Former U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson Dies
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Jul 3, 8:31 AM (ET)
By RYAN NAKASHIMA
MILWAUKEE (AP) - Gaylord Nelson, a former governor and U.S. senator from Wisconsin and the founder of Earth Day, died Sunday. He was 89. Nelson died at his home in Kensington, Md., of cardiovascular failure, said Bill Christofferson, Nelson's biographer and a family spokesman.
"He died peacefully. His wife was with him," Christofferson said.
Twenty-five years after the first Earth Day, April 22 is still a day on which many people plant trees, clean up trash and lobby for a clean environment.
A conservationist years before it became fashionable, Nelson was recognized as one of the world's foremost environmental leaders. Then-President Clinton presented Nelson with a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995 for his environmental efforts.
"As the father of Earth Day, he is the grandfather of all that grew out of that event: the Environmental Protection Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act," read the proclamation from Clinton.
Nelson entered public life in 1948 as a Wisconsin state senator from Dane County, a position he held for 10 years. In 1958, Nelson became only the second Democrat during the 20th century to be elected governor of Wisconsin.
While in office, Nelson used a penny-a-pack tax on cigarettes to pay for the Outdoor Recreation Acquisition Program in 1961. The program allowed the state to buy hundreds of thousands of acres of Wisconsin park land, wetlands and other open space.
After two two-year terms, Nelson was elected in 1962 to the U.S. Senate, unseating 78-year-old incumbent Republican Alexander Wiley.
In his three terms, he championed conservation policies, including legislation to preserve the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail and create a national hiking system.
Nelson's most recognized effort, however, was Earth Day, which he started as an environmental demonstration based on the anti-war teach-ins of the Vietnam War.
"It suddenly occurred to me, why not have a nationwide teach-in on the environment," Nelson said. He announced his idea at a speech in Seattle in September 1969, and it "took off like gangbusters."
The first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, attracted an estimated 20 million people. Tens of thousands of people filled New York's Fifth Avenue, Congress adjourned so members could speak across the nation, and at least 2,000 colleges marked the occasion.
Nelson once said Earth Day worked because "it organized itself. The idea was out there and everybody grabbed it. I wanted a demonstration by so many people that politicians would say, 'Holy cow, people care about this.' That's just what Earth Day did."
In 1972, Sen. George McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee, sought out Nelson as a potential running-mate. Nelson said no.
"Behind his humor and behind the sort of rough-cut, down-to-earth manner, there was always a person of sober conviction," McGovern said later.
Nelson continued to represent Wisconsin in the Senate until he was narrowly defeated in 1980 by Robert W. Kasten Jr., one of a raft of Republicans swept into office with Ronald Reagan.
Staying active in the Wilderness Society, Nelson more and more focused his attention on the world's quickly multiplying population. When he was born in
1916, the world's population was about 1.8 billion - which grew to nearly 6 billion in 1999."At the present, all nations in the world, without exception, are pursuing a self-destructive course of fueling their economies by consuming their capital ... by degrading and depleting their resources," he said in a June
1999 address to the Wisconsin Legislature."The wealth of the nation is air, water, soil, forest, scenic beauty, wildlife habitat - take that away and all that's left is a wasteland," he said.
Nelson grew up in the northern Wisconsin town of Clear Lake and later said he learned to love the outdoors "by osmosis" and learned frugality from his father, a country doctor who conserved paper by writing his patient profiles on the back of drug advertisements.
Nelson earned his bachelor's degree from San Jose State College in California and received his law degree from the University of Wisconsin in
1942.Nelson served in the U.S. Army during World War II before returning to Madison to set up his law practice.