Earth Day founder dies at 89

MILWAUKEE – Gaylord Nelson, the folksy Democratic senator from Wisconsin who helped start the modern environmental movement with the creation of Earth Day 35 years ago, died Sunday. He was 89.

Nelson died of cardiovascular failure at his home in the Washington suburb of Kensington, Md., said Bill Christofferson, his biographer and family spokesman.

A conservationist years before it was fashionable, Nelson was recognized as one of the world’s foremost environmental leaders.

The former governor and senator started Earth Day in 1970, when an estimated 20 million people participated. April 22 is still celebrated today by planting trees, cleaning up trash and lobbying for a clean environment.

“He was just an incredible person: humble, funny, proud of his roots in Clear Lake, Wisconsin, and never changed by the power and pomp of the offices that he held,” Gov. Jim Doyle said in a statement Sunday.

Fifteen years after he left office, Nelson received a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995 for his environmental efforts from then-President Clinton.

“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. In 1958, Nelson became only the second Democrat during the 20th century to be elected governor of Wisconsin. He used a penny-a-pack tax on cigarettes to allow the state to buy hundreds of thousands of acres of park land, wetlands and other open space to protect it — an idea that became a model for other states.

After two two-year terms, Nelson was elected in 1962 to the first of his three terms in the U.S. Senate. In the Senate, Nelson 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.”

For the first Earth Day in 1970, 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.