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FHS Breaks Ground for New Building
With great excitement in the air, the Forest History Society held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new 16,750 square-foot library, archives, and headquarters. Since moving to Durham in 1984, the FHS has been located in a converted office building. The Society purchased 8.6 acres from Duke University in 2015, and anticipates opening the doors to its new home by 2019. Held in conjunction with the fall Board of Directors meeting, nearly 70 guests gathered to mark this historic initiative.
According to FHS President Steven Anderson: "Although FHS is 71 years old, this is the first building to be designed specifically to house its unique and extensive collections. It will have state-of-the-art protection systems and is envisioned to be a point of pride for the forest and conservation community." The new facility will triple the size of the library, archives, and study space. New dedicated space for processing, digitizing, and restoration of historic materials will enhance the core functions of the Society. A soundproof oral history room will enable FHS staff to expand its collections of oral history interviews with leaders and workers in forestry, forest industry, and the environment. It will also add an important multi-purpose meeting space for workshops, forums, colloquia, distance learning, and collaborative opportunities at the local, national, and international level.
The
Building on History campaign aims to raise $6.8 million by December 2018. The Harley Langdale Jr. Foundation has issued The Langdale Capstone Challenge to encourage others to support construction of the new FHS facility. Every gift and pledge counts toward the final $500,000 that FHS must raise in order to earn Langdale's gift of $250,000. To date,
156 donors
,
including the FHS Board of Directors, former board members, long-time supporters, and a select group of companies donating construction materials, have made it possible to break ground and begin construction of the Society's new home. To learn more about the facility and the Building on History campaign, visit the campaign webpage.
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| FHS Board of Directors joined president Steve Anderson in making the dirt fly at the groundbreaking ceremony. |
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FHS
Welcomes New Board Members
FHS is proud to announce the newest members of our
Christopher Boyer
,
Professor of History and Latin American and Latino Studies, and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Chris teaches courses on social and environmental history of Modern Mexico and Latin American history. His book, Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico (Duke University Press, 2015) won the FHS Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award.
Shawn Fowler
,
Partner, Frazier & Detter, LLC, Atlanta, Georgia. Shawn is an audit member of Frazier & Deeter, LLC, who has more than 25 years of experience in public accounting. He is a nationally recognized expert in the
timber industry and has audited several large timber funds and REITs. Shawn has also earned the designation of certified fraud examiner from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.
Rhonda D. Hunter,
Senior Vice President - Timberlands, Weyerhaeuser Company, Seattle, Washington. Rhonda joined Weyerhaeuser Company in 1987 as an accountant. She has held a variety of leadership positions within the company, primarily in the southern U.S. prior to becoming Senior Vice President- Timberlands in January of 2014.
Ellen Stroud,
Associate Professor of History, Pennsylvania State University. Ellen is a U.S. environmental historian with a particular interest in the nature of cities. Her first book, Nature Next Door: Cities and Trees in the American Northeast (University of Washington Press, 2012) looks at the ways in which the twentieth-century growth of cities in the northeastern U.S. fostered the return of forests to the region.
Charles L. VanOver,
Vice President, Director of Real Estate Transactions, Forest Investment Associates, Atlanta, Georgia. Charlie started with FIA in 1994 and manages the acquisition and sale of timberland and has extensive experience in all aspects of timberland investments, forest management, timber procurement operations and real estate transactions.
Natural Resources Director, Louisiana-Pacific Corporation, Nashville, Tennessee. Manages all of LP's forestry activities in North America, which include the purchase of more than 11 million tons of wood annually for the company's 21 mills in the U.S. and Canada, and management of crown lands in British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Quebec.
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Marion Clawson Papers Examined
Daniel Schiffman, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics and Business Administration at Ariel University in Israel, spent an afternoon conducting research in the Marion Clawson Papers and talking with staff about his research topic, Israel's Economic Advisory Staff (EAS). Clawson (1905-1998) was a leading agricultural economist, government official, and senior fellow with the Resources for the Future. He spent two years in Israel, where he served as Senior Officer for Agriculture on the EAS. Clawson joined the EAS after directing the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Department of the Interior, from 1948 to 1953.
According to Daniel, "The EAS was established in Jerusalem at the initiative of the Israeli government; its mission was to formulate economic policies that would reduce Israel's dependence on foreign loans. During the 26 months of its existence (May 1953-July 1955), the EAS produced numerous policy memoranda in the fields of macroeconomics, international economics, public finance, industrial economics, project evaluation, agriculture, housing, and economic statistics. While in Israel, Clawson authored 47 memoranda on various aspects of agriculture, including water resources, land policy, commodity prices, and efficient utilization of labor and machinery. These memoranda are preserved in Box 8 of the Clawson Papers at the Forest History Society. They are an invaluable resource for understanding both the history of the EAS and the history of Israeli agriculture."
In September, Daniel's book
The Role of Economic Advisers in Israel's Economic Policy: Crises, Reform and Stabilization, co-authored with Warren Young and Yaron Zelekha, was published by Springer.
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Glass Lantern Slides Available for Viewing
The collection, donated by the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research at the University of Iowa's College of Engineering, includes 58 glass, hand-painted lantern slides showing pulp and papermaking in the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, and New Brunswick. These include images of logging, papermaking, products made from pulp, and mills. The mill images include exterior and interior views showing mill layout, machinery, and workers. Some slides are labeled with company names and several are labeled with "Natural Resource Intelligence Branch Department of the Interior." The collection also includes a copy of a lecture entitled "Lecture on The Manufacture of Pulp and Paper. Natural Resources Intelligence Service," which describes the papermaking industry in Canada through the 1920s.
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Log Haul to Slasher (FHS7311).
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The oral history interview with Harley Langdale Jr., president of The Langdale Company of Valdosta, Georgia, is now available on the
FHS YouTube Channel
for listening. Harley discussed the family's forest products company, the southern U.S. naval stores industry, wetlands, and southern pine during the twentieth century. The interview was conducted by Harold Steen in 1991 and recorded on multiple audio cassette tapes. The interview has been separated into 7 videos. You can read the interview transcript
here
.
Langdale (1914-2013) was a forester, business environmentalist, and former chairman of The Langdale Company who helped to grow the business into a fully integrated, diversified forest products company. FHS conducted interviews with other members of the Langdale family as well. You can see a listing of them on the "Guide to Oral History Interviews" page.
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From "Peeling Back the Bark"
Everyone knows Smokey Bear, Woodsy Owl, and maybe even Ranger Rick Raccoon. While there are many forest-related fictional characters that long ago fell by the wayside, new ones are appearing all the time. In this first installment of our new series "Meet a Conservation Character," we introduce you to
Rozzie the Rat
..
.
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It's Rozzie the Rat to the rescue!
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We have two Thanksgiving-related posts:
FHS historian Jamie Lewis recounts his
epic forest history road trip made a year ago, when he drove cross-country just for some turkey. This is an expanded account of the "History on the Road" column from the latest issue of
Forest History Today
.
"Grandpa, tell me about that time when turkeys were used to fight forest fires." "Why, sure! The governors of Oregon and Washington needed help preventing wildfires,
so they asked two turkeys to help..."
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The FHS Annual Fund for fiscal 2017-2018 kicked off last month with a personal appeal letter to each current supporter from FHS board member and Development Chair, Brooks Mendell. Mendell explained that with the Building on History capital campaign underway, FHS needs unrestricted support more than ever for its Annual Fund. Annual Fund support makes it possible for FHS to preserve, grow, and make widely available the most comprehensive collection of forest and conservation history in the world. This year's Annual Fund goal represents a 25% increase from last year that is necessary to build the foundation now for expanded programming and public outreach opportunities with the new FHS facility. In October, all FHS members should have received our
Annual Report
showing the significant strides made possible by Annual Fund support last fiscal year. To make your fiscal 2017-2018 Annual Fund gift or pledge,
click here
or phone Valerie Bass at (919) 682-9319.
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