Seeking the Greatest Good: The Conservation Legacy of Gifford Pinchot

7. Conservation Education

63 The four-fold blessings bestowed on Grey Towers by the Pinchot family, the Conservation Foundation, the Forest Service, and the Executive Office of the President were complicated by the fact that each institution sought to shape the celebratory moment and contribute to a projected future in which the nation benefitted from the Pinchot Institute’s success. Yet the impact of the speakers and the entities they represented was also limited by their past beliefs and contemporary enthusiasms, constraining just how much the institute could achieve. None of these limitations bothered President Kennedy’s speechwriters (nor should they have). After all, the chief executive was in Milford to accept the Pinchot family’s gift, to give it his benediction, and to lift up the crowd and their sense of Grey Tower’s prospects. His closing words did exactly that. As his keynote address at Grey Towers reached its climax, the rhetoric intensified. Bringing to the fore one of Gifford Pinchot’s most forceful, historically evocative arguments about the ineluctable link between environmental protections and social uplift—“a Nation deprived of liberty may win it; a Nation divided may reunite; but a Nation whose national resources are destroyed must inevitably pay the penalty of poverty, degradation , and decay”—Kennedy agreed with Pinchot that conservation could save the day. “Conservation is the key to the future, and I believe our future Chapter seven Conservation Education If this institute does not succeed in training the American people to use its resources wisely, this country will collapse. —Maurice K. Goddard Dr. Goddard is a prophet. I completely agree with him. —Matthew J. Brennan 64 CONSERVATION EDUCATION can be bright,” the president affirmed. But the level of the nation’s success depended on the citizenry’s shouldering its responsibilities, on the fiscal commitments and political will that local, state, and federal governments must muster to reclaim a battered terrain and the people who depend on its bounty, and on whether or not the Pinchot Institute for Conservation Studies and its like could generate the requisite “insight and foresight” necessary to advance the frontiers of knowledge. If his audience joined him on “his journey to save America’s natural heritage,” a “high purpose unparalleled in the history of the world,” then, Kennedy predicted, they would assure “a fuller, richer life, for all Americans now and for generations to come.”1 With cheers raining down, the platform party rose to flank the president who, with Gifford Bryce Pinchot at his side, leaned over the bunting -draped front railing and pulled a thick cord to unveil a large boulder with an embedded brass plaque commemorating that day’s celebration and the institute’s new motto: “For greater knowledge of the land and its uses.” At that, Kennedy flashed his patented smile, waved his hand, walked up the hill, and disappeared from view. His electric presence lingered. “For many Milford residents the visit of the president had a story book flavor,” a journalist wrote, “but the familiar figure of the TV screen and magazine cover was real. He was here in their midst addressing them, talking about their neighbors, the Pinchot family, emphasizing this state, this town, this house.” That house, this place, bore a new responsibility, wired in as it was now with the main currents of American life: “Much is left to be done, the President reminded his listeners. The Conservation Institute at Milford, at Grey Towers, the home of Gifford Pinchot will lead in the effort to see that it is done.” Elated, “a spiritual buoyancy . . . was lifting Milford into a niche from which it must not fall.”2 The elation could not last. The Pinchot family felt it first, and one of the most aware of the deflation was also the person most physically close to the scene: the sharp-eyed Ruth Pinchot. By political allegiance and personal temperament, she distrusted the government’s ability to safeguard Grey Towers, the site and its treasured artifacts. The Forest Service had assured Gifford Bryce that the family could take whatever mementos they wished, but the Conservation Foundation and the federal agency, expecting to develop a museum devoted to Gifford Pinchot and the larger conservation movement, preferred that they would leave the heirlooms; the Pinchots complied. From her front porch, Ruth Pinchot watched in dismay as many of the family’s invaluable collections—Gifford Pinchot’s priceless jades, a CONSERVATION EDUCATION 65 George Washington–signed mirror...