Robert W. Mondy

Robert William Mondy (September 4, 1908 – August 18, 1997)^[1] was an historian of the frontier experience in the American West and South, who spent thirty-nine years, from 1935–1974, on the faculty of Louisiana Tech University^[2] in his native Ruston in Lincoln Parish in north Louisiana.

Background

Mondy was the older of two children born to Thomas Oliver Mondy (1885–1958), a Lincoln Parish farmer and dairyman, and the former Katie Ford Swift (1885–1966).^[3] He graduated from Ruston High School (ca. 1925) and obtained his undergraduate degree from Louisiana Tech in 1930. He taught for five and a half years in Jackson Parish and then at Ruston High School during the early 1930s prior to his appointment at Louisiana Tech, effective January 1, 1935.^[4]

In 1934, Mondy received his Master of Arts degree from the University of Texas in Austin, having completed the thesis, "A History of Lincoln Parish, Louisiana".^[5]

Historian

In 1950, Mondy received his Ph.D. from UT under Professor Walter Prescott Webb. Mondy's dissertation is Jesse Mercer: A Study in Frontier Religion.^[6] Jesse Mercer (1769–1841) was a Baptist minister originally from North Carolina who founded Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.

Related to his dissertation, Mondy also published "Jesse Mercer and the Baptist College Movement" in Georgia Historical Quarterly 40 (December 1956): 349-59.^[7]

In 1970, he wrote "Societal Evolution of the North Louisiana Frontier" in the North Louisiana Historical Journal, since renamed North Louisiana History. The article argues that behavior later perceived as peculiar, such as the Puritan practice of bundling, simply reflected an attempt to adjust to new experiences, one of the desires of individuals. In his instruction, Mondy often reminded students that new experience along with recognition, security, and response are the basic needs of mankind. He sought to apply the philosophies of the sociologists William Graham Sumner and Albert Galloway Keller in the teaching of history.^[8]

In the summer of 1972, Mondy wrote an essay, "The Still," in the publication North Louisiana Folklore.^[9]

In 1980, five years after his retirement from Louisiana Tech, Mondy completed Pioneers and Preachers: Stories on the Old Frontier, a study of the experiences of early clergymen throughout the eastern United States, including north Louisiana. In his book Mondy demonstrates how differences in climate, soil, and culture effected the activities of frontier people.^[10]

Death and family

The tall, lanky, bestackled Mondy died in Ruston in 1997 at the age of eighty-eight. He and his wife, the former LaRue Barham (October 1, 1910–January 21, 1999), daughter of John Barham,^[1] had a son, Robert Wayne Mondy (born 1940), and daughter-in-law, Judy Bandy Mondy (born 1947), of Lake Charles. Robert Wayne Mondy, a graduate of Ruston High School (1958) and Louisiana Tech University (1962 and 1968), is a retired professor of management at McNeese State University and the co-author of the textbook Human Resource Management, in its tenth edition.^[11][12] Judy Mondy is the McNeese assistant professor of teacher education and a co-author of her husband's textbook.^[13] LaRue Mondy was a sister of Mrs. Joel C. Tubberville, Sr., of Minden, Louisiana.

Mondy was also survived by a sister, Mildred M. Gullatt (born 1921) of Ruston and two granddaughters, Allison Lynn Wallace, then of Houston, Texas, and Marianne Elizabeth Mondy, then of Lake Charles.^[2] Mondy was a member of the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Lincoln Parish.^[14]

Services were held on August 19, 1997, at Kilpatrick Funeral Home Chapel in Ruston, with the Reverend Dale Oden, associate pastor of the Temple Baptist Church of Ruston, officiating. The Mondys are interred near his parents at the Wesley Chapel United Methodist Church Cemetery off Lincoln Parish Road 818.^[2]

References