Member

Fred was born on April 11, 1921, in Woodburn, Oregon, where he attended elementary and high school. He moved on to Oregon State University and graduated with a BS degree in wildlife management in 1943. He worked as a weather observer for the Army Air Force during World War II. Following the war he returned to school and earned a PhD degree at Oregon State University in 1949. His thesis dealt with the habitat relationships of birds in the Willamette Valley. He married Mildred Martin at that time, and they raised two children, Angela Gayle and Jeanne Anne. Fred’s first professional employment came before he received his PhD degree in 1948 at the Office of River Basin Studies of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Sacramento, California. He stayed there until 1953, when he became the director for the California Junior Museum in Sacramento. Then in 1956, he established a real estate and financial management business in Sacramento with the help of his wife, who held a business management degree. Later he worked as a private consultant and completed a study of hunter educations programs in the U.S. on a grant from the Fish and Wildlife Service. Fred held an important position in The Wildlife Society as its first full-time executive director, working from 1963 to retirement in 1978. He was a major player in the effort to establish the Renewable Natural Resource Foundation, of which he became vice chairman and chairman of several of its committees. He also was actively involved with the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the Urban Wildlife Research Institute, the Natural Resources Council of America, Rachel Carson Trust for the Living Environment, National Conservation Committee of Boy Scouts of America, and the American Committee for International Conservation. Fred was elected to Phi Sigma, Sigma Xi, was a fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union, an honorary life member of the Multnomah Hunters and Anglers Club of Portland, Oregon, as well as a member of the American Fisheries Society, the Ecological Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Throughout his life he was very interested in birding and kept detailed records of bird sightings from everywhere he went. He had seen 1,530 species, which in 1980, placed him as 149th in the world for the number of birds personally identified. He conducted the White House Christmas Bird Count for many years. Fred was elected to membership in the Washington Biologists’ Field Club in 1965. On February 20, 1982, while driving in their car, he and his wife were caught in a mud slide on a road in Oregon and they both perished in that accident.