A very special man died on Friday, October 11th, 2013.
A world renowned botanist; a pioneer researcher of the ecological impact of acid rain; a beloved educator; a dynamic role model for students, colleagues, and friends alike; an artist who loved to paint; an essayist; a prolific science author; a cofounder of the Vermont Nature Conservancy; an inspirational story teller with a piercing sense of humor and a touching capacity for hilarious self-depricating irony; a loving family man to his late wife (Marie), to his children (Tom, Jim, and Andy), to his grand children (Scott, Alice and Connie), to his daughters in-law (Tom's wife Mary, and Jim's wife Ann), to his significant other (Mary Jane Dickerson), and to his extended family and their loves ones; a man of unequivocal integrity and abiding love for salt, bread, steak, home-raised trout (from his own pond), honey (from his own bee hive), many kinds of potatoes (from his own land), and straight-gin martini.
This was Dr. Hubert Vogelmann; a singular man who was greatly admired for his achievements, and revered for his intellect, by all who knew him and read his writings. Indeed, he won virtually every award and accolade his peers & the State of Vermont could bestow upon him, including a plaque at the top of Camel's Hump Mountain acknowledging his groundbreaking work on the effects of acid rain on forest ecology.
Dr. Vogelmann deserved all the awards and accolades he received but he never, not even once, made a big deal about any of them. I guess you can call him the salt of the Earth, the Earth which he so loved and to which he is returning. Those who knew him well, we simply called him Hub!
Hub, you will be so very dearly missed.
Dr. Azzam Elayan
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Philadelphia, PA
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