|
FRANCIS HOLLIS FAY (1927-1994) |
|
|
Francis H. Fay ('Bud') was a distinguished marine
mammalogist, a dedicated scholar, and a man of unwavering
integrity who inspired colleagues, students, and friends. Bud
died of a heart attack on 9 June 1994 at his home in Fairbanks.
Bud was born in 1927 in Melrose, Massachusetts, the last of
three children. He received his B.S. degree from the University
of New Hampshire in 1950 and his M.S. from the University
of Massachusetts in 1952. His early interests were focused on
lagomorphs, and his M.S. thesis was on the ecology of cottontail
rabbits. A summer job manning a fire lookout in Oregon
introduced him to pikas, and Bud was determined to investigate
their ecology for his doctoral studies. At the University of
British Columbia, however, Ian McTaggart-Cowan had a
different idea; he sent Bud north to investigate the life history
of the Pacific walrus. In the spring of 1952, Bud hitched a ride
on a military ship to the village of Gambell on St. Lawrence
Island. He had little money, but he possessed a wealth of
interest in the natural environment and respect for the islanders'
know- ledge. The patience and skills he learned from the
people of the island proved more valuable than money in
feeding himself over the five months he spent on the island. His
teachers on the island, especially Charles and Vernon Slwooko,
taught him a great deal about walrus ecology, and they |
|
|
provided him with specimens he used to describe the reproduction,
growth, and anatomy of Pacific walruses. |
|
|
In 1953, Bud returned to the island with his young bride,
Barbara, and they spent seven months collecting specimens
and data on walruses, terrestrial mammals, and birds of the
island. Barbara and Bud were a formidable team, and they
continued to work well together for the rest of Bud's life. |
|
|
On St. Lawrence Island, Bud developed a reputation as a
great walker, for he traveled many miles over the tundra on
foot. Stories of his exploits in that era are still told today on
the island. His efforts on St. Lawrence Island from 1952 to
1954 culminated in his doctoral thesis on the spatial ecology,
life history, and population biology of Pacific walruses. |
|
|
In 1955, Bud was hired by Robert L. Rausch as a medical
biologist at the Arctic Health Research Laboratory in Anchorage.
In that position, he studied zoonotic diseases and the
helminth fauna of Alaska as well as continuing his investigations
of marine mammal biology and ecology. His passion
remained walrus biology, however, and he continued to study
and publish on that subject. |
|
|
Bud and Barbara's two children, Holly and Jeff, were born
in Anchorage. The family moved to Fairbanks with the Arctic
Health Research Laboratory in 1967. When the laboratory
closed in 1974, Bud received a joint appointment to the
Institute of Marine Science and the Institute of Arctic Biology
at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. In 1982, Bud published
his monograph on walruses, Ecology and Biology of
the Pacific Walrus, Odobenus rosmarus divergens Illiger, in
the North American Fauna Series. The book was a masterful
piece of scholarship and reflected not only years of hard work
but also Bud's painstaking attention to detail. He did not stop
there, however, and he continued to investigate walrus taxonomy, population biology, and ecology right up until the
time of his death. His relentless search for knowledge of
walruses led him to the Russian literature. He learned the
Russian language in order to read that literature, and over the
years he and Barbara carefully translated over 120 scientific
articles from Russian into English. One year before Bud's
death, they completed a monumental translation of Konstantin
Chapskii's 111-page monograph entitled The Walrus of the
Kara Sea. |
|
|
Bud was dedicated to international cooperation in research
and management, as demonstrated by the enthusiasm with
which he shared his translations of Russian literature and by
his early and continuous activity as a member of the Steering-
Planning Committee of the Marine Mammal Project under
the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Agreement on Environmental Protection.
He participated in numerous research cruises aboard Russian
vessels and studied pinniped phylogeny and taxonomy in
museums around the world. In 1990, he organized and chaired
the first international workshop on walruses and prepared the
report, "The Ecology and Management of Walrus Populations." |
|
|
Bud was deeply interested in the evolution and taxonomy
of pinnipeds, and he contributed to that field in publications
and by collecting specimens. His contributions to the University
of Alaska Museum helped make theirs one of the foremost
pinniped collections. His views were widely sought and
reflected in many of the major works on pinniped phylogeny. |
|
|
Bud's selflessness was notable to all who crossed his path
and remains evident in the ubiquity of his name in the
acknowledgement sections of a diverse literature. On more
than one occasion, Bud was ill-treated by a colleague, but he
never retaliated. Instead, he continued to treat everyone as he
wanted to be treated. As a consequence, no one could ever
doubt the sincerity of his every utterance or the consideration
that went into all of his ideas and opinions. Indeed, his
counsel was sought by many, and he reluctantly served on a
long list of scientific advisory boards (the Marine Mammal
Commission, the Seal Specialist Group of the International
Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, the
Science Advisory Committee to the Alaska Eskimo Whaling
Commission, and the Scientific and Statistical Committee of
the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, to name a
few). He served reluctantly because those duties took time
away from the research that was his passion. |
|
|
Bud took great care in his use of both the Russian and
English languages. His students were treated regularly to
floods of red ink, which temporarily devastated egos but
ultimately honed their writing skills. He always admonished
them to speak and write as though English were not the
listener or reader's first language. Editors, translators, and
non-native speakers always appreciated his efforts. |
|
|
To complete his walrus monograph, Bud was forced to
turn over a smaller writing assignment to me. As he laboured
to meet deadlines and produce clear, precise prose, he became
uncharacteristically short with his students. We decided that,
for everyone's sake, he and I would trade offices during the
day. Every morning, we would roll carts containing our
writing materials past each other in the hall as we went to one
another's desk. He would write in the relative quiet of my
office, and I would write at his desk between visits by students
seeking his advice. Finding me at his desk, they would depart,
disappointed not to have his thoughts and relieved not to have
been growled at. In the evenings, Bud and I would roll our
carts back to our own offices, trading our writing efforts for
the day. At home, we would edit each other's work, returning
it in the hall the next morning. It was much easier to find fault
with my prose than with his, so I was somewhat pleased to
discover that many of his sentences began with the conjunction,
"however." I smugly reworked his sentences, moving
the conjunction to a place within a sentence or removing it
altogether. The next day, I gave the "improved" text to Bud,
and he gave me my reworked piece. Reading it over, I was
horrified to see that he had inserted "however" into the
beginning of a startling number of my sentences. For several
nights, I pulled "howevers" from his text while he liberally
inserted them into mine. We stubbornly argued in the hallway
each morning, but could not convince one another. I resorted
to Strunk and White, who backed me up, but Bud was little
impressed. Then, quite by accident, I came across an argumentative
correspondence between Lord Rutherford and
Niels Bohr. At the end of a letter reviewing one of Bohr's first
manuscripts, Rutherford sniped, "It would be better not to
start every sentence with 'however'." In the morning, in the
hallway, I gave Bud a copy of the exchange and commented
that at least we were in good company. Bud changed his use
of the conjunction, and we laughed often over the word in
subsequent years. However, it never was clear whether he
deferred to me or to Lord Rutherford. |
|
|
We miss his passion for research, his editing, and his
humor. We were indeed in good company. |
|
|
Bud's family has established a memorial scholarship fund
to support promising students in marine science. Tax-free
contributions may be made to the Francis (Bud) Fay Memorial
through the University of Alaska Foundation, P.O. Box
755080, Fairbanks, Alaska 99775-5080, U.S.A. |
|
Brendan P. Kelly
Institute of Marine Science
University of Alaska
Fairbanks, Alaska, U.S.A.
99775-7200
|
|
from ARCTIC
VOL. 48, NO. 1 (MARCH 1995) P.107-108
|
|
|
|