Cartography Expert Knew Maps Were About More Than Travel

In his youth, he played pickup basketball for extra money and was so good with tools that he made his own furniture. He worked for Standard Oil for a couple of years to earn money to attend the University of Wisconsin.

"He wanted to be a scientist but couldn't afford the lab fees," his son said. "Geography was the only science without lab fees."

Geographers were seen as adventurers in those days, charting parts of the world that had yet to be mapped. Ristow journeyed to Brazil in the 1930s and received a master's degree from Oberlin College in Ohio and a doctorate from Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

Two years after joining the New York Public Library's map division in 1937, he went to Germany to explore his ancestral homeland of Pomerania. On the train, he encountered German soldiers mobilizing for the invasion of Poland that launched World War II.

Ristow retreated to London, then boarded one of the final passenger ships to cross the Atlantic in 1939. That year, in the map division's annual report, he wrote: "Emasculated and disheartened Czechoslovakia becomes part of the German Reich! The World is in turmoil and we must have maps!"

One day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Ristow was asked to furnish maps of Japan to U.S. authorities. For almost three years, while retaining his position at the New York library, he analyzed maps for the Office of Military Intelligence.

Not all of his work, though, was so weighty. Writing about a collection of treasure maps at the Library of Congress, he offered this whimsical disclaimer:

"The Library of Congress assumes no responsibility, of course, for the accuracy or inaccuracy of the maps, and offers no guarantee that all who consult them will find tangible riches."

A few years after his wife, Helen, died in 1987, Ristow moved to a retirement home, decorating his apartment with maps, atlases and globes.

Among his possessions, his sons found a bulging folder labeled "Hand drawn maps" -- a collection of hastily sketched maps that people draw when inviting someone to their homes.

Ristow saved them simply because they were maps. And every map, no matter how humble, helps you find your way in this world.