Thanks for the Memories

Ed. note: To cap our 25th anniversary year, we invited the first editor of The George Wright Forum, Jean Matthews, to share her thoughts on the evolution of the GWS, starting with the creation of the organization in 1980. Jean edited the Forum throughout much of the 1980s, and helped set a tone of forthrightness and candor for the journal—one which we have tried to maintain ever since. Trained as a journalist, Jean worked as a newspaper reporter before beginning a government writing career in 1962. Initially a speech writer for Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall and Ladybird Johnson, she also produced several highly regarded yearbooks on the work and staff of the Department of the Interior. In the early 1970s, Jean began writing speeches for NPS Director George Hartzog and served on an environmental education task force that sought to integrate natural systems concepts into NPS interpretive media. Jean’s idea to publicize the marriage of science and resource management came about in 1980 when she launched the journal Park Science, a project she oversaw until her retirement in 1994. A year later Jean was named a co-winner of the Society’s highest honor, the George Melendez Wright Award for Excellence. As you’ll see, although “retired,” Jean maintains her passion for bringing the best science to bear on park management.