The World Wildlife Federation and the Hornaday Award Page 3
By Dave Eby
A Pictorial History of the Hornaday Awards |
    |
| According to the 1951 BSA National Report to Congress, no badges or medals were awarded that year. The first Hornaday Unit Award however was presented to a Boy Scout Troop in Bristol, Virginia in 1951. It was the only one that was presented in the nation that year. |
    |
  |
The "Other"
|
| Originally conceived in 1911, William
Temple Hornaday in 1913 formally created the Permanent Wild Life
Protection Fund (P.W.L.P.F.), whose purpose was to promote through
legislation and other means, more protection for wildlife around the
world. The Fund was a stand-alone organization and not an extension
of some other group. It was essentially a war chest to combat anti
wildlife forces. Dr. Hornaday decided that the Fund needed monies in
the amount of $100,000.00 to be fully endowed and have the ability
to achieve its objectives. The Fund had three Trustees of whom two
were bankers with Dr. Hornaday serving as the third Trustee. Dr.
Hornaday had complete control over how it was used and spent. His
goal of raising $ 100,000 was finally achieved on November 17, 1915.
The list of donors to the Fund is somewhat surprising. The largest
donor by far and also the person to receive the very first Wildlife
Protection Gold Medal was Mrs. (Russell) Margaret Olivia Sage. The
very first Gold Medal was awarded to Mrs. Sage on June 29, 1917
along with a certificate and the first copy of the Second Biennial
Statement of the Fund, which was a thick hardbound book written by
Dr. Hornaday. She had inherited $63 million in 1900 when her husband
died and she became one of the great philanthropists of the early
1900’s. She donated $25,000 or one fourth of the total needed for
the P.W.L.P.F. In 1912 she had also purchased the massive
76-000-acre Marsh Island in the Gulf of Mexico and donated it to the
State of Louisiana as a bird sanctuary as which, it remains. The
next highest donation was $6,000 by George Eastman (of Eastman
Kodak). There were eight donors of $5,000 each that included Henry
Ford and Andrew Carnegie. National Scouter Mortimer Schiff also
donated at the $ 1,000 level to the' Fund. When William T. Hornaday
died on March 6, 1937 at age 82, the Permanent Wild Life Protection
Fund was bequeathed to the New York Zoological Society and became
the beginning of their conservation endowment which was exactly what
its original bylaws stated should happen when it was created. The
New York Zoological Society continued to sponsor the BSA awards for
about 35 years, presumably through the endowment. During his lifetime, William Hornaday was the Chief of the National Zoo in Washington D.C., the founder of the New York City Zoo in 1899 (now called the Bronx Zoo), and Chief Taxidermist of the U.S. National Museum (the Smithsonian). He also revolutionized how museums displayed wildlife exhibits. Before he came along they were simply mounted and placed on a board. He created what we call a diorama and showed wildlife in their natural settings. The first time he did this with monkeys it created a sensation. Surprisingly, Dr. Hornaday was at one time a big game hunter. He established the National Collection of Homs and Heads at the Bronx Zoo when it appeared big game animals would become extinct. That collection is now owned by the Boone & Crockett Club and on display at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. Dr. Hornaday is widely credited with saving the American bison and the Alaskan fur seal from extinction. He also played a large part in ending the use of feathers in women’s hats. This alone saved millions of birds from slaughter. He was the first director of the New York Zoological Society, which is now known as the Wildlife Conservation Society (since 1994). He was also the President of the U.S. Junior Naval Reserve in 1916 and was a published poet. He' was a very influential writer and wrote hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles and more than twenty books which greatly helped bring about far reaching conservation laws. He was also the author of the 1929 BSA Bird Study merit badge book. He', along with Ernest Thompson Seton, is among the 27 people enshrined in the National Wildlife Federation Conservation Hall of Fame. Seton was selected in 1968, Hornaday in 1971. The very first person chosen for the Hall of Fame was another icon of Scouting in it’s early years. It was not Audubon or John Muir, but Theodore Roosevelt, who was inducted in 1964. Dr. Hornaday was considered to be a bit eccentric in his day and was involved in a highly controversial exhibit at the Bronx Zoo in 1906 that involved an African named Ota Benga and ended in tragedy. According to Dr. Hornaday. in 1915 the P.W.L.P.F. Trustees developed the gold “Wild Life Protection Medal” to present to people who had "rendered conspicuous services to the cause of wild life”. Every Website on the' planet including the BSA says 1914 but I believe we can presume Dr. Hornaday was the best authority on exactly when the program was created. In the first 1913-1914 Annual Statement of the P.W.L.P.F. published in March 1915, it was announced that the Fund was creating a special medal and that the first thought was to offer it strictly to the BSA but the Trustees decided to make it available around the world. It was also mentioned that the medal was still in the design stage at that point. I would like to point out that the design of the badge or top part of the eventual medal was pictured on the cover of the 1913¬1914 Annual Statement. It was the logo of the Fund throughout its existence. The Trustees of the P.W.L.P.F. made the medals (and later the badges) available to three separate other organizations besides the P.W.L.P.F. itself. The French National League for the Protection of Birds in France, the Peoples Home Journal Magazine for a readers campaign starting in 1918 and the Boy Scouts of America for its members all used the P.W.L.P.F. medal. Thus there were four different groups giving out the same awards. The Fund also had a certificate award that was an “Honorable Mention” type although it was not known to have been used within the Boy Scouts program. Based on the known BSA awarded specimens that can be verified, the BSA awards without exception had the recipients names inscribed on the back of the award. None of them were awarded without the inscription. Should there be any medals/badges out there without inscriptions they would probably be the non-BSA awards from one of the other groups using the program. . "The Trustees of the Fund formally offered to makes it's awards available to the Boy Scouts of America and proposed that the Courts of Honor of the Scouts should themselves designate the Scouts to whom medals and gold badges should be awarded". Again, the medals were not created solely as a Boy Scout awards program and the early medals were NOT called the "Hornaday Medal" (not until after his death in 1937) even though many Internet websites say otherwise. Among the early non-Scout recipients were naturalist Aldo Leopold (1917) and author Thornton Burgess (1919) who both received the medal directly from the P.W.L.P.F. It is unknown if the non-BSA awards programs continued on after the death of Dr. Hornaday although in all likelihood they did not. At that point it may well have become a BSA only program. Most of the collectors of Scouting memorabilia are well aware of the Hornaday Award, or at least the one that has been around since 1952. Most are unaware that there is a Type I and a Type II Hornaday Gold Medal and Gold Badge. Some Scouting memorabilia collectors refer to the early medal as the "World Wildlife Federation Medal" which it is not and never was. According to a history of the award that Dr. Hornaday himself wrote in 1931. between 1915 and 1931, fifteen of these gold medals were awarded to individuals including just three to members of Scouting and the others to individuals outside of Scouting. A total of thirty Gold Badges were awarded during that same time period according to Dr. Hornaday's records with twenty three of them being members of the BSA. The Scouting recipient's gold medals were awarded through the National Court of Honor and were referred to by the BSA as the wild Life Protection Medal" through 1937. It should be made clear that ALL the medals were awarded as the Wild Life Protection Medal of the P.W.L.P.F. both inside and outside of Scouting through 1937. It was not a BSA created award program but one that had simply been made available to the BSA by the P.W.L.P.F. Trustees. According to National BSA information, in 1938, after Dr. Hornaday's death, the awards were renamed the Hornaday Medals and Badges. The only difference between the pre-1938 BSA awarded Wild Life Protection Gold Medals and Badges and the post-1938 BSA awarded Hornaday Gold Medals and Badges is the inscription on the back of the medals. They remained identical otherwise. In a 1922 BSA national publication it is stated " A (BSA) committee ...was appointed to revise the requirements for this medal, which had seemed perhaps not entirely appropriate for boy service". A 1921 BSA national publication stated "this revision has been thought advisable as Dr. Hornaday believes that the requirements are too difficult for boys to meet." This very much appears to state that the BSA determined their own guidelines that were used for selecting Scouting recipients for the awards and not Dr. Hornaday. They apparently were quite high initially in Dr. Hornaday's estimation and since seven years went by before the first medal was awarded to a member of Scouting, he was probably correct. Even then it went to an adult. The Type I gold medal was awarded to members of Scouting a total of nine times between 1920 and 1950. There is a discrepancy between the list of medal recipients Dr. Hornaday published in 1931 and National BSA records. Hornaday lists an Eagle Scout from Bristol, Tennessee receiving the medal in 1926 that is not listed in the BSA records. BSA records show only eight being presented through the National Court of Honor. The first Wildlife Protection Gold Medal awarded to a member of the BSA was in 1922 to Scoutmaster Harry (or Henry) Hall of Carbondale. PA. In 1923 (BSA records) (1922 in Hornaday records) Mr. Hall, an adult, received the Gold Medal for twenty years of service to wild life. That same year, the first gold Honor Badge awards were established (and presented) which was known as the “Honor Badge for Distinguished Services To Wild Life” in Dr. Hornaday's 1931 history. Interestingly enough many of the Type 1 BSA Honor Badges were awarded to adults as well as boys. The badge was the top part of the Gold Medal (minus the ribbon and medallion) with an additional oval disk that had "For Services To Wild Life" on it. They were cast as one piece as was not two pieces soldered together. They had a reddish glaze material on the front. Three badges were awarded to Scouts in Sulfur Springs. Texas and Pittsburgh, PA that first year. This would be the Type I Honor Badge. In Dr. Hornaday's list there is an adult Scouter recipient of the1 badge in 1922 who is not listed in BSA records at all. The pre 1937 badges state on the back “Permanent Wild Life Protection Fund” with the individuals name engraved on the back while the post 1937 badges state “Hornaday Award presented by the Boy Scouts of America to:” with the individual’s name engraved on it. The fronts are identical and both types were cast with wording into each badge. While the design of the medal remained the same through 1950, it is clear that there were only four Type 1 “Hornaday Medals” issued by the BSA. as they were not officially named as such until 1938. The first “official” Hornaday Medal was not awarded until 1941. (None were awarded in 1938, 1939 or 1940) Only three' more were awarded after that including years 1943 (which is pictured), 1945 and 1949. BSA national publications clearly state this. The last year the Type I BSA Honor Badges were awarded was in 1950 when five were presented. In 1951 the BSA awarded no medals or badges but the first BSA Unit Hornaday Award was presented to Troop 16 in Bristol, Virginia. In 1952 the newly designed Type II BSA Hornaday Medals and Badges were awarded for the first time in the current design. Seven Type II medals and 17 Type II badges were awarded in 1952. Of the nine Type I Gold Medals awarded within the BSA. the first five were presented as "Wildlife Protection Medals" by the National Court of Honor and just the last four as "Hornaday Medals". The 1943 specimen came inscribed on the back as “Hornaday Medal”. Presumably the other three are the same. Just over 1,000 medals of both design types have been awarded to members of the BSA in the last eighty plus years while well over one million Eagle Scout Medals have been presented during the same period. In the 1970's the current awards system was established with partial funding being provided at that time by the DuPont Company. The 1943 medal as a whole weighs exactly 1/10 of a pound. The medallion weighs 1.25 ounces with the ribbon, metal rings and badge weighing the remainder. I did not take the medal apart to weight the badge separately. Gold was going for $20.72 an ounce in 1915-16 so with the presumed gold content of the medal right at 1.5 ounces, it seemed to me there was over $30.00 worth of gold in the medal without any expenses for the ribbon, labor, die creation, shipping, etc. In the second bi-annual Statement of the Permanent Wild Life Protection Fund 1915-1916, (authored by W.T. Hornaday) which was published as a thick hardcover book with only 100 being printed, it states the Fund paid $172.50 for medals during that two-year period. How many were purchased is not disclosed. There are some incredibly tiny letters and numbers stamped under the hallmark on the 1943 medal. After scanning and magnifying them many times, they read “1/510KGF”. A local jeweler informed me that it means, “one fifth, 10 karat gold filled”. What that means in English is that the medal is not solid gold as I thought but has very little true gold content although it doe's have some. It is a step above gold plated but not much more. Dr. Hornaday was in contact with the designer of the medal in 1915 via letters back and forth. His name was H. Newman and he was a jeweler. Mr. Newman created a magnificent medal and then some. His hallmark is on the reverse side of the medal, a shield with an “N” inside the shield. Some of the other non-Scouts that received the early medal were two Presidents of Mexico. Probably far and away the most extraordinary recipient of the Wild Life Protection Gold Medal was Lenhardt E. Bauer of Terre Haute, Indiana who received the gold medal in 1920. His story is mentioned in the 1922 National BSA Report to Congress as we'll as the 1927 edition BSA Scout Handbook even though he was NOT a Boy- Scout. Curiously he is not listed on Hornaday's list of recipients but may have received it through the Peoples Home Journal magazine campaign. He created 266 private wildlife sanctuaries by convincing the owners of farms and other lands of the need and got written pledges from them to dedicate their land for wildlife preservation. The reason he was not a Boy Scout was that he was not old enough to join. He was nine or possibly ten years old when he was awarded the Wild Life Protection Medal. He was born in 1910 and received it in 1920. Lenhardt lost his father at age 13 and worked many jobs to help his family. He grew up to be a lawyer and was a state legislator by age 22. He was admitted to the State Bar one year before he graduated from college. A catastrophic fire later in life apparently destroyed his medal and many other personal items according to his son. It is said that he had an exceptional gift of persuasion. There was one person in Scouting who was a double recipient of the Type 1 awards. Harold Whitford of New York received the Type 1 Gold Badge in 1930. and then in 1934 received the Type I Gold Medal. The 1929 Gold Medal (#3 of the Scouting medals) was awarded to Arthur E. Roberts, the longtime executive of the Cincinnati Council in Ohio. Mr. Roberts founded Camp Friedlander in 1919, which is the twelfth oldest surviving Scout camp in the country, and he also was the founder of the Tribe of Ku-Ni-Eh (in 1922), which was the main competitor for years with the Order of The Arrow as far as camp honor societies go. I have already tracked down his family on this one and it is unknown what happened to it (or his other things). There was never more than one gold medal awarded in any single year therefore it is probably safe to say that the Type I Hornaday Gold Medal (four issued: 1941, 1943, 1945 and 1949) is Scouting’s rarest national award. The Type I Wild Life Protection Gold Medal would be a close second with a total of five issued in 1922, 1926, 1929, 1934, and 1936. 1f you are confused, these nine medals were the exact same medal. They were awarded and inscribed on the back as one or the other depending if they were awarded before or after 1938. The lone 1943 Type 1 Hornaday Medal (#2 of the four Hornaday Type 1 Medals), which is pictured, was donated to the Camp Miakonda Museum in Ohio. 1t was inscribed on the reverse side as the "Hornaday Medal" and came that way from the National Council. The medal was awarded to Louis Klewer of Toledo who was a nationally known outdoors expert and writer. He was also a 1917 Eagle Scout and one of the original 1914 members of the Tribe of Gimogash in the Toledo Council. He also was the first 70 year Scouting veteran in the country in 1983. 1t may be of interest to know that Mr. Klewer grew up in a tough neighborhood in Toledo and would usually get into a fight when he wore his Scout uniform to meetings, which he always did. He took up boxing and became a professional boxer in high school as a bantamweight. He enlisted in the Marine Corp at the end of WW1 as a Marine. When WW11 came around he was too old to serve his country in the military so he took a leave of absence from his job and worked as a Red Cross volunteer in war tom Europe. He was one of a tiny number of civilians in WW11 who was awarded the Bronze Star by the military (also in 1943) for heroism for rescuing people at great danger to himself in France. The Hornaday Medal was awarded while he was serving his country overseas. He was later a member of the prestigious Explorers Club of New York City and actually was part of an expedition to Antarctica in his later years. The medal was donated with the stipulation that it cannot be sold or loaned out and if the camp is sold or the museum disbanded, the medal must be placed in the National BSA museum. The medal is on display along with other Scout items from Mr. Klewer as is a collection on the Tribe of Gimogash, Scouting's earliest known honor program. The museum building was built in 1917 and is the second oldest known surviving BSA camp building in the country. Miaxonda itself is the sixth oldest Boy Scout camp in the nation and probably the most storied. The museum is open to visitors only on Saturdays or by special appointment. 1f you want to visit call 1 -800- 241-7293 ahead of time. The camp has it's own Historical Trail outlining it's considerable history and has a large historical marker placed near it's entrance. 1f you find yourself in Northwest Ohio, stop by. 1t is located near the Michigan-Ohio line off U.S.23. A sincere thank you is extended to the Camp Miakonda Museum, to Paul Myers Jr. for his priceless resources, to the archives of the Bronx Zoo and to the archives of the Rockefeller Archive Center for information used in this article. A thank you is extended to Ruth Crocker, author of “Splendid Donation: A Life of Margaret: Olivia Sage” (Indiana 2003) and to Baltimore collector Paul Kramer who happens to be one of the initial seven 1952 recipients of the Type 11 Hornaday Medal. Additional information was drawn from various locations including national BSA publications, unpublished Hornaday letters and one rare book containing the Wildlife Protection Medal's early history and partial list of recipients. In addition the very early annual statements of the Permanent Wild Life Protection Fund were referenced. I will be placing this article at my Website and will include a list of the early known medal recipients; a listing of books authored by Dr. Hornaday and several full color scans of the magnificent Type I Hornaday Medal. It is spectacular. Of the nine Type I BSA awarded medals including the four Hornaday Type I medals, only the location of two has been determined. The 1936 Wild Life Protection Medal awarded to Hollis Two (in a private collection) and the 1943 ( Klewer) Hornaday Type 1 medal (in the Miakonda Museum). Some of the other seven may still exist somewhere. Good hunting and good luck! |
|
|
| Paul Myers Goshen,
Indiana gimogash@comcast.net |
