Image: Black-and-white 1941 photo of Chief Interpreter Howard Michaud standing in the center of four other people in uniform beside a roadside sign. Photo courtesy of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.
BY TERRI GORNEY LEHMAN
Howard Michaud did much to educate Hoosiers about the natural world, yet few Hoosiers know his name.
He was a native of Berne, Indiana, with deep family roots in Adams County.
When he moved to Fort Wayne after college, he became active in the local Stockbridge Audubon Society and the Indiana Audubon Society (IAS). He participated in the Fort Wayne Christmas Bird Count and was the compiler for the count in 1938. He served as an officer in both Stockbridge and IAS and was a speaker at IAS conferences.
At the age of 29, he became the first chief interpeter for the Indiana State Parks. It was a summer position; interpreters worked only from Memorial Day to Labor Day. At the time, he was based at McCormick’s Creek State Park, Indiana’s first state park.
In the 1930s through the 1950s, he gave many talks on conservation and forestry in Indiana, and led bird and nature hikes for the Department of Natural Resources. A 1937 article in the Indianapolis Star stated that a hike with Howard Michaud was a “treasured experience.”
By profession, he was a biology teacher. He first taught at Central High School, then North Side High School in Fort Wayne. In 1946, he accepted a position as professor of conservation and forestry at Purdue University. In Lafayette, he and his wife, Ruth, created a weekend camp program of nature hikes and biology lessons for the city’s fifth-grade students.
In 1961, he became president of the Indiana Academy of Science.
Over his teaching career, he influenced many of his students. They include Marion T. Jackson, author of “The Natural Heritage of Indiana” and “101 Trees of Indiana,” and Erik Neumann, former director of the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C.
In 1991, Gov. Evan Bayh named Michaud a Sagamore of the Wabash, a fitting honor since he grew up fishing in the Wabash River. He later received the Theodore Roosevelt Award from the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE). After his death in 1998 at age 95, the Indiana NAAEE chapter named an award in his honor.
Cheers to Howard Michaud and his long and productive life.
This blog post was written by Hoosier historian and naturalist Terri Gorney Lehman as part of her Flight Paths Through History series, exploring the people, places, and moments that have shaped Indiana birding.
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