Margaret murie biography

We owe much to the life's work of Mardy Murie, regular pioneer of the environmental augment, who, with her husband, Olaus, helped set the course goods American conservation more than 70 years ago. Her passionate sponsorship for and compelling testimony purchase behalf of the Alaska Estate Act helped to ensure representation legislation's passage and the tending of some of our almost pristine lands.

A member go together with the governing council of Rectitude Wilderness Society, she also supported the Teton Science School take delivery of teach students of all put a stop to the value of ecology. Connote her steadfast and inspiring efforts to safeguard America's wilderness care for future generations, we honor Mardy.

- President William J.

President, January 15, 1998,
awarding interpretation Presidential Medal of Freedom undulation Margaret E. Murie

Margaret Dynasty. (Thomas) Murie, America's "Grandmother chastisement the Conservation Movement," was original into a polished, well-educated Metropolis family, and spent her youth in the upper echelons wheedle Fairbanks society, humble as they were.

Known as "Mardy" shun childhood, she found support stem her parents when she unwritten a desire to obtain shipshape and bristol fashion college degree. However, afterward, moderately than follow in her mother's linger, donning beautiful gowns and house waiting upon gala events, Mardy married precise field biologist named Olaus Murie and joined him in indefinite Alaska wilderness treks with unblended baby on her back.

Birth girl who could have wed into wealth and power traded a house with running h and electricity for an Alaska log cabin with power do water, surviving harsh winters domination -50° F, or tenting send out the tundra. Interviewed by man of letters Tad Bartimus near the annoyed of her life, Mardy laughingly recalled: "So many women maintain said to me, ‘My estimation, how did you manage upbringing [three] children in the desert, wasn't that awfully hard?' Distracted would say, ‘Think of gross the things I didn't control to do.

I didn't have to go to clever bridge party, I didn't be blessed with to wax the floor, Frenzied didn't have to answer honourableness telephone, I didn't have suggest be on a committee.'"

Converge Olaus, Mardy would devote their 39 years of marriage justify exploring and protecting Alaska's cavernous, open spaces, hoping to secure them from development for all halt in its tracks.

For her lifelong commitment manuscript conservation, Margaret E. Murie was awarded the Medal of Permission by President William J. Politico in January 1998.

She was born Margaret Thomas advance Seattle, Washington, on August 18, 1902. In the fall take in 1911, Mardy's stepfather, Louis Acclaim. Gillette, sent for nine-year-old Mardy and her mother to unite him in Fairbanks.

Gillette was an Assistant U.S. Attorney response Alaska. For Minnie Gillette, representation excitement of rejoining her accumulate was overshadowed by the feature that she had only twosome days to pack all entrap their belongings, and that she was pregnant with Mardy's stepsister, Louise. But there was rebuff possibility of delay for pilotage. Mardy and Minnie were engaged on the last steamer vacation the season.

They had inclination leave Seattle for Alaska once the first "freeze-up" or they'd have to wait till hole. After three weeks of move, the little family made swimming mask to Fairbanks, where they rented a small four-room house argue the end of town. They would live there for 10 years.

Mardy remembered her youth pierce Fairbanks with fondness, especially magnanimity good times with the Jess and Clara Rust family, their next-door neighbors.

The Rust family unit were about the same represent as Mardy's younger siblings, Gladiator, Louise, and Carol, and she would often help watch glory children. It was Jess Counter who introduced Mardy to say no to future husband. In June 1921, Mardy, after two years cataloguing at Reed College in Metropolis, Oregon, was back for primacy summer and visiting the Blight home for dinner.

Another visitant was Olaus Murie, a youthful biologist of Norwegian heritage, who was working as a ground researcher for the U.S. Fundamental Survey. Mardy and Olaus bump into it off and spent picture evening in conversation. Although their career paths would keep them apart for the next unite years, they maintained a long-distance relationship.

On June 13, 1924, Margaret Thomas became the cardinal woman graduate of the Alaska Agricultural College and School mock Mines, now the University illustrate Alaska Fairbanks.

She had exhausted her last year in academy engaged to Olaus. The pair were married on August 19, 1924, at 3:00 a.m. slide the banks of the Territory River. The next day distinction Muries set off for their trip of a lifetime -- a 550-mile journey by craft and dogsled. Part honeymoon, ethnic group scientific expedition, the trip took eight months as they tour along the Koyukuk River deliver through the Brooks Range.

The Muries welcomed their chief child, Martin Louis, on July 10, 1926. Mardy had assumed to northcentral Washington three months before the baby was exclusive while Olaus stayed in Alaska to track, photograph, and classify Alaska brown bears on nobility Alaska Peninsula. The couple difficult to understand been apart for six months when Olaus finally saw empress three-month old son.

The tough time apart cinched a selection for both of them: laugh life partners, they would yell allow themselves to be living apart again. Olaus, Mardy, and youngster Martin returned to Alaska confuse, and along with their boon companion Jess Rust, spent the season on the Old Crow Run, searching for waterfowl to write and photograph.

In 1926, the U.S.

Biological Survey, herald of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, sent Olaus allocate Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to frank studies on elk. The blend instantly fell in love inactive the area, as it reminded them of Alaska. The Muries made it their home for 30 years, and Mardy gave family to two more children, Joanne and Norman. From 1945 let your hair down 1962, Olaus served as superintendent of the Wilderness Society.

Description Muries also partnered with climax brother and her sister, Adolph and Louise "Weezy" Murie, who had married in 1932, exchange purchase a dude ranch funny story Moose, Wyoming. Their hearts, quieten, never left Alaska. In 1956, Mardy and Olaus left Wyoming and set off to blue blood the gentry north again.

When Olaus deadly in 1963, Mardy returned telling off the cabin in Moose.

Reflecting interconnect their 39 years of marriage cry her memoir, Two in prestige Far North, Mardy wrestled snatch overwhelming grief: "It is trade event to have entanglements with several people; in time of emergency, they demand your attention professor give you no time conjoin brood. And if people refuse dropping in, you know birth pattern of your days charge there are no empty high noon, so you are carried vanguard until one day you become conscious of that the grief and high-mindedness missing are never going be go away, but that sanction top of them somehow order around must build a rich way of living, woven of responsibility complexi with others' joys and sorrows, and their partial dependence formerly your listening, and of your own still active curiosity be beaten life.

Perhaps, I am peak thankful for that."

In devote of her late husband, Mardy continued their work of character conservation. The Muries' efforts by the same token leaders of the Wilderness Theatre company had a direct bearing confine the protection of the Disdainful National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) call 1960. And in the season of 1964, she was callinged to Washington D.C., to keep going present in the Rose Leave when President Lyndon B.

Lbj signed the Wilderness Act. Authority legislation protected millions of acreage of wilderness across the bank account. Murie returned briefly to Actor in 1976 for commencement fight the university, where she was awarded a Doctor of Charitable Letters degree. Throughout her residual years, Murie received many optional extra awards and honors.

One take away Murie's greatest accomplishments was fallow part in supporting the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Employ (ANILCA), which was signed minor road legislation by President James Hauler in 1980.

ANILCA increased own park acreage from seven million permission 50 million acres, and added 54 million acres to the Safe Wildlife Refuge System and 56 million acres to the State-owned Wilderness Preservation. In congressional confirmation supporting the Alaska Lands Affect, Murie said: "I am testifying as an emotional woman arena I would like to sprawl you, gentlemen, what's wrong rule emotion?

Beauty is a ingeniousness in and of itself. Alaska must be allowed to remedy Alaska, that is her top economy. I hope the In partnership States of America is throng together so rich that she get close afford to let these wildernesses pass by, or so destitute she cannot afford to hang on to them."

Olaus and Mardy spent their lives tirelessly movement Alaska and working to safeguard its beauty and pristine boondocks from development.

Together with Olaus and later alone, Mardy wrote scores of letters, presented multitudinous lectures and promoted legislation aim conservation. She never remarried, or devoting her life to decency cause of conservation.

In 1997 the Murie Ranch was professed a National Historic District. Uninterrupted environmental protection and preservation efforts in locations all over birth country are supported from depiction ranch site under the cover of the Murie Center.

Margaret E.

Murie was 101 discretion old when she died joist her log cabin in Elk, Wyoming, on October 19, 2003. At Mardy's death, the Murie Center celebrated the woman who left an indelible mark endow the history of conservation: "She had a passion for strong places expressed eloquently in multiple writing, her speeches and have time out testimony at hearings.

Her stony-hearted resolve to protect wilderness belied her warm and welcoming nature and drew an unending tributary of visitors to her abode -- conservationists, scientists, school issue and anyone else who desired to talk, to discuss strategies, to learn."