This is a look at the mans entire life with great insights into the value of growing up in a small rural WI community with parents who were educated, involved, and ethical. The author does a good job of portraying the man who was nicknamed Happy as a youth and continued to earn that moniker throughout life even as he worked against the challenges that were destroying our environment and resources.
Earth Day was an expression of his love of the Earth and its natural beauty, but more important it was an outlet for millions of people who shared his love and concern. Describing the Earth day rally in the Chicago Tribune – side by side photos during and after the demonstration, the paper wrote with astonishment, “When the demonstrators left there was no post-rally litter remaining to be cleaned up.”
He recognized the conscience of the American mind, the fact that we had grown as a nation in natural beauty and natural abundance. His call for a day to raise the political will to protect the environment included every age. “The National Education Association estimated that ten million public school children took part in Earth Day Programs.”
The day had its detractors, just as we see Koch and others of the Tea Party ilk attacking parks and greenways - the true peoples places - Time magazine wrote that the day “had aspects of a secular, almost pagan holiday.” Unwittingly this would plague the environmental cause with a “pagan” stigma that would be latched onto by some critics. But it was not religion and religious leaders with a true sense of creation joined in the day and celebrations.
Gaylord Nelson delivered a speech on a four day tour that
included this statement: “This is not just an issue of survival. Mere survival is not enough. How we survive is the critical issue…Our goal
is not just an environment of clean air, and water, and scenic beauty – while
forgetting about the Appalachias and the ghettoes where citizens live in
America’s worst environment…Our goal is an environment of decency, quality, and
mutual respect for all other human creatures, and all other living creatures –
an environment in the deepest and broadest sense.”
His ideas were not new - John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, Emerson, Thoreau, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold and many others had been expressing similar sentiments, but Gaylord had put himself in the political position to do something about these concerns and to answer the question raised in 1873 by Wisconsin Chief Justice Edward G Ryan at a University
of Wisconsin commencement said, “Which shall rule – wealth of man; which shall
lead – money or intellect; who shall fill public stations – educated and
patriotic free men, of the feudal serfs of corporate capital?”
The author spends the majority of life in the political decades that defined Nelson, but he also gave us an intimate look at Gaylord and his buddies in Clear Lake: “Gaylord and Sherman were up in Clyde Jones’s apple tree one
night, stealing apples, when Jones came out and turned on the light “so you can
see better,” then went back inside while the embarrassed would-be thieves ran
off.”
We can also see the man who was eloquent in the Senate and the Governors office as a less polished speaker in his young adulthood. “…on a walk along Willow Drive on the U.W. campus. Gaylord shifted from one foot to the other,
finally pulled out a ring with a small diamond in an exquisite rosette setting,
and said, ‘Here, my mother wanted me to give this to you.’
“’He didn’t say I love you and want to marry you, nor did he drop to his knees,
but it was assumed that somewhere along the way that ring would join a band of
a different sort,’ Carrie Lee recalled.
She called it the classic Scandinavian approach: ‘If you think it, then
the other person is supposed to know and already imagine that you said
it.’ At a party for their fiftieth
wedding anniversary, Nelson joked about the Norwegian who told his cousin, ‘You
know, I love Amanda so much that sometimes it is all I can do to keep from
telling her.’”
It is difficult to summarize his life. Like Theodore Roosevelt, he was a politician for the environment and he knew how to get things done. But unlike Roosevelt, he was not captivated by the manly art of war and the Vietnam crisis was another time that tested his strength of character and his need to say what was right even it if was not popular.
Edmund Muskie was a leading environmental politician and friend and he shared friendships with other senators - Russell Long, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale. In fact, despite disagreements, he might have been the most popular Senator on the hill - at least with other Senators who enjoyed the conviviality of his home, the welcome of his wife Carrie Lee, and the stimulation of good debate out of the public eye.
If Earth Day is the thing that will forever be his signature, perhaps if is fitting to end this summary with this is the ad that was run in the New York Times in 1970
for the first Earth Day.
"A disease has infected our country. It has brought smog to Yosemite, dumped
garbage in the Hudson, sprayed DDT in our food, and left cities in decay. Its carrier is men.
"Earth Day is a commitment to make life better, not just
bigger and faster; to provide real rather than rhetorical solutions. It is a day to re-examine the ethic of
individual progress at mankind's expense.
It is a day to challenge the corporate and governmental leaders who
promise change, but who shortchange the necessary programs. It is a day for looking beyond tomorrow. April 22 seeks a future worth living. April 22 seeks a future."
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