In Millersburg, Ohio, Ambrose K. Welliver, 78, died of heart failure while watching a televised auction of antique globes.

Mr. Welliver taught geography at Millersburg Central High School for thirty-nine years and was remembered by former students for pronouncing "archipelago" as if it were both a warning and a blessing. He owned two atlases from before the Second World War, a wall map of South America that had faded to nearly pink, and 214 hand-drawn maps of places he had never visited.

His wife, Marlene, said he had left Ohio only once, in 1986, to attend a funeral in Kentucky, where he developed an immediate distrust of the hotel ice machine and refused to sleep under the bedspread.

Mr. Welliver believed every person had one country they belonged to but might never reach. He told his grandson Devin that his was Portugal, though he disliked fish, sun, wine, olives, tiled roofs, and most music involving guitars.

He is survived by Marlene, by three sons, by seven grandchildren, and by a shoebox marked ISLANDS, which his family has not yet opened.