings College and the University of Auckland. His professional musical career was discontinued when he came to the United States to begin work on his Ph.D. in Zoology at the University of Illinois. There he met his future wife, Georgene Tyler, a librarian from Indianola, Iowa, and they were married in Urbana on December 21, 1968. When his professor, Hobart Smith, moved to the University of Colorado, Jim and Georgene followed him there, Jim to continue on his project, Georgene to work as a serials librarian at Colorado State University Libraries.



In 1972, Jim accepted a position as Instructor of Biology at University of Nebraska at Omaha. He interviewed at several places but liked the friendly atmosphere in the department at UNO. Upon completion of his degree in 1975, he was promoted to Assistant Professor, and, in 1981, to Associate Professor. He became Associate Professor Emeritus upon his retirement in 2015. During his career at UNO, Jim directed more than 48 Master's theses, innumerable undergraduate student projects, and served as a committee member for countless additional graduate students. His overall publication list totaled about 23 articles in journals and more than 25 abstracts. He was a co-founder of the Nebraska Herpetological Society in 1981, and he was honored by them with a lifetime membership at a special dinner in 2006. Throughout his career, Jim maintained an ongoing card catalog of literature citations of New Zealand Amphibians and Reptiles. He had a special interest in the tuatara (Sphenodon), a "living fossil" of New Zealand.



He taught courses in herpetology, vertebrate embryology, comparative vertebrate anatomy, histology, and human anatomy and physiology. Jim was an extraordinarily popular teacher, almost always obtaining the highest evaluation numbers in the department, even in the human physiology and anatomy course, whose students have been notoriously difficult to please. In 1981, he received the Excellence in Teaching Award from UNO and, in 1991, the High School-College Teacher award from the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Nursing. Jim always told the nursing students to study hard, work hard, and learn the information well, because he might need their help later, and that became very true in the past five years. Their care was much appreciated.



Jim is survived by his wife Georgene, of Omaha; by her relatives in Iowa, Texas, and North Carolina; by his cousins in New Zealand, Australia, and Scotland; and by numerous friends. Jim was respected and loved by many and will be greatly missed. Nobody who knew him will ever forget his charming New Zealand accent with its strong British overtones.



Private services for family only will held at his burial site in Hartford, Iowa, on Saturday, February 1.