Remembering Gaylord Nelson

[AlumniClub]

Remembering Gaylord Nelson


The former governor of Wisconsin, who also served in the U.S. Senate for 18 years, took on Joe McCarthy, championed civil rights, was an early and courageous opponent of the Vietnam War, an advocate of auto and tire safety, a fighter for Legal Services and for Head Start, and above all, an ardent environmentalist. He was the first Senator to propose a ban on DDT, and he helped shepherd through the landmark environmental laws of the 1970s.

Gaylord Nelson was the father of Earth Day. It was his idea. And when he left the Senate, he continued for the rest of his life to work on the issue of the environment at the Wilderness Society.

On Earth Day 2000, he wrote: “Forging and maintaining a sustainable society is The Challenge for this and all generations to come. At this point in history, no nation has managed to evolve into a sustainable society. We are all pursuing a self-destructive course of fueling our economies by drawing down our natural capital—that is to say, by degrading and depleting our resource base—and counting it on the income side of the ledger. . . . We have finally come to understand that the real wealth of a nation is its air, water, soil, forests, rivers, lakes, oceans, scenic beauty, wildlife habitats, and biodiversity. Take this resource away, and all that is left is a wasteland.”

And so, on July 13, former Wisconsin governors, and Wisconsin’s two Senators, and Senator Joe Biden, and members of the Wisconsin delegation to the House, and Wisconsin state senators and state assembly members, and justices of the Wisconsin supreme court, and other pols and friends, and more than 600 appreciative citizens filled the rotunda in Madison to pay proper respect to Gaylord Nelson.

In front of a bust of Fighting Bob La Follette and a large American flag, one speaker after another saluted him.

[keith]

As a kid in school I learned that Wisconsin had much to be proud of in political history. We had what was often described as the finest pair of US Senators in Gaylord Nelson and William Proxmire. We had the traditions of fighting Bob LaFollette, a "stand up (comic) and be counted" governor in a red vest, Lee Dreyfuss, and the awesome Zeidler brothers and Daniel Hoan who made capitalism work toward socialist ends for the people of Milwaukee. We had fine schools, even in the city of Milwaukee, extraordinary parks and the feeling that a kid from Milwaukee could grow up to be President...and one did, Golda Meir, who oversaw her mother's Milwaukee storefront for short times at the tender age of eight - signer of Israel's Declaration of Independence and the first Prime Minister of the new State.

A politician looks to the next election, a statesman looks to the next generation. Thanks for remembering Gaylord Nelson here, a real statesman.

Regards,
Keith

[Crys]

I was lucky enough to hear him speak while I was in college. It's my understanding that he spoke there more than a few times (I could be wrong), but I only saw him the once, during my freshman year.

Beloit College tends to have a fairly progressive student body and conservation was something that most of us just took as granted. Most of us just took things like recycling and reducing our footprint on the Earth as part of the way we lived. It is, I suppose, a given that someone like Nelson would speak there.

Still, it never fails to amaze me how many common sense things that we knew or did there are considered "questionable" away from the College and similar places (for instance... the fact that so many politicians still question the existence of global warming and our part in it just boggles my mind). We need more people like him to keep up the fight...