David Underhill: A Remembering

Featured Sierran, Alabama Sierra Club (in honor of David Underhill)

(June 2, 1941 – November 7, 2019)

David R. Underhill, age 78, a long time resident of Mobile, AL, died while hospitalized in Mobile on Nov 7th. David was the second child of E. Calvin Underhill and Beth M. Wickham Underhill and was born June 2, 1941 in San Francisco, CA.

He grew up in Boise, ID, and loved the mountains of Idaho. He graduated from Boise High School in 1959, where he was an outstanding student and served as student body president. He also served as president of Idaho Boys' State. He graduated from Harvard University and did graduate work at Columbia University. Writing and activism for the benefit of others were his life's passions. His perspective was always thoughtful and thought provoking for the reader or listener. He is survived by a sister, Patricia Nutt of Seattle; a brother, Joel Underhill of Ellensburg, WA, and several nieces and nephews.

His parents and two brothers, James and John predeceased him. A service honoring David's life was held Nov.22 at 4pm at Stirling Hall, 151 S Ann St, Mobile. Memorial donations may be made to Sierra Club, Alabama Chapter, Mobile Bay Group, an organization David supported, in lieu of flowers.

Acknowledgements of Gratitude for David Underhill’s Life of Service

Reverend Ellen Sims is pastor of Open Table, A Community of Faith.
“Many who knew David Underhill might be surprised to learn he was a member of a small progressive church in Mobile that, partly due to his influence, considers care for the earth a central Christian tenet and task. As his pastor, I recall appreciatively how David would inject into our Sunday sharing of prayer concerns his circuitous harangue against a venal corporation or public figure harming the planet. My favorite of David’s prayer requests years ago was his briefest: “Pray for the soul of Dick Chaney.” Activists can be stereotyped as humorless. David was righteously angry at times. And resolved and committed. But he was also funny and gentle and generous. He encouraged us to support the Sierra Club, to attend the first Tuesday environmental education programs of the Mobile Bay Group, to protest publicly against environmental harm, and to participate in Earth Day Mobile Bay and similar events and causes. Most recently he indirectly contributed to our congregation’s joining with other congregations to form the Gulf Coast Creation Care, a faith-based climate action alliance, which hopes to focus moral attention on the climate crisis. May we continue to be inspired by David Underhill’s advocacy for the earth and her most vulnerable inhabitants.”

Cynthia M. Sarthou serves as Executive Director of Healthy Gulf.
“I worked with David for over 20 years. He was an indomitable force for the protection of Alabama’s environment. Whenever a community in Alabama was threatened by pollution, David was there to support them. And, when it was important to speak out David was willing to do so. With David’s passing, we have lost a passionate advocate for Alabama’s people and environment. He will be sorely missed.”

Lella Lowe worked with David on Sierra Club and MEJAC projects.
“My first memory of meeting David Underhill was at a protest march in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement, where he was a regular presence in front of Government Plaza during that time. Shortly thereafter, I started to notice him at various meetings with elected officials. David always showed up for justice causes. What was striking about him at these meetings was that the questions he asked were always showstoppers, in which the elected official couldn't just answer with a talking point, but was being challenged to look at the ethical basis for a stance they were taking. The lens through which David viewed the world always seemed a little clearer than the lenses the rest of us use, especially as regards issues of social justice. I once asked him if he thought that he would be able to change the minds of those elected officials by challenging them at public meetings. He replied that his questions were not really aimed at the elected official so much as at the members of the public, to hopefully make them think about the issues in a broader context of justice. David continued to challenge me to think beyond my cultural worldview, while demonstrating that it is up to all of us to insure that justice is served.”

Derrick C. Evans is the director of Turkey Creek Community Initiatives.
“My memory and admiration of David will always be dominated by the many amusing times when his unflinching grasp of an important truth, and of every irony surrounding it, would emerge from his baritone cadence like rabbit after rabbit from a silk top hat. Never was his sage and deft wit more alluring, and fun for David himself, than when he would politely stun or “taze” some condescending technocrat or pompous government egghead in a room full of his people — an “amen corner” of good natured but beleaguered real folk from real homes and real communities on Mobile Bay and along the Gulf Coast. Be it from Weeks Bay and Fairhope to Africatown and Prichard, or from Florida to Texas during many years of “Reeling from Katrina” and “Dancing with BP ” — David’s smooth but spicy delivery of facts, tidbits, musings and zingers left numerous polluters, displacers, apologists and liars across our land and waters feeling as they ought to — naked, laughable and wrong. No one did this quite like he could and did.”

Tom Hutchings founded Alabama Coastal Foundation and is CEO of EcoSolutions, Inc.
“David Underhill was an activist.  You could count on David Underhill.  He showed up.  He was a ubiquitous and informed force in the pursuit of justice and fair treatment for all living things within his community.  His intellect, his word choice, his angles, and  his smile were sometimes misunderstood but, upon introspection, were always right on and always consistent.  David challenged us all to be awake; to be better humans, better neighbors, better participants.  His physical presence will be missed but his legacy of caring and willingness to take action will continue to empower all of us who care enough to stand up for the welfare and health of all that inhabit this place we call home.”

Joe Womack is CEO of Africatown C.H.E.S.S. (Clean, Healthy, Educated, Safe, Sustainable Africatown).
He served on Mobile Bay Sierra Club ExCom and MEJAC Board with David. “I first met David in 2013, a few months after The Africatown Community had been placed on The National Registry for Historic Places. He attended our community meeting to inform Africatown residents that businesses in Mobile were planning to build super storage tanks to store and ship Tar Sands Oil in Africatown. I thought he did not know what he was talking about because Africatown had been identified as an historic place and thus was protected against being over taken by businesses. I soon found out that David was right and thus begin a 4 year fight against local government and business from taking over and putting residents in danger of being polluted by toxic and dangerous industries. Throughout those 4 years and until the day he died, David never left Africatown alone to fight that battle by ourselves. David grew to love and appreciate the residents of the Africatown Community and the residents of Africatown grew to love and appreciate David.”

Joel Underhill is David’s brother.
“We, the Underhill children, were fortunate to have been raised by parents that came of age during the Great Depression (1929 – 1933).  We learned a minimalist lifestyle including limited purchases and reusing or recycling most everything. Our parents were also avid outdoor adventurists exploring the backcountry of the Idaho wilderness with their children in tow.  We learned to embrace the wonderment of nature’s creation and our place as stewards of the land.  Perhaps a simple saying we often heard, and said, was the seed that grew into the environmental activism of David Underhill: “Leave your campsite cleaner than you found it”.”

Glynn Wilson, editor and publisher of New American Journal and friend and colleague of David, published the following article:
Mobile Writer and Activist David Underhill Dies at 78 “Long-time activist and writer David R. Underhill, Associate Editor of the New American Journal, died in the Mobile Infirmary Medical Center of heart failure after a battle with a series of other health issues early Friday morning, November 7. He was 78.

A native of California who grew up in Idaho and had family in Washington State and California, Underhill arrived in Mobile in 1965 after graduating from Harvard where he worked for the student newspaper and was assigned to cover the city for The Southern Courier out of Montgomery, a weekly newspaper devoted to issues of civil and economic rights inspired by others at the Harvard Crimson since there was a consensus that newspapers in the South were not doing a very good job of covering the Civil Rights movement. Throughout most of the paper’s short but important three-year run from 1965 through 1968, according to local historian Scotty Kirkland, Underhill was “the entire operation” in Mobile, writing stories, taking photographs, handling ads and subscriptions. He covered a number of important topics, including the War on Poverty, local and state politics, voting rights, and James Meredith’s March Against Fear in Mississippi.

“No journalist wrote about Mobile’s civil rights movement in quite the way Underhill did, particularly on matters relating to economic injustice and racial inequality,” Kirkland said in an email interview. “In his stories you will find the voices of Mobilians working on the grassroots level, fighting injustice at great personal cost far away from the limelight.”

To him, he said, what he’ll remember about David the most is something Underhill once said to him about “the contrast between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought to be’.”

“He sought to reduce the distance between the “is” and the “ought to be” through his activism and his work as a journalist,” Kirkland said. “Alabama’s Port City has lost a true advocate with his passing.”

Underhill kept coming back in the ’70s and ’80s to work for protecting the natural environment in the Gulf of Mexico region and fell in love with the warm climate and the land of live oak trees, Spanish moss and Southern hospitality. He settled in Mobile and called it home, where he was known for asking provocative questions of public officials and advocating for a clean environment on the Gulf Coast and civil rights in Alabama.

“David believed in poking, prodding, and sometimes shaming those in power to find their better angels. His articles about race relations and economic and environmental injustice in south Alabama are a testament to him as a journalist and an activist” Kirkland said. “The fact that David was not a native of the Port City makes all the more laudable his decision to stay and fight to make it a better place for all of its residents.”

Underhill sat on the board of the Sierra Club Alabama Chapter and Sierra Club Mobile Bay Group for many years, and served as treasurer of the The Society Mobile-La Habana, the official sister city organization between Mobile and Havana, Cuba.

“I will miss David’s dedicated support,” said former Mobile Mayor Mike Dow upon learning the news of Underhill’s passing. Dow served on the board of the organization.

“David always had strong opinions and a strong sense of what he felt was the best interest for our city,” he said.

Underhill was born the second child of E. Calvin Underhill and Beth M. Wickham Underhill in San Francisco on June 2, 1941, but grew up largely in Boise, Idaho, where he loved the mountains and where his ashes will be scattered after his cremation at Radney Funeral Home in Mobile.

“Writing and activism for the benefit of others were his life’s passions,” according to his sister Patricia Nutt of Seattle. “His perspective was always thoughtful and thought provoking for the reader or listener.”

Underhill hosted an eclectic radio talk show in Mobile in the late 1990s called “The Bay Today and the World Beyond” on WABB AM, where he sometimes challenged the conventional wisdom of the local establishment.

For my part, I met Underhill and became aware of his writing and activism in the late 1980s and early 1990s when he also became aware of my work as the first full-time reporter in Alabama covering the environment as a beat working for a chain of newspapers out of Gulf Shores and Baldwin County in the aftermath of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Prince Williams’ Sound, Alaska.

While I broke and investigated environment-related stories with economic, legal and political implications, Underhill wrote about similar themes for The Harbinger, a now defunct community newspaper covering the environment out of Mobile.

Our paths became intertwined when we both took on the story of the Navy’s EMPRESS II program in 1992, a nuclear blast simulator that was to be moved to the Gulf of Mexico to test ships for electronic hardening coming out of the Naval Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. It ended up mothballed in dry dock after U.S. Senator Richard Shelby, then a member of the Armed Services Committee, worked to eliminate a $78 million appropriation to fund the program from the budget of the Department of Defense. It was a classic example of how the watchdog press helps inform citizens in a democracy and by getting involved, “the people” create a better world along the way.

The story of how “the people” turned that into an environmental and democratic victory is recounted in my book, Jump On The Bus: Make Democracy Work Again.

Underhill became a fan and supporter of my work in the early days of the internet and world wide web, and we were in contact when I published many important political and environmental stories for The Locust Fork News-Journal out of Birmingham beginning in 2005, including the story of how the Republican Bush Justice Department turned the courts political in the prosecution of former Alabama Governor and Democrat Don Siegelman.

When BP’s Deep Water Horizon oil well began gushing its slick black crude into the Gulf in the spring of 2010, becoming the largest and worst environmental disaster in the domestic United States before the well was finally capped, we hooked up again and I consulted with Underhill as a key source of information and we became closer as friends.

In 2014 when I moved out of Birmingham and onto the MoJo road traveling and chasing stories from the Gulf Coast to Washington, D.C. in a media camper van, Underhill offered his home in the Oakleigh Garden District for use as a Southern Bureau newsroom and winter camp. We became fast friends in large part because of our editorial agreements about political and environmental issues and the need to build a strong press to make democracy work.

In talking to people who knew Underhill after the announcement of his death was posted on Facebook, I contemplated what I will miss most about David.

“I spent more time with him in Mobile in the wintertime after he fell down and broke his arm and leg at that Sierra Club meeting. We agreed on most everything and could complete each others sentences at times, especially when talking about news, politics and the environment,” I wrote. “He was one of the few people I know who kept up with the news even more than I do. I am glad I was able to help him in his final years as his health began to fail. He also helped me a lot.

“I will especially miss him as a copy editor. He caught many of my typos, spelling errors and wrong word usage in the New American Journal. He was a true expert on the language and a valuable partner in the publication. He will be dearly missed.”

I found Mr. Underhill — no relation to Frodo Baggins — to be of sterling character, and you can quote me on this: “He was the most tolerant human being I’ve ever known.”

Aaron Viles, an environmental activist we both got to know out of New Orleans, made the comment: “Our happiest warrior has left us for clean skies, just communities and pristine waters. Such a loss for Alabama and the Gulf.”

“I am so sorry to hear this,” wrote Bethany Knight Metzger, a member of the local Sierra Club. “The world was a better place with David in it.”

“David was challenging and forced people to think,” she said further in a phone text interview. “Without fail, David provided an enlightened as well as pithy point of view. Our community is a better place due to the stewardship he provided in social and environmental justice.”

Myrt Jones, the long-time leader of the Audubon Society in Mobile and Baldwin Counties and a fellow activist, said Underhill “cared for Alabama’s coastal resources and people’s lives.”

“He was the Paul Revere of our time,” she said upon learning of Underhill’s passing. “His articles alerted the reader to the ‘special interests’ numerous and constant threats, and his rallying cry for others to become involved were appreciated by all.”

Underhill also published essays and columns in CounterPunch, an alternative web publication out of California known for “muckraking” journalism.

Underhill conducted graduate work at Columbia University in New York after graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Harvard in the mid-1960s, where he wrote for the Harvard Crimson student newspaper. He graduated from Boise High School in 1959, where he was considered an outstanding student and served as student body president and governor of the American Legion Boys State of Idaho.

He is survived by a sister, Patricia Nutt of Seattle; a brother, Joel Underhill of Ellensburg, Washington, and several nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents and two brothers, James and John Underhill.

A memorial service honoring David’s life was held on Nov. 22 at 4 p.m. in Stirling Hall at All Saints Episcopal Church, 151 S Ann Street, Mobile.

In lieu of flowers, the family would like memorial donations to be made to Sierra Club Mobile Bay Group, P.O. Box 2682, Mobile AL 36652, an organization David represented and supported for many years.

Underhill was Associate Editor at the New American Journal since its founding and was committed to supporting a free press. He would also encourage people to continue supporting the ongoing work of the New American Journal.”

Link for more information and photographs of David Underhill: https://www.newamericanjournal.net/2019/11/mobile-writer-and-activist-david-underhill-dies-at-78/

David was, through the years, a frequent contributor to the Alabama Sierran. We've gathered a few of his pieces below. There are many more in the archives!

POWER FROM THE PEOPLE July 2009

by David Underhill

In a realm of Civil War re-enactors other times deserve their due too. So on Sunday May 31 the 60s staged a brief revival in Mobile’s Municipal Park. The Happenin’ it was called in homage to that era. Mobile Bay Sierra and the local MoveOn.org sponsored it to support Obama’s energy legislation. It was a collection of displays and events that flowed casually around the park’s bandstand for several hours. There was info about the bills in congress, and petitions, and entries from an enviro art contest, and wind and solar energy devices, and poetry readings, and a series of rap, rock, country, and other musical acts--along with something of no known category called the Blind Mule Improv Band.

Among the poetry (loosely speaking) composed for the occasion was the following. It offers some opinions about the head of the Southern Company, the conglomerate that includes Alabama Power. As a customer of Alabama Power, the author’s monthly payments contribute toward the CEO’s paycheck. This makes the CEO the author’s employee.

Therefore, the author expects the CEO to pay strict attention to the author’s opinions, as any worthy worker should do when the boss speaks.

No we can’t.
That dismal rant
Echoes through this entire area
With a message meant to scare ya.
They say there is no global warming.
Instead they issue us a warning
That all such talk is just a ruse
To give the liberals an excuse
To seize control of all the world
And then you’ll see their plan unfurled
To make everybody grovel
And accept life in a hovel
To save the earth’s ecology
By wrecking the economy.
Because we can’t live clean and green.
We are enslaved to our machine,
Which must run dumbly on forever,
Which means the time for change is never.

               ***************

But they don’t believe this in Apeldoorn,
A Holland town whose future’s not forlorn.
They simply decided to change their ways
By showing that’s saner and also pays.
So they’ve made a plan and are taking bids
To unplug themselves from the standard grids.
Energy misers with houses leak proof,
Walls insulated and gardens on roof.
Autos exiled for feet, busses, and bikes,
A new ethic learned by elders and tykes
To take what is given but return more
From eternal winds and waves on the shore.
That’s a power blessing of sun distilled,
Enough for most electric needs fulfilled.
And in reserve there’s a recycle loop--
The sewage system’s source of people poop,
A renewable nothing could surpass,
Its vapors burned as turbines’ biogas.

               ***************

But no we can’t
Becomes the slant
When gazes turn from Apeldoorn
To local CEOs who mourn
That other habits would be too hard on
Those long accustomed to coal and carbon.
Besides we’ve no choice about what to do.
Alternative methods are very few.
And somehow they say this with a straight face,
Not noticing that they live in a place
With sunshine enough to bake all your brains
And winds cranking up into hurricanes.
Never mind, said the power potentate,
Nothing will be lost if you hesitate.
Let’s keep using the air as a sewer.
It would cost money to do things newer.
Perhaps he thought this clever and frugal.
You can verify his words by Google.
Electric exec David Ratcliffe’s name
Is inscribed forever in cyber fame.
Snugly ensconced in his Atlanta suite,
He saw no harm in creation’s defeat.
So don’t fret your silly head about that.
He said the environment can adapt.

               ***************

His argument proves the opposite point.
So David Ratcliffe we now will anoint
Our savior, since when his sort come to pass
We’ll always have plenty of biogas.

                    David Underhill
                    5/31/09

MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL August 2009

By David Underhill

The Mobile daily paper carried a story whose headline didn’t match its contents. So I did my civic duty by pointing out this mismatch in a letter to the editor. I even offered a remedy. For my trouble I received a note saying, in effect: we would never print such a letter unless you were a major advertiser or a cousin of the publisher.
Unsurprised—but also undaunted—I took my rejected effort to a local quasi-renegade bi-weekly paper. They like to tweak the big daily sometimes. The editor looked my letter over and said: oh yeah, we’ll run this!
But they didn’t.
Despite the damage these developments did to my fragile ego, I decided to risk submitting the doubly rejected letter to the editor of the Alabama Sierran. Perhaps he will consider the issues it raises worthy of his readers’ attention. If so, you will see the letter below. If not, expect a blank space.

Dear Mobile Press-Register Editor:
Attention spans shrink to cope with the info overload. So headlines become the news, because multi-tasking hyper-activity prohibits reading a story through to the end.
COAL REGION WORRIED ABOUT EPA MINE PERMIT APPLICATION REVIEWS. That headline in your business section is all that many readers will garner as they flip through the paper while hastening on to other things. And they will take along the image of an Appalachia so depressed that truckloads of Zoloft should be dumped into the water supply to perk people up.
But reading the whole article from Charleston, WV shows that the headline could just as accurately have said the region was ELATED rather than WORRIED. The report cites only one anxious interest, the coal mine owners’ association. The elated include the Sierra Club, among other national groups, and many local ones who have campaigned for years to stop blasting mountain tops away to expose coal seams for strip mining. Immense amounts of rubble from these operations entomb neighboring valleys and streams.
The EPA’s decision to review applications for such mines slows down this “destructive practice,” as the article accurately describes it. The reporter also quotes a local environmental leader in terms fit for a headline, which could have read: MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL MINING DESTROYS ECONOMIC POTENTIAL OF APPALACHIA. Or another taken directly from the article: EPA DECISION SPURS HOPE FOR GREEN JOBS AND RENEWABLE ENERGY.
An editor with a longer view and a spiritual bent could even have construed the article to warrant a headline like this: WILL GOD’S WRATH WREAK VENGEANCE ON WRECKERS OF HIS HANDIWORK?
Newspapers everywhere are slashing staff to ward off bankruptcy. Perhaps the Press-Register has lost some of its headline writers, and the few survivors simply don’t have time to read and evaluate the entire articles they’re responsible for.
In an era of electronic outsourcing, headlines needn’t be produced in house. Neither do they need to come from Bangladesh or Bangalore. This job could be done locally and cheaply, even free.
A team of dedicated volunteers would await receipt of pending articles by email. After careful reading, a selection of appropriate headlines would be crafted and returned. Guaranteed swift turnaround time. The decision about which headlines to use would remain entirely yours, of course.
Since you are obviously in need of assistance, please contact me ASAP.
                    Sincerely,

                    David Underhill, chair
                    Mobile Bay Sierra Club