Gaylord Nelson

Gaylord Nelson was born June 4, 1916, in Clear Lake, Wisconsin, the son of Anton Nelson, the town's only doctor, and Mary Bradt Nelson, a nurse, in a family whose Norwegian and Irish roots ran deep enough in the county that public service felt like the family trade. He earned a political science degree from San Jose State College in 1939 and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1942, then enlisted in the Army before he could practice, serving through the Okinawa campaign and rising to first lieutenant. He came home in 1946, opened a law practice in Madison, and within three years had won a seat in the Wisconsin State Senate, the first rung of a career built almost entirely around conservation.

As governor of Wisconsin from 1959 to 1963, Nelson used a small cigarette tax to fund a land-acquisition program that preserved public access to hundreds of lakes and forests, then carried the same instinct to the U.S. Senate, where he served from 1963 to 1981. He persuaded President Kennedy to take a five-day, 11-state conservation tour in 1963, and in 1969, after a major oil spill off Santa Barbara, proposed a nationwide teach-in on the environment. On April 22, 1970, some 20 million Americans took part in the first Earth Day, then the largest single-day demonstration in the country's history. In the Senate he championed the Wilderness Act, the National Trails System Act, the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and the National Environmental Education Act, and pushed some of the first federal bills to regulate strip mining and ban DDT.

Nelson's most ambitious idea also became his most quixotic: in 1971 he introduced a bill to phase out production of the gasoline engine within roughly a decade, a proposal that went nowhere in a Senate unwilling to legislate the auto industry out of existence and that even sympathetic colleagues treated as a stunt. The larger cost came at the ballot box. After 18 years and a legislative record built almost entirely around conservation, Nelson lost his Senate seat in November 1980, swept out in the same Reagan landslide that unseated several of the chamber's most committed environmentalists, proof that the mass movement he had helped create could not yet reliably protect the people who built it.

After the Senate, Nelson spent nearly a quarter-century as counselor to the Wilderness Society, still lobbying for causes that had cost him his seat. President Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in September 1995, citing Earth Day by name, and in 2002 the University of Wisconsin renamed its environmental studies program the Nelson Institute in his honor. He died of cardiovascular failure on July 3, 2005, at 89. Earth Day, which he started as a one-day national teach-in, is now marked in more than 190 countries by an international nonprofit no longer tied to any single sponsor, roughly the outcome Nelson said he had always hoped for.

Gaylord Nelson's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Earth Day mission
  First observance, April 22, 1970, drew an estimated 20 million participants 1970
• Wilderness Act law
  Championed as a freshman senator 1964
• National Trails System Act law
  Created the federal network of designated hiking and scenic trails 1968
• National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act law
  Protected free-flowing rivers from damming and development 1968
• National Environmental Education Act law
  Established federal funding for environmental education programs 1970

• June 4, 1916 aged 0 Born in Clear Lake, Wisconsin
• 1942 aged ~26 Earns a law degree from the University of Wisconsin Enlists in the Army before he can practice.
• 1949 aged ~33 Wins a seat in the Wisconsin State Senate
• 1959 aged ~43 Becomes governor of Wisconsin
• 1962 aged ~46 Elected to the U.S. Senate Takes office in January 1963.
• April 22, 1970 aged 53 The first Earth Day is observed nationwide
• November 1980 aged 64 Loses his Senate seat in the Reagan landslide
• September 1995 aged 79 Receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom
• July 3, 2005 aged 89 Dies of cardiovascular failure

• Rachel Carson 1907–1964
  Marine biologist whose book Silent Spring launched the modern environmental movement. influenced by
• John F. Kennedy 1917–1963
  35th President whose brief tenure included the Cuban Missile Crisis and the launch of the Apollo program. persuaded
• Al Gore b. 1948
  Vice president and 2000 presidential candidate who became a leading advocate for climate policy. succeeded the movement of
• Ralph Nader b. 1934
  Consumer advocate whose auto-safety campaign produced federal vehicle standards and a public-interest lobbying network. reform contemporary of