opponents change their minds, but because they die off. By the time the Geological Society of America finally recognized Bretz’s work with the Penrose Medal, the field’s highest honour, it was 1979 and Bretz was 96 years old. He joked to his son, "All my enemies are dead, so I have no one to gloat over." Caves and karst Bretz wrote an extremely influential paper on the morphology and origin of limestone caves in 1942, followed by detailed studies of the caves of Missouri in 1956, and Illinois with Stanley Harris, in 1961. Later life Bretz and his wife Fanny Belle Challis (1881-1972), whom he had met at Albion College, married in 1906, and had two children, Rudolf Challis Bretz and Rhoda Bretz Riley. The Bretz family settled in Homewood, Illinois where they bought property and constructed a Sears Catalog Home on it in 1921. Bretz nicknamed the property "Boulderstrewn" because of all the rocks and minerals he collected and was given that were placed around the property. He donated a portion of this collection to Albion College in the 1970s. Boulderstrewn was renowned for being an active place, where Bretz hosted many parties with students and faculty from the University of Chicago. His post-retirement body of work includes Geology of the Chicago Region (1955), The Caves of Missouri (1956), Washington's Channeled Scabland (1959), Caves of Illinois (1961), and Geomorphic History of the Ozarks (1965), in addition to his 1949 Incomplete Genealogy of the Family of John Bretz Of Fairfield Co, Ohio, with a Partial History of One Line of Descent in this Family. Awards and honours The National Speleological Society made Bretz an honorary member in 1954. Bretz received the Penrose Medal, the Geological Society of America's highest award, in 1979, at the age of 96. After this award, he told his son: "All my enemies are dead, so I have no one to gloat over." Each year at Albion College, the J Harlen Bretz Award is given to the most outstanding senior in the geology department. Bretz Drive in Homewood, Illinois was named in his honour. A plaque was dedicated to Bretz in 1994 outside the Visitor Center at Dry Falls State Park in Coulee City, Washington that reads "Dedicated to J Harlen Bretz who patiently taught us that catastrophic floods may sometimes play a role in nature's unfolding drama". Notes Bibliography Digitized for the web by Michael