Celebrating 100 years of "Nature" column

 

Celebrating 100 years of "Nature" column

On March 5, 1922, a lawyer-turned-naturalist named Edward Sinclair Thomas penned the first incarnation of this column. The Dispatch had asked him to write a short series of articles about birds, and Thomas eagerly took up the challenge.

His writings proved popular, and the newspaper asked him to continue with the column. He did so with a passion, stamping out weekly columns for the next 59 years. Thomas wrote over 3,000 articles in all, in addition to his weekly “Blendon Woods — Metro Parks — Central Ohio Park System” series that was geared toward kids.

Thomas was born in Woodsfield, Ohio, on April 22, 1891 — fittingly, as April 22 would much later become the date of the annual Earth Day celebration.

The very first animal mentioned in Thomas’ inaugural column was, “A flight of wild geese…” referring to the now-ubiquitous Canada goose. A century ago, geese were not nearly so frequent and a wild skein of honkers passing overhead piqued great interest in the citizenry far below.

Thomas didn’t confine his prose to birds. He was an old-school naturalist, an ecological Renaissance man who once would have been termed a natural philosopher. He had expertise in flora, singing insects (the orthoptera), geology, amphibians, mammals and more — and he wrote about them all.

His last column appeared on Sept. 6, 1981, just about five months before his death on Feb. 16, 1982.

Thomas inspired many people with his encyclopedic knowledge of natural history and his passion. One of them was a young naturalist named Jim Fry. Thomas became a mentor to Fry, who went on to become a professional naturalist. He worked for Columbus and Franklin County Metro Parks for over three decades, with much of his tenure at Blendon Woods.

Fry took over the column in 1981, segueing seamlessly from Thomas' final piece. By this point the column was dubbed Nature — same as it is today. Fry, who now lives in Hocking County — not far from Thomas’ cherished retreat known as Neotoma – is an ornithologist of note.

For the next 29 years, Fry regaled readers with his adventures involving birds, both rare and common. An inveterate lister, Fry annually racked up large lists of species in Ohio. He was well-known for his spur-of-the-moment chases of great rarities, no matter where they might appear. His regular fodder of bird subjects was often interspersed with other subjects in keeping with Thomas’ template of diversity.

In all, Fry wrote 802 columns. By the time he took over Nature, it had shifted to a bi-weekly format or I’m sure he would have written double that number.

Fry, in turn, was a mentor to me. I met him when I was still in middle school, and he was stationed at Blendon Woods. Because of my strong interest in birds, he took me under his wing, so to speak. I became a fixture at Blendon, soaking up knowledge from one of Ohio’s most accomplished birders.

In late 2009, Fry decided to cap his pen and hand off the column. I was flattered when he recommended me as his successor. I had already been writing a science column for The Dispatch, but when my editor offered me the Nature column, I jumped at the chance. This column is my 336th to date.

I appreciate The Dispatch’s long-standing role in supporting conservation and natural history. If there’s a longer running nature column in an American newspaper, I’m unaware of it. If you know of one that bests our centennial-eclipsing Nature column, please let me know.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at www.jimmccormac.blogspot.com.