The School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (F&ES) will present its Distinguished Alumni Award posthumously to Edward ("Ted") Childs, a member of the Yale College Class of 1928 and a 1932 graduate of F&ES, on Monday, May 25, during its post-Commencement degree ceremony on the lawn of Marsh Hall.
Childs, who died in 1996, devoted his life to the protection, use and understanding of forest ecosystems. As a member of the Connecticut Park and Forest Commission, he helped guide state land use policy and worked with private entities to promote sound management and conservation in the Northeast. His role in Connecticut conservation was recognized in 1992 by a special award from the state's governor.
Childs put his ecological principles to work in his Great Mountain Forest and camp, and shared the forest and its facilities with F&ES students, who learned basic forestry field work there.
His lifelong interests also extended to other parts of the world. He taught school in the Philippines, and during World War I, he served in Central America in an emergency effort to grow cinchona for quinine. Starting in 1931, he established one of the 20 benchmark meteorological observation stations in the United States, and the only privately maintained one.
|