Becoming Responsible Citizens

Dr. Thomas lovejoy, Class of 1959

Becoming Responsible Citizens

Much like any 13 year-old, when I visited Millbrook I hadn’t the slightest clue what I might like to become. I was, however, totally taken by the zoo and announced that Millbrook was where I wanted to go. Luckily, I was admitted. I certainly had no idea of either becoming a scientist or of being involved in environmental stewardship. In fact, when I learned biology was required and had to be taken the first or second year, I actually said I would take it the first year and get it over with.

Within weeks Frank Trevor had worked his spell. His course was essentially a biodiversity course, although the phrase did not exist back then. We started with blue green algae in the fall and worked through the Plant and Animal Kingdoms to mammals in the spring, with all other parts of biology hung on along the way. So just shy of my 15th birthday I understood the outline of life on Earth, and basically I have never been able to get enough ever since. Seeing a species new to me is always a thrill.

At the zoo we all learned the ultimate lesson in responsibility: namely that the animal(s) we cared for were completely dependent on our doing our job. That is an important key benefit (but hardly the only one) of the new requirement that every student spend time at the zoo.

With Frank Trevor and the zoo squad in 1956. Tom is front row, 5th from the right.

The latter 1950s were a time when endangered species were few. We knew, of course, what had happened to the American bison herds and to the Passenger Pigeon. Frank Trevor’s biology course featured birds of prey during the week we studied birds, and we had to learn their food habits as well as how to identify them, but also understood how they were subject to irrational persecution. Far from stodgy book learning, Frank’s teaching also got us outdoors frequently interacting with nature. We learned the value of conservation and the value of environmental stewardship in that more classic sense.

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was serialized in the New Yorker and published in 1962, an early indication that environment was more than just traditional conservation. By then I was on my way to becoming a scientist, and all my mentors reinforced the message. Dillon Ripley, the Director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, said any biologist with a conscience should spend some time on conservation. So before I even knew it, I was headed for the career I have since pursued.

That the zoo and environmental stewardship survived Frank Trevor’s departure seems pretty remarkable in one sense. But maybe there were just too many alumni like myself who couldn’t imagine Millbrook without them. So the question of their future at the school never arose. In all the long years I served on the board of trustees, there was never a whisper of such a suggestion. And when my classmate, Don Abbott, became headmaster, they just became bedrock.

With ring-tailed lemurs in the 1980s

Looking at all of that today, especially as someone who knows the environmental challenges facing the world in spades, it is indeed hard to imagine a proper education without environmental stewardship. During my time we all had to take a course in civics, and while there were few if any who reveled in the subject, it certainly has been valuable to us as engaged citizens.

The point is not to turn everyone into scientists or environmental practitioners of various sorts, but rather to enable us all to be responsible citizens because there is probably no walk of life that doesn’t have implications for the environment.

Just about my favorite example is the story of the New York City watershed, famous for the quality of its water to the point it would win in blind tastings against specialty waters like Evian. Some 30 years later the watershed had deteriorated to the point that the Environmental

Looking out over the clear-cut jungle in Brazil

Protection Agency was going to require the city to build an eight billion dollar water treatment plant. Eventually a different option was pursued that resulted in restoration of the watershed ecosystem: a permanent fix at 10% the cost.

That is a classic story of the value of ecosystem services, but the point here is that the advocate for the solution was Constantine Sidamon-Eristoff ’48, who pursued a career in the law and public office but had a sense of the environment going back to his Millbrook education. I had known the story of the watershed, but given Connie’s modesty, I only discovered he was responsible for fixing the watershed problem when I read his obituary.

When I tell that story (as most recently as last week) I say we both had the same biology teacher (Frank Trevor, of course), but that is a discredit both to Frank and Ed Pulling’s understanding of the importance of the zoo at Millbrook and to the tradition of environmental stewardship at the school, which both transcends those individuals and is stronger than ever today. And it fails to recognize the role that Jono Meigs, in particular (but others as well), played in institutionalizing the zoo and integrating it more fully into the classroom. “Across the pond” it may be, but it is integral to the enlightened citizenry a Millbrook education provides.