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NJCF mourns the loss of environmental champion and friend Franklin E. Parker III

FAR HILLS, NJ, Feb. 4, 2008 – All of us in the conservation community lost a great champion on Feb. 1, when Franklin E. Parker III of Mendham passed away at the age of 82.

Mr. Parker was a co-founder, former president and a longtime trustee of New Jersey Conservation Foundation (NJCF), and was involved in numerous other environmental causes in New Jersey and beyond. He was the first chairman of the New Jersey Pinelands Commission; and NJCF’s 9,400-acre Franklin Parker Preserve in the heart of the Pine Barrens was named in his honor.

Friends, staff and trustees of NJCF remembered Mr. Parker as a humble, gracious man who cared deeply about the environment and dedicated countless hours toward its protection.

“He was one of the most caring and generous people I’ve ever known, and I will miss him very much,” said Michele S. Byers, executive director of NJCF.

Byers remembered meeting Mr. Parker for the first time when he was chairman of the Pinelands Commission and she was a 25-year-old “environmental rookie watchdog” at a public hearing. Many residents affected by the Pinelands protection effort were angry, she said, but Mr. Parker treated everyone in the audience graciously.

“When it was time for me to stand and speak, he made me feel that my message was important,” Byers said. “He lived well north of the Pine Barrens with a full family and career, and he really did not have to care about the Pines or do anything for them at all. But he chose to spend huge amounts of his own personal time leading the early battles to protect this wonderful part of New Jersey.”

“In the process of conserving land, Frank touched many of us. Frank was an inspiration and a moral compass,” said Richard Hehmeyer of the New Jersey office of the Trust for Public Land (TPL), for which Mr. Parker worked in the early 1990s after retiring from his law practice.

“Always optimistic about what we together could accomplish, always fair and compassionate, and always there to help make it happen, Frank, quietly and behind the scenes, touched and impacted many major landscape and park initiatives in New Jersey, from the Pinelands, Highlands, Barnegat Bay, to the community park program he started in Newark,” added Hehmeyer. “His commitment to land and his commitment to people were huge. And so he conserved land for the benefit of us all, so that we can all experience, understand and appreciate the miracles of nature.”

Candace Ashmun, a Pinelands Commission member and former NJCF president, also remembered Mr. Parker fondly. “In his years as chairman of the Pinelands Commission, Frank established a commission attitude that lasts to this day: Commissioners were there to do the public’s work, not play politics,” she said. “Acrimony was not acceptable, and everyone knew they would get a fair hearing and be treated politely. He was strong, patient and always the gentleman.”

Michael Catania, president of Conservation Resources Inc. of Chester, who knew Mr. Parker for more than 25 years, remembered him as a colleague, mentor and close friend.

“Looking back, it is hard to recall any important conservation event during the last several decades that Frank did not have a hand in… He just had a quietly effective way of bringing folks together and getting them to do the right things,” said Catania. “When others might be more concerned with appearances or with who might get the credit for some noble accomplishment, Frank just wanted to get the job done, and he eschewed any attention to his considerable role. There are so many wonderful examples of his legacy – places like the Great Swamp, the Schiff Natural Lands Trust, the Pinelands, the Highlands, playgrounds in Newark, Barnegat Bay and the Wallkill National Wildlife Refuge, and organizations like the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, and the Trust for Public Land, to name just a few – that have made a lasting difference here in the Garden State and beyond.”

David Moore, a former NJCF executive director and current member of the Board of Trustees, recalled meeting Mr. Parker in about 1967 at the dedication of the Dismal Harmony Preserve in Mendham.

“I was working for the state at the time, and I was taking pictures of the ceremony,” said Moore. “I don’t remember what was said, but I do recall how impressed I was that the North Jersey Conservation Foundation (NJCF’s name at the time), over which Frank presided, had put together a deal that used state Green Acres and federal HUD funds to match each other. It was one of the first such deals as I remember, if not the first. I thought to myself, now that’s an outfit I’d like to work for!”

Funeral services will be held at noon on Thursday, Feb. 7, at the Church of St. John on the Mountain in Bernardsville.

The trustees, staff and members of NJCF wish to convey our deepest condolences to the Parker family, and our heartfelt thanks to Frank for his years of dedicated service to the cause of protecting New Jersey’s environment.