27,106 research outputs found
Galison Peter, Stump David J. (éd.), The disunity of science : boundaries, contexts and power.
No full textSchweber Libby. Galison Peter, Stump David J. (éd.), The disunity of science : boundaries, contexts and power.. In: Revue française de sociologie, 1998, 39-2. Carrières masculines, carrières féminines. France - Allemagne. pp. 448-450
Author Peter FitzSimons speaking at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, 13 November 2012 /
No full textTitle from acquisitions documentation.; Part of the collection: Portraits of author Peter FitzSimons speaking at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, 13 November 2012.; Acquired in digital format; access copy available online.; Mode of access: Online.; Photographed by a staff member of the National Library of Australia
A concert of works by guest composer SAMUEL ADLER and by PETER LIEUWEN ANTHONY BRANDT LIBBY LARSEN Wednesday, October 30, 2002 8:00 p.m. Lillian H. Duncan Recital Hall
No full textPresented by SyzygyPROGRAM: Sonata for Horn and Piano (1948) / Samuel Adler -- Nocturne (1993) / Peter Lieuwen -- Handful (2002) (Premiere) / Anthony Brandt -- Sonata for Viola and Piano (2001) / Libby Larsen -- Quintet for Piano and String Quartet (2000) / Samuel Adle
Bill Koch
No full textWilliam "Bill" Koch oral history as conducted by Libby Herland.
Mr. Koch grew up near the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge and remembers when the refuge was established and the designation of it. Mr Koch started as a temporary employee at Great Swamp before getting an offer for a permanent position. He would work at several refuges, before returning to Great Swamp, where he only planned on staying three to five years, but turned into thirty. Mr. Koch would also be the first recipient of the National Wildlife Refuge System Wilderness Legacy Award.
Organization: FWS
Name: William "Bill" Koch
Years: 1971-2017
Program: Refuges
Keywords: Biography, Employees (USFWS), History, work of the Service, wildlife refuges, management, Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, 50th Anniversary of Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Helen Fenske, John Gottschalk, Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, refuge manager, George Gavutis, National Wildlife Refuge System Wilderness Legacy Award, contaminants, Jack Fillio, wilderness, Rupert Cutler, Congressman Peter Frelinghuysen, Stewart Udall1
Interview with Bill Koch
September 3, 2014
Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge
Interviewer: Libby Herland
LIBBY: Hi, this is Libby Herland; I am the manager of the Eastern Massachusetts National Wildlife Refuge Complex and I’m also the representative for the Fish and Wildlife Service on the Heritage Committee from the Northeast Region of the Fish and Wildlife Service. It’s September 3, 2014, and I’m at Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge where I am speaking with Bill Koch, who recently retired as the manager of the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. We are here today because we just celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the National Wilderness Preservation System being enacted into law. And that event was held here with the Secretary of the Interior, Congressional Representatives, and many other people because Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge was the first designated wilderness area within the Department of the Interior. We just had a wonderful celebration and I’m doing three oral histories today, and this history with Bill Koch, is to learn a little bit about the management and the activities of the wilderness area within Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. We’re really focusing on the wilderness today and some of the activities that have occurred in there, the management or how people perceive it. Bill, I want to thank you for agreeing to be part of the oral history project about the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge Wilderness. You are the former, long-time manager of the refuge and I know that you were raised nearby, and I want to discuss that, but before we get started today, we had a little bit of history created when Bill received the very first National Wildlife Refuge System Wilderness Legacy Award. And I wanted to read this because this is pretty spectacular. Bill is the first recipient of this award, which “is presented to individuals for their tireless support of wilderness throughout their career. Through their actions and accomplishments, they preserved the wilderness character of the National Wildlife Refuge System wilderness areas. They have continued the legacy of wilderness heroes Aldo Leopold, Howard Zahniser, and Olaus Murie. Their dedication and commitment is hereby recognized upon retirement from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.” And this is a really wonderful plaque, wooden plaque with the blue goose symbol, the Fish and Wildlife Service logo and the Wilderness Preservation System logo. And there’s space on here for twelve names and Bill’s is the first name, “William Koch 2014.” This is going to be permanently stationed at the National Conservation Training Center for all the people who work for conservation throughout the country and who go there will see Bill’s name forever; pretty amazing award, and Bill’s the first. Congratulations on that.
BILL: Thank you, Libby. As I said a little earlier upon receiving this, with great surprise, it might have my name on it, but what I’ve been able to do here was truly, with a tremendous help from a lot of other passionate people and organizations, and my name is just, it does represent many, many people. It’s just a true honor; I was just totally blown away. I was almost speechless, which if you know me, that’s unusual. But I just still don’t know what to say other than it was, it’s been a privilege to 2
have a dream come true job with the Fish and Wildlife Service for 43 years and to be the manager at Great Swamp for 30 of those years. I’ve had a lot of help and, again, speechless.
LIBBY: Well, it’s a very well deserved honor. And for the record, we are going to do a separate oral history of Bill’s management for 30 years, and we wanted to spend a little bit of time just focusing on the wilderness here as part of our wilderness legacy little section here. So Bill, but still, nevertheless, we need to start with a little bit of information about yourself. I do understand that you grew up real close to the Great Swamp, right?
BILL: Yeah, about 20 minutes away; I grew up in the town of Whippany, same county that the refuge is in. And got real hooked on conservation in this area, didn’t really, growing up, pay much attention to the news and the establishment of the refuge. I’d groan when my parents would want to put the news on when I couldn’t put something that I wanted to see on the TV in those days. So while the saving battle was going on to save the Great Swamp from becoming an international airport, I really didn’t hear much about that.
LIBBY: You were a kid, weren’t you?
BILL: Yes, I was. However, I will never forget when I was a senior in high school, that on one of the career days the manager from the Great Swamp Refuge was there and he was the only table I went to; I was drawn to what he was about. So that was Tom McAndrews, and so I don’t remember much, we didn’t talk so much about the swamp, but that was my first awareness of it. Also when I was in high school, one of my biology classes came to the Great Swamp but we went to a county facility in the Great Swamp and there wasn’t much talk about the National Wildlife Refuge back in the ‘60’s then. And the timing of that was back when the; that was about ’66 when we did that, no, maybe it was in ’64. So it was about the time the Wilderness Act was being signed and all that was going on.
LIBBY: And the refuge was also established the same year as the Wilderness Act.
BILL: The refuge was designated in ’64, it was designated; they had a big celebration but there was acreage in hand prior to that because the original agreement was a donation of 3,000 acres. And the momentum was starting to slow down on gathering those acres, so there was about 26, 2700 acres but the folks felt that’s enough to get the Fish and Wildlife Service stamp on things and a presence; need to get a presence. And then they went out after migratory bird approval to get federal funding to start buying land.
LIBBY: To start buying land.
BILL: So there was a big celebration in 1964, Interior Secretary Udall was the keynote speaker. And he had really been watching this effort and said it was the first citizens’ effort, remarkable effort; those weren’t his exact words. And the reason I’m saying this is because I had the honor to participate in the fireside chat with Udall and John Gottschalk and other folks, Helen Fenske back in ’94. And Udall did come out for a celebration that the Watershed Association sponsored to rekindle the interest, preservation interest and the desire to protect the Great Swamp from outside threats. So that effort was amazingly successfully as far as stirring up a lot of interest. I had the honor to meet former Secretary Udall and have dinner with John 3
Gottschalk and his wife, and meet a number of other extremely awesome people that were part of that whole effort. It’s been a lot of, there’s just been a lot of help to do this, to take care of the swamp in the earlier days to save it and that effort continues to this day. And it will never end, conservation, you’re never done with it, it’s always something that you have to keep doing. But to keep back to the original question, because you did ask, I grew up around here, I did hear about the Great Swamp way back when, but I didn’t really pay much attention to what was going on; I was a kid. But early in my career, coming out of college, I did start to work at Brigantine for the summer; when the money for that temporary ran out, appointment, I stayed on for another month or so volunteering. But during that summer of ’71, the staff at Brigantine and Great Swamp had a staff picnic and it was here at a house just down the road from this visitor’s center where the manager lived and that was George Gavutis. And I was a temporary but invited up to that staff picnic. Well, we had Hurricane Doria that year and the swamp was flooded, so I came up, you couldn’t drive to the house; the roads were under water. We didn’t have cell phones in those days and so I found a pay phone and I called the Gavutis residence and they told me how to get into the swamp. And I was greeted just down the road from the Visitor’s Center by the water, but a big sign, “Blow horn for Great Swamp Ferry,” so I did. And the tractor comes through towing a boat, a flat bottom boat, and we got across through the water that way. I was also with a couple of the other guys that were working with me at Brigantine, so there were three of us that had come up for that. So I got to meet the Great Swamp staff that way, and then I went back to Brigantine. And that appointment, when I took it initially I was told there’s a good chance that it might become permanent position, which it didn’t. So I helped the deputy pack, he was moving to Kenai, and I was volunteering there and living, staying in at a cot, they set up their basement for me; I became a live-in babysitter for them, but it was free rent and no rent and right on the refuge and an opportunity to continue volunteering. But when he was moving, then I had to move. So he said, “Well, why don’t you go up to Great Swamp and see what they’ve got going?” So I did, I came up here and there wasn’t any jobs, paying jobs, so I was volunteering here for a month or two. And then the college loans start coming due and then I asked the manager, George Gavutis, if he could pay me for one day a week, anything would help but “I’ll be here all week but if you can afford anything and you can swing it, it would help with the loans,” because I was living, again, at home with my parents. So we were out and he was able to put me on a temporary appointment as the deer biologist because the guy who was doing it went on for his master’s degree. We were studying deer because the refuge tried to have a deer hunt, and we were in court.
LIBBY: Oh yeah, opposition.
BILL: So, Libby, I just realized we were talking more about my career and not the wilderness and let’s get it back on track.
LIBBY: So you started here as a temporary and then you went to some other refuges?
BILL: No, I was a temporary about a year, we were out for about a year, maybe a little less than that, we were out tagging deer and Gavutis drove up, called me over, there were several of us; we had drugged a deer and were tagging it and getting ready to release it. He called me over said, “Your paperwork came in today for permanent appointment to refuge manager, entrance level.” And I was 4
totally, wow, that’s way more than I thought could ever happen. He said, “You have a choice, there’s two positions; one right here at Great Swamp and one at Brigantine.” I said, “Oooh, I want to stay here.” I was at Brigantine and I would have gone there in a heartbeat if there was no other offer, but I was totally enjoying what was going on at Great Swamp and I said, “I’d like to stay here.” He said, “Well, that’s good, because the same offer is being made today to some other guy and he picked Brigantine.” So we both got our first pick. So I was here for three and a half years as a refuge manager, lower level, you know an assistant manager. And then transferred from here to Parker River, and then Parker River, Montezuma, Montezuma, Blackwater, and then Gavutis called me again when I was down there; I was there, it was going on five years, and said, “I’d like to see your application for the project leader at Great Swamp.” And because I had been here three and a half years, never thought of coming back; my goal was to work in every region in the country. So I said, “I’ll give it three to five,” because I had been in Blackwater for five years and that was an eternity in those days.
LIBBY: Right, it was.
BILL: And three years turned into thirty.
LIBBY: Wow, that’s fascinating to me. So you were here, at first, in 1971. The wilderness designation was only a couple years old and then you came back in 1984 or so?
BILL: Yeah, I was selected in November ’83, but Blackwater was so understaffed, they asked me to stay, because I was the acting manager there at the time. They said, “Can you stay until we get a manager down there?” And I said, “Sure.” So I didn’t physically move here until February of ’84.
LIBBY: So really, almost the entire time that this has been wilderness, you’ve been involved one way or the other.
BILL: Almost.
LIBBY: So tell me what the wilderness area was like when you first came here.
BILL: When I first came here, there is a road that goes through it that was almost entirely closed. That was something that Congress would not allow, Wilderness Act would not allow. And both towns that it encompassed, previously agreed to abandon it so the Service could undo it, otherwise it wouldn’t become wilderness, which really felt we needed wilderness protection here; that was going on in ’67, where the wilderness hearing started and it was designated in ’68, signed by President Johnson in ’68. So when I first came here, George Gavutis was a really on-the-grounds manager. I remember seeing houses that were crunched along that road, the bulldozer was in there peeling up the pavement and ditch plugs, because the swamp had been previously drained by the previous owners, brooks channelized and everybody, all the privately owned properties, they tried to dry the swamp up because you go back far enough, they felt wetlands were wastelands, mosquito breeding wastelands and a good place to get rid of your garbage. But convert that wetland into more farmland or orchard or whatever and to keep your backyard dry.
LIBBY: That was a very common perception.
BILL: So we were undoing a lot of that. We were plugging the ditches to restore the natural wetlands, taking out the permanent structures, the bridges, the asphalt and the buildings. And I remember seeing 5
structures, houses, former home sites that are no longer there. And Congress charged the Fish and Wildlife Service to remove those things, restore the natural wetlands, and Gavutis played a big part in that; he was very aggressive at that time doing that. He’s just an individual I greatly admire, not because he hired me initially into the Fish and Wildlife Service, but because I had the opportunity to work for him three different occasions. When he hired me here at Great Swamp, later on when I moved to Parker River, he was the project leader there so I was his deputy. And then later on he was a refuge, regional supervisor and I, again, my boss when I came back here. And Great Swamp, he was passionate about, and he left his footprint here. And since I totally admired his work, I wasn’t going to let him down or the people or the Congress, and so I had big shoes to follow and I wanted to fill them and do what was right here. So the area is much more wilderness today than when it was declared.
LIBBY: That is exactly what I was going to ask you. So here we have people advocating for a wilderness designation in an area where there’s roads and there’s houses and probably didn’t even feel that much like wilderness.
BILL: No, it didn’t.
LIBBY: And had been cultivated and had some farm land.
BILL: That’s right. At one point, you talk to some locals, Lou Hinds’s dad told me once, and Lou Hinds retired about a little more than a year ago as manager from Chincoteague, another awesome Fish and Wildlife manager. His dad told me once, because he’s a swamper; Lou grew up in the swamps, started his refuge career right here at Great Swamp. But I was one time talking to his dad, and his dad said at one time you could see clearly across the swamp, all the wood, all the timber was cut; it was just clear. When I got here in ’71, that wasn’t the case, but it was very different than what it is today. Some of those, because as the refuge was established there, there were saw mills, in fact, Lou’s grandfather had a saw mill in the swamp; one of them. When most of the timber was gone that they could get to, and fortunately on some of the knolls out there that were very difficult to get to, there are still some awesome trees that are hundreds of years old, which is just great, and a lot of that’s in the wilderness. But the old fields were let go and became forest again, the wetlands were restored and nature was reclaiming it. But the Fish and Wildlife Service gave it a big jump start by plugging those drainage ditches, and putting the water back to where it used to be, removing the structures. And we also, years ago, did not, because we got a big donation of about 2700 acres, and it didn’t go directly to the Service, it went to the North American Wildlife Foundation; they held it and then turned it over, the big donation. And there was no pre-acquisition survey, so we ended up with lands that ultimately were declared Superfund sites.
LIBBY: Right, I remember that.
BILL: So, we had to do something about that for sure.
LIBBY: Is any of that in what is now wilderness?
BILL: Yes. There was an asbestos dump in the wilderness, there was about a five acrea, five and a half acre field of asbestos, twelve feet deep, filled wetland, and then some outlying areas maybe totaling a half acreage more of piles of asbestos. There was a plant in Millington, which is just outside of the 6
swamp, manufactured this stuff, siding, shingles and stuff. And there was a truck driver for the company who lived in the swamp and nobody knew the hazards of asbestos in the day. And being a swamp, the Great Swamp is part of an ancient glacial lake, and it’s got poorly drained soils, high water tables, artesian water popping up in places. So the people that were living here, if you paid for expensive gravel for a driveway or a road, if you had a farm, that gravel would sink down in time and it was endless, it would just keep pressing down and it was costing a lot of money. And then they discovered that these sheets of asbestos floated on the surface longer and all it cost you for a whole truck load was a six pack to the driver, because the driver got paid at the plant to get rid of it and now he got a six pack before he went home. And many driveways and roads in the swamp, backyards were filled with asbestos.
LIBBY: Oh my goodness.
BILL: But this one area, which he owned, the driver owned, was his back yard. And he just kept dumping and dumping and dumping, and when I got here in ’84, EPA was just beginning to do the site investigation of the site. And a long story short, fast forwarding into the late ‘90’s, the site was remediated and so I saw it all the way through to that stage, the completion and it is delisted now, it’s been delisted from Superfund. And we did manage to, because I insisted this has got to look like wilderness when you’re done. And my number one choice for remediation was remove it and get it out of here.
LIBBY: As opposed to capping it.
BILL: Yes, and did an engineering study and that would have cost millions and millions and millions of dollars and we would have to buy new roads from all the years of truck traffic, getting it out of there and put the public at risk hauling it out if there was an accident or something. So the next best thing was to cap it, and so I worked very closely with them, with our team, which was a fabulous; we worked with the Army Corps out of St. Louis, they were great, tremendous team. But the contractor, design contractor who was in earlier, they went out and they were locating, we did ground penetrating radar on that whole field of asbestos and there was lots of stuff; drums, a school bus packed with drums, there was a bulldozer buried in it, the bus was buried in it. And it was filled with drums and sometimes when the drums, air hit it, they’d explode in effervescence.
LIBBY: You have to get rid of that.
BILL: Oh, we did, ground penetrating radar throughout and all of those things were removed, and then an engineered cap, earthen cap but with fabrics and stuff to keep any trees from breaking through and critters from digging in. So it looks like the wilderness area now, like it should, and it’s safe to have a picnic on; it’s open to the public and it’s delisted. So the wilderness character, restoring that, was the primary objective next to making it safe for critters and the public.
LIBBY: Wow. That’s really fascinating because I was not aware that you had that contamination in the wilderness area. During the course of the remediation, did you have to do special planning because it was wilderness?
BILL: Yes. I was at the table all the time explaining this is minimum tool, but it required heavy equipment. And I told the team that the minimum tool, I felt, the minimum tool, if I restrict you guys to wheel 7
barrel, you’re going to be in there for centuries. Let’s restore this as soon as we can, so part of my interpretation of minimum tool was to do it
Moral Good, the Beatific Vision, and God’s Kingdom Writings by Germain Grisez and Peter Ryan, S.J.. Edited by Peter J. Weigel
No full textFor close to half a century, the work of Germain Grisez has been highly influential, and his writings continue to receive considerable attention from philosophers and theologians of diverse viewpoints. His co-author for this work is the professor and noted moral theologian Fr. Peter Ryan, S.J., currently the executive director of the Secretariat of Doctrine and Canonical Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). These two eminent scholars explore fundamental questions about Christian eschatology, moral theory, the purpose of human life, and the promise of human fulfilment. The authors examine Christian teaching on the final destiny of persons, investigating the meaning of God's kingdom, the hope of the beatific vision, and the centrality of moral goodness and divine grace in one's final end. This work is an ideal source for students, scholars, ministers and lay persons interested in basic questions of Christian theology, the philosophy of religion, ethical theory, and Catholic doctrin
Murder on the mountain: author talk with Peter J. Wosh
No full textAuthor talk by Peter J. Wosh on May 5th, 2022, on his book, "Murder on the Mountain: crime, passion, and punishment in gilded age New Jersey.
Libby, Bertha oral history interview
Full text linkBertha Yvonne (LeClair) Libby was born March 3, 1922 to Joseph and Florida LeClair, the seventh of twelve children. She attended St. Peter\u27s Catholic School in Lewiston until the seventh grade. She was a waitress for many years at Steckino\u27s Restaurant in downtown Lewiston and has vivid memories of serving Democratic politicians
Lunchtime Talk with Author and Attorney Peter Godwin
No full textAuthor and attorney Peter Godwin gave a lunchtime talk about the topics discussed in his book, The Fear, which focuses on the human rights situation in Zimbabwe under the rule of Robert Mugabe
February 26, 1905 Page two Gems from old Japan Captain Libby reported dead
No full textMutty, Peter; Libby, John B.;steamer Paul Jones; steamer Jefferson; schooner Forest Home
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