Dr. Oakleigh Thorne II writes: “At 93, I still go to work each day at Thorne Nature Experience (Thorne Ecological Institute), a nonprofit that I founded in 1954. We connect kids and youth to nature through classes and field trips. As a master bird bander, I teach a bird-banding class in the month of June each year to 12–15-year-olds. We band lots of red-winged blackbirds and hundreds of cliff swallows. Two of my former students are now in grad school at Yale, one in ornithology and one in environmental engineering!”

Richard Chase writes: “I’m still enjoying retirement in the North Carolina Piedmont after a challenging 40-year career with the U.S. Forest Service followed by 10 years in private consulting. Time with the USFS was equally divided among varied assignments on three national forests, the National Office Fire & Aviation staff, and in fire research developing methodology to incorporate benefit/cost considerations into fire protection program planning and budgeting locally and nationally. An early surprise in my career came in my second year, when I was asked if I might know how to carry out a timber reinventory and recalculate the annual allowable cut for the ranger district (a major fire four years earlier making a reduction from the current cut necessary). The expertise on how to go about doing that apparently not being available among more experienced foresters, the forest supervisor wondered if my master’s degree from Yale might have included that very technical subject, which, of course, it did in Professor Meyer’s ‘Forest Management’ class. The somewhat humorous side of this is that as we spent time in class wading through the detailed technical steps involved, the question of why — when the probability that any of us would ever get to actually do it was about zero — was broached more than once! My response to the forest supervisor was a quick, confident ‘sure,’ and I got to spend the next several months getting to know the whole ranger district intimately on foot as I took many dozens of sample plots for the calculations involved in the sustained-yield formula.”

Richard Bury writes: “Never thought I’d last this long! Still in good health, living in the beautiful southern Appalachians in Asheville, North Carolina. Active in environmental management of our retirement community of 700 persons within a forested hilly property of 50 acres. Rereading (for the third time) the five-volume series, ‘Early Days in the Forest Service,’ published by the Northern Region, USFS, Missoula, Montana, and Northern Rocky Mountains Retiree Association, Missoula. Absolutely wonderful stories written by the guys working 1900–1950. Living conditions, life of their wives, boundary establishment, inventory, firefighting, horse- and mule-packing, rafting through wild waters, fire lookouts, grazing administration, etc. They were a truly tough bunch!”

Larry Sunderland writes: “For the past two years my wife and I have been living in someone’s idea of an arboretum, now a retirement community. Our cottage is feet away from a steep strip of Douglas fir forest separating us from the Willamette River flood plain. It was assumed I could name and label 30+ tree species. I knew three, the rest unfamiliar mostly from Asia, Europe, and Australia. My career: five years in Northern California (redwood lumber, cruising); 25 years in Washington, D.C., and Geneva, Switzerland (foreign trade tariffs, policy and disputes, a good part about forest products); the rest in New Hampshire managing my own forestland, teaching foreign marketing at Keene State, and volunteering with environmental organizations (forests, birds, lakes).”

SAVE-THE-DATE

Yale School of the Environment Reunion 2023

October 6-8

Patrick Duffy writes: “Chaired the Canadian Task Force to write the National Environmental Impact Assessment Policy and Procedure (1972) and co-authored the FAO EIA Guidelines for the Field Projects (2012), thus received the 2013 Outstanding Service Award from the International Association for Impact Assessment. I have also enjoyed mentoring forestry students at the University of British Columbia and IAIA entry workers for 20 years. Half of the 1,000 UBC students are women! Over my career I was fortunate to work in over 40 countries, half with U.N. agencies. Recently I made a five-year grant to UBC to aid co-op students with travel and per diem costs to remove a barrier to international travel. And I give to The Forest School, with happy memories being on the executive board of the student body in the mid-1950s.” 

Scott Wallinger writes: “I just finished, with Jamie Lewis of the Forest History Society, a presentation on the history of the Appalachian Society of American Foresters for its centennial meeting; for me, a look back after 65 years as an SAF member. This year I’m past chair of the Lowcountry Land Trust, winding up seven years on its board. We’re celebrating 35 years of work with 150,000 acres protected in the South Carolina Lowcountry. At the Bishop Garden retirement community where I live, I chair its arboretum group. Our arboretum was just recertified by ArbNet, an international body based at the Morton Arboretum in Illinois.”

Scott Wallinger writes: “I just finished, with Jamie Lewis of the Forest History Society, a presentation on the history of the Appalachian Society of American Foresters for its centennial meeting; for me, a look back after 65 years as an SAF member. This year I’m past chair of the Lowcountry Land Trust, winding up seven years on its board. We’re celebrating 35 years of work with 150,000 acres protected in the South Carolina Lowcountry. At the Bishop Garden retirement community where I live, I chair its arboretum group. Our arboretum was just recertified by ArbNet, an international body based at the Morton Arboretum in Illinois.”

Bob Latham writes: “Still vertical but too tottering to do useful work. My wife and I have sold our ranch/tree farm in eastern Oregon and moved back to Corvallis. The CRC Press published my book, ‘Forensic Forestry,’ a few months ago. I’m not planning on royalties to sustain retirement, but it seemed like a useful endeavor. TGIF.”

Albert Stoll writes: “Thank you, Yale School of Forestry (1963 name!), for giving me 59 years of memories, huge environmental knowledge, and the social desire — the guts — to speak out on behalf of the earth’s precious environment. My memories arose out of Dr. Albert C. Worrell advocating for my desire to study the social impact humans have on the environment. Dr. Worrell, an open-minded forest policy and economics professor at the time, arranged for me to take classes from Yale’s Industrial Psychology Department — outside the regular curriculum — from a professor named Chris Argyris. This changed my life! I learned simple things like ego, social structures, culture, self-esteem at the naïve age of 23. Since then, I’ve done social research on human-caused forest fires for the PSW Forest and Range Experiment Station, taught forestry at a small California junior college, and, recently, successfully advocated to protect an abandoned golf course from losing its open-space value! I lost my own home October 9, 2017, to the same wildfire the golf course’s fire break diverted from thousands of other adjacent homes (not exaggerating) in the Wikiup-Larkfield, California, area. Dr. Argyris was absolutely the inspiration of my life, thanks to Dr. Worrell and the Yale School of the Environment’s open-minded, flexible student attitude. Sadly, my father passed when I was attending Yale; otherwise I would have never left the exciting Yale experience.”

Adolfo (Jun) Valenzuela Revilla Jr. writes: “I will be 83 in a few months, but my problem for six years now has been my weak heart due to ‘heart failure condition with only 21% ejection fraction.’ My only remaining asset is my natural still-undyed hair. Anyway, I have put the solution to widespread poverty, the sustainable development system with the three integral components, in adequate detail so that our younger, healthier colleagues in all fields and disciplines can master the theory, concepts, and processes involved for its successful implementation. I am hoping that we can get the next president to implement the SD system. If so, I hope to witness the initial processes including the pilot projects — I believe that once the SD system implementation reaches its third or fourth year, then we will be on our way to success!? And my dream, since 1987, of liberating our poor families from the shackles of widespread poverty will start to become a reality!? Anyway, regardless of what happens, this will be my legacy to the Filipino people and humankind!”

John Blouch writes: “Reconnected with Jun Revilla ’64, ’78 PhD, cabin mate at Crossett in spring of ’64. COVID-related wood pricing brought a 50% increase on offer for timber on the wood lot, but shifting management focus toward aesthetic value for development as houses appear on adjacent plots. No COVID or even common cold as a result of social distancing, masks, inoculation, and handwashing. Understand why the elderly, seen in ports of Southeast Asia during Vietnam, wore masks. As previously, mill closed just as pandemic hit. If it had to be, timing was fortunate. Heavy air schedule would have become a nightmare of delays and cancelations. Health great but 30-pound bag of bird seed more of a challenge than 100-pound bag of portland cement in Yale days’ summer job. ‘Sic transit gloria mundi.’”

Ron Wilson writes: “I am enjoying life as a semiretired forester working part time for a medium-sized plantation company with head office only one suburb away from where I live in Sydney. I ride an e-bike to work. The major fires of 2019–2020 had major impact on our company as around 30% of our softwood plantations were burnt. Fortunately, most were insured but a lot of extra work in sorting out replanting/rehabilitation of the burnt areas and investors. COVID has been a real challenge here. I am currently involved in policy with colleagues to attempt to get more plantations established in Australia, for many good reasons. Other than work, I am busy with family (five grandchildren), cycling, swimming, golf, and playing the sax in a jazz band.”