Emmett Morton (Lars) Laursen Obituary (1919 - 2013)

Emmett Morton (Lars) Laursen January 24, 1919-October 17, 2013 Emmett Morton (Lars) Laursen was born all Dane to Axel Laursen and Millie (nee Jorgensen), in Fairmount, North Dakota, on January 24, 1919, away from the American Scandinavian heartland of Wisconsin and Minnesota because his mother was following his father as he traveled with his combine to seek harvesting work where available. During his youth, Lars' school years were spent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he attended North High and played hockey on ice sheets poured by the fire department in neighborhood parks. His summers were spent in Luck, Wisconsin, where he worked on the Jorgensen family dairy farm and was mentored by his grandfather, Martin (who, it is said, would treat himself to a bottle of Leinenkugel only when the haying was finished). Lars worked his way through college, taking jobs as an optometrist's assistant and a surveyor, graduating with a degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1942. After graduating, he worked for a construction company, helping to build airfields in Greenland, among other things. He enlisted in the Army after World War II broke out and suffered a serious brain injury in training, from which he recovered fully except for the lifelong loss of feeling in his right hand, which never stopped him from swinging a hammer or handling a drafting pencil. After the war, Lars began working at the Institute of Hydraulic Research at the University of Iowa, which was led by one of the world's foremost hydraulic engineers, Hunter Rouse. The professors at the Institute encouraged Lars to seek a doctorate degree in hydraulic engineering because, as they told him, he was doing all of the research already. In the course of his Ph. D. studies, Lars was bothered by the prevailing theory of infinite scour, defended by Dr. Rouse, and persisted with experiments challenging the theory until he was able to prove to Dr. Rouse that scour was demonstrably not infinite but reached a level of equilibrium. Dr. Rouse grudgingly admitted defeat only by turning on his Germanic heels and walking away silently when confronted with Lars' evidence. Lars obtained his doctorate in 1958. While studying at Iowa, he met the love of his life, Ann, daughter of Edward and Theresa Collins of Des Moines, who was studying for a Masters degree in speech therapy at the University. They met on Halloween Eve, 1950, and were married the following year. They honeymooned in Havana, Cuba, and Bogot, Colombia. A year later, they had their first son, Thomas, who was followed by their daughter, Suzanne, eleven months later. Both, probably to Lars' dismay, took up careers as lawyers. Seven years later came their youngest, Patrick, who, thankfully, followed Lars into the engineering profession. With his own hands, Lars built a house for Ann, Ann's House, on the hilltop corner of a farm outside of Iowa City, overlooking beautiful Iowa woods and meadows, where the children picked flowers with Lars for Ann. He didn't ask Ann if she wanted to move from the city, but she found the house to be wonderful, especially as the family grew. Lars' first professorial job was at Michigan State, but in 1962 he leapt adventurously far away from the northlands of America, taking a position as head of the Civil Engineering Department of the University of Arizona in Tucson, then a small town in the verdant Sonoran desert, surrounded all around by mountains. At Arizona, he built a leading civil engineering department and mentored countless young engineers and doctoral candidates for over twenty years. Lars became prominent as a researcher in the highly complex fields of fluid mechanics and sediment transport, publishing extensively, receiving numerous national awards, and being selected as a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Society's most prestigious award. Although Lars' field involved the most refined and arcane equations, his favorite class was a writing class he designed to teach students, by writing about non-technical subjects, that good, clear writing is dependent on fully understanding what you are writing about, and that they had to understand things qualitatively before they could hope to understand them quantitatively. Lars was preceded in death by his brother Milton; and is survived by Ann; Thom of Park City, Utah, his wife, Michele, and his sons, Nick and Jack; Suzanne of Tucson, Arizona; and Pat of San Antonio, Texas, his wife, Shelly, and his daughters, Jenna and Stacey. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Humane Society of Southern Arizona.