Samuel P. Hays arrived in Pittsburgh in 1960 as the head of the history department at the University of Pittsburgh. At that time the Sierra Club was mainly a California organization with minor membership east of the Mississippi. In 1970 Judge Rolf Larsen was instrumental in forming the Allegheny Group in Pittsburgh as a branch of the Atlantic Chapter of New York.
With his interest in the history of the conservation movement, and his time in Oregon forests as a conscientious objector during the Second World War, it was only a short time before Sam joined the leadership of the Allegheny Group. He became the new group’s leader on forest and state park issues. In the seventies his major concern was clear-cutting on public lands and he strongly objected to former Gov. Gifford Pinchot’s philosophy of viewing public forests solely in terms of profitability and commercial use. The concern with forest management lead to his support of Dick Pratt and others in incorporating areas of the Forest into the National Wilderness Preservation System in 1984.
Shortly after the Allegheny Group was formed in Pittsburgh the state Chapter was created in Harrisburg. This was the beginning of many trips by Sam and his wife Bobby to Executive Committee meetings in the state capital. Sam became chair of the chapter’s Public Lands committee, a position he held until 2000. In Chapter Executive Committee meetings Sam arguing strongly for the need of a full-time Sierra Club lobbyist and indeed in 1983 an office was opened in Harrisburg with full-time staff.
Samuel P. Hays of the Sierra Club Allegheny Group
As was his bent as an academic, Sam wrote position papers, et cetera, for Sierra Club members to use at public hearings, but it was also Sam’s strong belief that once people learned about and enjoyed wild places in Pennsylvania they would become strong advocates for protecting the state forests from commercial exploitation. So he and wife Bobby led numerous Sierra Club hikes, especially in the Laurel Ridge area.
In line with his belief that protection of the environment could no longer rely on the elite, as was the case of the early wilderness movement, Sam was a strong advocate of public education, and for years he chaired the program of monthly talks at the Allegheny Group During his thirty years with the Sierra Club in Pennsylvania Sam was an important leader, always digging for the root cause of the problems we dealt with and providing the ethical compass that we sometimes needed.
Bobby was Sam’s constant companion in the Sierra Club. After their four children finished with school she was involved in the Allegheny Group and an enthusiastic outings leader. She was group chair in 1985-87 and Chapter membership chair 1996-98. In his 2000 Sam acknowledged Bobby’s help with the organizing and writing of his last book, “A History of Environmental Politics since 1945”.
We lost touch with Sam and Bobby when they moved to Boulder in 2000. But during the past year I wondered what Sam thought of the calamitous changes in Washington, with clear-cutting on state forests seeming to be an almost quaint concern compared to what is happening now to our planet.
Sam died on November 22, 2017 and his wife joined him on January 31, 2018.
This article was writte by Peter Wray and is part of our Summer 2018 Sylvanian Newsletter. To read other articles from this issue, please click here.