Pete Gosling

Lee Anthony Peter (Pete) Gosling passed away peacefully at his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on December 13, 2023, of lymphoma, surrounded by his immediate family. Pete was born on 14 November, 1927 in Cleveland, Ohio, to John Gwynne Gosling (1896-1962), a banker with Otis & Co., and Nell Marion Lee (1900-1963). In 1937 they moved to a farmstead in White Pigeon, Michigan with their sons, John Roderick Gwynne (1926-1992), later a medical graduate and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan; Pete; and David Christopher Lee (1933-2016), later a University of Michigan PhD and biology professor at Glen Oaks Community College.

Pete attended the Boulevard School in Shaker Heights, Ohio (1932-37), Sturgis, Michigan public schools (1937-45), the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Pass Christian, Mississippi (1945-46), and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he obtained BA (1952), MA (1953) and PhD (1958) degrees in geography, after sailing with the Merchant Marine in Latin America and Asia (1946-47). In 1956 he joined the University's geography department as an instructor, becoming assistant professor in 1959, associate professor in 1964, and full professor in 1970, and serving two terms as the department's chair (1966-69, 1972-75). He transferred to the department of anthropology in 1982 when the geography department was closed, retiring in 1994.

Pete conducted extensive field research in Southeast Asia on rural development, water transportation and population resettlement, chiefly in Malaya/Malaysia and Thailand, including a major United Nations-funded project on a proposed Pa Mong dam in Thailand/Laos in the 1970s. He also undertook research and consultancies for, among others, the U.S. Office of Naval Research and Agency for International Development, the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), and Fund for Population Activities, the Henry Luce Foundation, and the State of Michigan Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

Pete was a visitor at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur (1961-62), Khon Kaen University, Thailand (1973-75), and Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore (1980-81). At the University of Michigan he taught undergraduate courses on world, Asian and Pacific regional geography, and graduate courses on population resettlement, Southeast Asian peoples and cultures, and rural development, and chaired or co-chaired 18 PhD dissertation committees in geography. A strong believer in what was then called "outreach" to non-academic communities, he also taught courses for the U-M Extension Service, and hosted over 50 U-M television programs from 1959-1965.

Pete was a leader in university administration and professional development for international and Asian Studies. At U-M he served on numerous committees since 1958 to develop Asian Studies, as Coordinator of the Asian Studies Program (1960-61, 1969-71, 1971-74), director of the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies (1962-66, 1971-72, 1977-80), and director of the Southeast Asia Business Program in CSSEAS (1984-1993), the latter two funded by U.S. Department of Education grants. He received a Distinguished Faculty Service Award in 1965. He considered his greatest career achievement to be raising funds for graduate student support and field research, and for institution building in Asian Studies at U-M and nationally.

On the national level, Pete served on numerous committees and councils of the Association of American Geographers, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (Fulbright), the Asia Society and the Ford Foundation, among other organizations. His greatest involvement was with the Association for Asian Studies (the world's largest professional association of Asian Studies scholars, headquartered in Ann Arbor), sitting on numerous AAS Committees from 1959-1980, and serving as its Secretary-Treasurer (1963-66, 1973-74, 1978-79, 1985-94). Among the numerous professional conferences he organized were an International Geographical Union meeting of Southeast Asia geographers at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur in 1962, and the first U.S. meeting of the International Congress of Orientalists, at U-M in Ann Arbor in 1967.

In 1949 Pete married Elizabeth (Betty) Montgomery Blair (1928-2007) of Marietta, Georgia, with whom he had three children: Kelcie Montgomery (Daniel Lindsay and daughter Blair, of Davis, California), Peter Blair Brian (Harlyn, of Ann Arbor, a U-M MBA alumnus) and Elizabeth (Betsy) Leslie (of New Orleans). Betty separated amicably from Pete in 1975, completing in 1983 a PhD in Art History at U-M, and becoming an accomplished independent scholar of Thai Buddhist art.

In 1977 Pete met and married Linda Yuen-Ching Lim of Singapore, a U-M PhD in economics and later business professor at U-M, with whom he has a daughter, Mya Lixian (of Ann Arbor, a U-M MA alumnus in Southeast Asian Studies). Together they published research on population redistribution and Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, and ran the federally-funded Southeast Asia Business Program at the U-M Center for Southeast Asian Studies which organized research conferences and executive education seminars, published an academic journal, and ran a MBA/MA in Southeast Asian Studies dual degree program. In 2022, Pete and Linda established the Gosling-Lim Postdoctoral Fellowship in Southeast Asian Studies at the Association for Asian Studies.

A devoted husband and father, history buff, theater aficionado and traveler extraordinaire, Pete was an accomplished photographer, gardener, cook, painter, philatelist and homemaker par excellence, who for decades greatly enjoyed hosting local friends and international visitors for festivities such as Chinese New Year, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, at the Ann Arbor woodland house he designed, built, decorated and lived in since 1959. He is remembered by all for his kindness, gentleness, generosity, wit, humor, keen people interest, and tales of exciting adventures around the world.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Gosling and Lim Library Fund, which will support the Southeast Asian Studies Library Collection at the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library.

https://giving.umich.edu/um/w/gosling-and-lim-sea-library-fund-337379