By David Eckert
Note: This article was originally published by the Village Preservation and Improvement Society.
Many people have found their life's calling in the seemingly insignificant experiences of childhood. A number of people raised in Falls Church found their calling from our local by-gone streams and and have since become well-respected naturalists, biologists, or environmental scientists. Following are a few examples.
Jim Fowler
Dr. James Henderson
Scott Merkel
John Maier
Thoughts for the Future
Jim Fowler
Jim Fowler was co-host on "Wild Kingdom" with Marlin Perkins. What person now between the ages of 45 and 55 did not sit glued in front of the TV each week watching Marlin send Jim out into the wilderness to bring back an awe-inspiring creature? Everyone knew it was Jim, not Marlin, who really knew his stuff. Well, Jim grew up in Falls Church. At the ceremony commemorating the demolition of Whittier School, one schoolmate recounted how Jim would spend his weekends at Four Mile Run collecting all types of creatures, plants, seeds, nests, and other interesting natural spectacles to bring into school on Monday. Everyone was so taken by his interest that the school set aside a special "Jim Fowler table" for him to display in weekly discoveries.
Top of Page
Dr. James Henderson
Dr. James Henderson received his doctorate in Plant Physiology at the University of Wisconsin and did postgraduate work at Cal Tech before taking his position at the Tuskegee Institute as Chair of the Natural Science Department and a researcher at the George Washington Carver Research Foundation. Born and raised in a home that still stands on S. Maple Avenue, he grew up playing in the Church Branch of Tripps Run, which was then in his back yard. The stream is now in a culvert under the parking lot of Coleman PowerSport. In a taped interview, Dr. Henderson revealed that it was playing in that stream, discovering crayfish and other aquatic creatures and plants, that inspired him to pursue his life's work. Now in his late 70s, he is still a vibrant contributor to the scientific and academic community.
Top of Page
Scott Merkel
Scott Merkel is a university professor in the environmental sciences in Georgia. As a teenager in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he became interested in the vanishing streams of Falls Church. As a result, he wrote a report that was published in a newsletter, "Falls Church Historical News and Notes", later republished by the Village Preservation and Improvement Society in book form (still available). Scott's interest in and research on the local streams as a teenager inspired the direction of his life. Reading his articles more than 20 years later was what initially sparked this author's interest in local streams.
Top of Page
John Maier
John Maier, recently stationed in Antarctica as an environmental scientist, explored the streams of Falls Church as a boy. When John was a teenager, a teacher introduced him to the ecological importance of our local streams through hands-on research in Four Mile Run at the Falls Church/Arlington border. He was hooked. Twenty years later, he is not only an environmental scientist who often works in remote areas of the world, but he is the co-founder of the Falls Church City Streams Task Force and a member of the Arlington/Falls Church Four Mile Run Watershed Joint Planning Committee.
Top of Page
Thoughts for the Future
Each of these professionals who grew up in Falls Church, exploring the local streams, has made his mark in the world and found a career worthy of his personal effort. Now that we have covered or otherwise damaged our streams, as a result of ignorance and greed, where are the future naturalists, biologists, and environmental scientists of Falls Church going to find this inspiration? Will it be from within a sterile classroom or laboratory? Will it be by looking out the window at cars going by or at the virtual reality on the home computer? The livers of these four people have shown that the relationship between education and the environment is a very important one, even in Falls Church. Will this inspiration be lost for our future scientists, because we destroyed all of our streams?
Surprisingly, a few years ago, I received a call from 12-year-old Becky Davis. She had visited portions of the urbanized Four Mile Run in Falls Church with a group of interested citizens in a class sponsored by the City's Recreation and Parks Department. She had the fortune to find some pollution-tolerant aquatic life forms, include a huge crayfish. She was hooked. She called me because she wanted to start a science fair project on the local streams and she knew I had some knowledge of them. The moment she said what she wanted to do, I felt a surge of hope for the future of our local streams and our children's future. Becky not only did an admirable study of the streams, but won a first place in the George Mason Middle School Science Fair and the opportunity to compete in the Regionals.
Who knows -- maybe some day, Becky will have her own "Wild Kingdon" TV show, or be a professor of environmental science, or travel to the far corners of the Earth, doing her life's work -- all because she got hooked on the streams of Falls Church. Maybe it's not too late to restore our streams for the sake of our children.
Top of Page
Home
