Deceased November 28, 2006
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In Memory
Jack Wenders, one of our class’s most productive and remarkable academic figures, died in Moscow, Idaho on November 28, 2006 of complications from esophageal cancer. He was 71 and professor emeritus of economics at the University of Idaho.
Jack grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, where, even as a small boy, he showed the strong attraction to outdoor activities—hunting, hiking, trapping—that was a defining feature of his life. He attended the Hill School, and later at Amherst won his freshman numerals in baseball and joined Delta Kappa Epsilon. Jack’s Amherst career is a bit elusive. He was a private, independent person with a strong personality who made lasting impressions on a chosen few.
Dave Koff, who grew up in the same part of the country, remembers Jack’s vigor and exuberance as a freshman. Although they did not stay in touch after college, Dave misses him dearly to this day. Fraternity brother George Willis recalls a long winter weekend at the Wenders’ home. “We hunted… and quit hunting and went to a bar where it was safer.” George and Jack also lost touch over the years. What Jack took most from Amherst, perhaps, was the subject of economics. His sister Clare recalls him saying “I had no idea what economics was until I got to Amherst.” But when he graduated he had begun to figure out how that discipline could become integrated with his deepest-held values and give him a life-long vocation. His son, John III, now a senior at the University of Chicago, told me that when Jack discovered economics, “it explained human nature in a way that was profound enough to change his life. For him economics was the greatest advocate of freedom, and he dedicated himself to explaining that advocacy in a way he thought everyone could understand.”
The liberating personal freedom Jack originally found in the outdoors became as well the central libertarian value in his professional life. He married days after graduation, taught school briefly in Hawaii and received an MA in economics at the University of Hawaii, and then a Ph.D. from Northwestern. He taught economics at Middlebury from 1963-1970, at the University of Arizona from 1970-1981 (where he became a full professor in 1976), and at the University of Idaho from 1981 until his retirement in 1998. Jack’s first wife died during the Arizona years. His second marriage ended in divorce. Jack’s close friend and economist colleague at both Arizona and Idaho, R. Ashley Lyman, has written that Jack was “larger than life, an excellent teacher and an excellent economist.” If you google Jack’s name, you will indeed come upon more than a hundred published articles and books. He was, in Lyman’s words, an expert in the economics of telecommunications and regulated industries, and a highly respected witness in regulatory and antitrust hearings and litigation. He published seminal articles on industrial organization and regulatory economics, and was a frequent contributor on popular topics in economics, natural resources, and wildlife in local newspapers and The Wall Street Journal. In retirement, he focused on improving public education. Even a brief perusal of this vast body of work reveals a withering yet graceful humor, the total antithesis of political correctness, and opposition to almost all of what moderates of whatever political persuasion regard as sensible (e.g. a minimum wage). Ashley Lyman and Jack Wenders spent much time together not only as colleagues but as mutual lovers of hunting, trapping, and the outdoors. He concludes that “Jack was enormously introverted with a protective and rough exterior. If you treated him unethically and burnt his fingers, that was the end. On the other hand, his loyalty knew no limits.” One letter-to-the editor Jack wrote in the 1990s concerned a requirement that hunters wear glowing orange jackets to protect themselves from other hunters. He was outraged: “No thank you. One of the reasons I hunt is to get away from the trappings of civilization, and I will accept all the risks. I’ll do others the favor of presuming that they know what’s best for them. I will support their right to wear macho hunter orange. I only ask in return that they support my right to accept the risks of not doing so.” How poignant that more of us did not stay in touch with such a provocative and lively voice, and how much we will miss that voice at reunion. Contributions in Jack’s memory can be made to the Cato Institute.
Arthur G. Powell '58