Jesse R. Pitts
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Jesse Richard Pitts (1921 - 2003), author and educator, was born in East Palestine, Ohio on June 13, 1921. The son of a veterinarian from Marietta, Ohio and a French warbride, he was raised in Ohio to the age of six and in France to the age of 17. He returned to the United States in 1938 to attend Harvard University and graduated magna cum laude in June 1941.
He enlisted in the US Army Air Corps in World War II. He was co-pilot of a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber stationed in England. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross as well as the French Croix de Guerre.
After the war, he conducted business in North Africa for three years.
He married Monique Bonnier, the daughter of French Resistance hero Claude Bonnier, with whom he had four children.
He returned to Harvard in 1948 to pursue graduate studies and received a Ph.D. in sociology in 1958.
Pitts was Assistant Professor of Sociology at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan from 1959 to 1962 and Associate Professor to 1964; he taught as a full professor at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan from 1964 to 1986; he taught as Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia from 1986 to 1991.
Pitts also taught sociology at Michigan State University in Lansing, Michigan and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also lectured in Paris.
Pitts did pioneering sociological work on marginality, deviance and conformity.
Pitts created the Franco-American periodical The Tocqueville Review, serving as editor from 1978 to 1991.
Pitts devoted the last years of his life to writing his memoir of the war, "Return to Base", which he dedicated to the crew of his B-17G, the "Penny Ante". The book was published posthumously in the US and Great Britain, and in a French translation in France, "Retour sur Kimbolton".
Pitts died in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 2, 2003. He was buried, with military honors, in Charlottesville.
Pitts was named after the popular heavyweight boxing champion, Jess Willard. He was called "Dick" and "Dickey" by close friends.
Of Ulster-Scot Presbyterian ancestry on his father's side, Pitts joined the Unitarian Church. While almost all of his friends and colleagues were liberals and solid Democrats, he voted for the Republican candidate is almost every presidential election.
Pitts had at least one ancestor who fought in the American Revolutionary War.
[edit] Quotes
"Some occupational roles...create marginality in their incumbents by being on the fringes of professional status, yet unable to claim commonality with the traditional professions." [Pitts, 1961, p.710]
"Another level of marginality is exemplified by the adult immigrant...another source...is intermarriage between different nationality or ethnic groups and/or social classes...such a marriage reflects a certain alienation, on the part of each spouse, from his or her original milieu." [Pitts, 1961, p.710]
"Error and illness are two forms of deviance that apparently derive from failures to reach efficiency and/or effectiveness...illness is also a lack of control...over the body and the mind that renders the individual incapable of realizing his value commitments...Even 'completely physical' illness can be an escape from onerous duty." [Pitts 1961, p.702]
"Illness...is the essence of powerlessness...an expression of nature's power over man...in a society [like the USA] stressing the spirit's mastery over matter, illness is considered...a failure of the will...the ill person is more alienated from his society...[and must take] vigorous steps to get well." [Pitts, 1961, p.705]
[edit] Publications
- 1961: Theories of Society: Foundations of Modern Sociological Theory, Two Volumes in One, with Talcott Parsons (Editor), Edward Shils & Kaspar D. Naegele, New York: The Free Press
- 1963: In Search of France co-authored with Stanley Hoffmann; Cambridge, Harvard University Press
- 1964: Social Approaches to Mental Patient Care, with Morrie Schwartz S. and Charlotte Green Schwartz; co-authors: Mark G. Field, Elliot G. Mishler, Simon Olshansky, Jesse R. Pitts, Rhona Rapoport and Warren T. Vaughan, Jr.: New York and London, Columbia University Press
- 1972: Strike at Oakland University, Change (Feb. 1972), p.18.
- 1980: Talcott Parsons: the sociologist as the last Puritan, American Sociologist, 00, p.64. (This article only cites and quotes Pitts.)
- 1986: Celebrating Tocqueville's Democracy in America, 1835-1985, with Olivier Zunz [eds.]; Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia
- 2004: Return to Base: Memoirs of a B-17 Co-pilot, Kimbolton, England, 1943-1944 xix, 280 p., 17pp. of plates: ill., maps, Charlottesville, VA: Howell Press, 2004.
