Janice and David Robrock Scholarship Fund

Janice Carlson grew up in Hanna, Wyoming, daughter of a Polish coalminer transplanted from Michigan. Valedictorian of her High School class, she attended UW on a High School Honor Scholarship. From her place on the Dean’s List and President’s Honor Roll, she became a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, and Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honor Society. She earned a BA at UW in 1968 which led to a job working in the UW Archives. That’s where she met David Robrock, helping him with his research on Fort Fetterman for his BA History (1970) and MA (1975) thesis project (published in the Annals of Wyoming, Spring 1976).

At the height of the draft for Vietnam, David volunteered for the Army and became a Military Intelligence officer serving at the White Sands Missile Base, New Mexico. He and Janice were married there in 1972 and were inseparable ever since. They both went on to earn Library Science degrees, David at Denver University and Janice at the University of Arizona.

Janice spent most of her professional life as a librarian with the Department of the Air Force working in base libraries. David developed a specialty in Historical Collections in universities, which gave him the opportunity to access historical materials of personal interest. He was particularly fascinated by the diaries and journals of Gold Rush era travelers; he edited and annotated _Missouri ’49er: the Journal of William W. Hunter on the Southern Gold Trail _(Historical Society of New Mexico series) and wrote articles in publications such as True West. Janice supported David’s writing endeavors over 38 years of their life together. She helped him explore many of the sites along the trails that he researched.

In 1982, they bought a house in Tucson which served as home base, among job changes around the Southwest. Janice was disciplined about maintaining a strict family budget with a priority of maximizing savings invested in retirement accounts. Although their salaries might be considered modest, time and compound interest was on their side to make their funds grow significantly.

As they approached retirement, Janice and David decided they wanted to leave their estate to create a scholarship fund at their beloved UW in the College of Arts and Sciences. David felt it was important to not restrict the use of the funds so narrowly that they might not be useful, but requested a preference, if possible, to students of History or Political Science. He also suggested the selection of students who are “late bloomers,” like himself, who may have stumbled a little freshman year with a corresponding impact on their GPA.

Submitted by David’s brothers Richard Robrock and John Robrock