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Born in St. Louis on 3/14/39, I'll be 60 in a few days. I graduated from the University of Tulsa (where I met my wife, Margaret) in '61. We both majored in Journalism. While at TU I worked and lived at a boy's prepschool where I coached football, basketball and baseball.
My older brother, Andy, was a coach and teacher at the same school. After graduation, I returned to St. Louis and got in the real estate business. I was Executive Director of the Building Owners and Managers Assn. before joining a public relations consulting firm for one year. In 1966 I joined the PR staff of Falstaff Brewing Corp. where I started a national river clean-up initiative called Operation Clean America and helped create the "Pitch In" anti-litter program.
A life-long outdoorsman, I moved to the Washington, DC area in 1973 to become editor of OUTDOOR AMERICA, the magazine of the Izaak Walton League of America, one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious natural resource conservation groups. A year later I was named Executive Director of the League, a post I held for the next 18 years. During my stint as CEO of the League, I was asked to the White House numerous times to advise Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush. These were the halcyon days for the environmental movement, a period of accomplishment, which may never be surpassed in the future. I'll not go into detail about the many victories of that era. They involve clean air and water, protection of wilderness areas in the lower 48 and Alaska and establishment of many wildlife refuges, wild and scenic rivers passage of new laws to prevent pollution. I was very fortunate to be able to play a significant role in these achievments.
I suffered a major heart attack in '91 and, following quintuple by-pass surgery, was forced to step down from my post in '92. For the past seven years I have served as a consultant to the League and as a member of the boards of directors of several national and local conservation groups.
Margaret is also in the environmental field. She is with the National Marine Fisheries Service, where she is a senior specialist in the Endangered Species Division.
We have two sons, John, 33, and Steve, 30. John is a social worker in San Francisco. Steve manages a book store in DC.