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VOL. 14
NO. 3 APRIL 2014
Denis Hayes – Environmental Activist Extraordinaire The inspiring story of the Northwest and global activist best known for leading the first Earth Day and heading The Bullitt Foundation …by Adam Conley
I
t’s not often you meet someone who says they face each day excited about the work that lies before them.
realized the inordinate amount of rust and corrosion destroying their automobiles was the same stuff they were breathing. In addition to premature deaths associated with the pollution, most working men were deaf by the age of 50 or 55 due to the thunderous noise from the equipment they worked with at the mill. “For the first seventeen years of my life,” recalls Denis, “I had a nagging sore throat.” However, this did not stop him from hopping on his bike to explore the surrounding Columbia River basin, or hiking through the nearby forests. Denis
Denis Hayes is best known for organizing the first Earth Day, which is now recognized in 192 countries and is considered the world’s largest observed secular holiday. Denis has headed Seattle’s Bullitt Foundation since 1992. Photo courtesy the Bullitt Foundation
So it is with Denis Hayes, to be, one prominent environmental activist, of the most national coordinator of the first Earth beautiful Day, and president of the Seattlenatural spots based Bullitt Foundation since 1992. in the world to “I have the gigantic good fortune Denis. to get up in the morning and work on One of something I care about,” proclaims many pivotal Denis with infectious enthusiasm. moments in To engage Denis Hayes in his life took conversation is to enter into his world place in 1961 for a moment and become inspired by as a junior at the many things that clearly light his Camas High fire. This articulate, highly intelligent School (now and thoughtful man speaks with named for passion and conviction that both him). Denis compels and energizes. enrolled in The Hayes family moved an Ecology from Espinola, Ontario to Camas, Seminar where Washington in 1950. It was here, he read Eugene growing up a stone’s throw from Odum’s the banks of the classic text Columbia River, On April 22, 1970, an estimated 20 million Fundamentals that Denis began people came together in virtually every city, of Ecology. to cultivate a love town, village, and crossroad in the country for for nature and the the world’s first Earth Day, an event coordinated “This was before we outdoors. by Denis Hayes even had a Denis’ father vocabulary for ecology as we now remembers made his living at understand it, but it was still an exploring the local paper mill important moment for me,” says green verdant as was the case with Denis. The seeds were planted that forests, only most men of that would shape the values by which to be suddenly time and place. Denis The Bullitt Foundation offices are located in Denis has made and continues disoriented recalls his father The Bullitt Center, a Seattle office building to make a global impact on the by stumbling held hard-working known as "The Greenest Commercial relationship humans have with this conservative values. Building in the World" - Photo by Nic Lehoux across a clearblue and green globe we call home. cut wasteland, He also possessed a As his teenaged years unfolded or “moonscape” in his parlance, that certain stoic pride in his role as the into adulthood, Denis spent two years had been sacrificed to feed the mill. operator of paper machine number at Clark Community College before “[The mill was] a great digesting 10, which was responsible for deciding to hitchhike around the machine, continually devouring producing paper that wrapped frozen world. A feverish bug for adventure the forests we’d go hiking in,” he food products. and world travel had fully settled in. explains. To Denis’ father and the rest After failing to get a job on a Denis remembers a happy of the town, the sulfur dioxide and round-the-world cargo-ship, Denis childhood growing up in Camas. other chemical pollutants thrown managed to secure a $99 passage on a The forty-mile round-trip bicycle off by the paper mill were tolerated vessel headed to Hawaii. He lived the ride to the Beacon Rock area of the as “the smell of prosperity.” As carefree life of a Waikiki surfer for a Columbia River was, and continues Denis recalls, nobody at the time
while and worked as a disc jockey at KNDI radio station in Honolulu. Eventually, Denis managed to get himself to Japan, where his ‘roundthe-world adventure continued. A job as an assistant at a swimming pool led to a position as director of an athletic club. With savings amassed over the summer, Denis, at age 20, began a hitchhiking odyssey that took him all over the world. He has visited over 140 countries in his lifetime. Denis traversed places that today would be unthinkable for their instability and threat to Americans. But in the mid-1960s, it was possible to travel just about anywhere in the world, including (if you were careful) countries behind the Iron Curtain. Denis spent time in Eastern Europe, even train-hopping as far as Siberia on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and hitchhiked through the Middle East. As he made his way down the West Coast of Africa, via the generosity and hospitality of others, he was reading Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. This seminal work, which explores the dehumanizing effects of colonization, had a profound impact on Denis’ mindset during his travels. “I wanted to experience all the different parts of the world,” exclaims Denis, “and I must honestly confess that most of what I found in developing nations was quite depressing.” It was in Southwest Africa, a place that is now called Namibia, that Denis experienced a second pivotal, life-changing experience. Indeed, this moment might be defined as a kind of crucible that forged the Denis Hayes we now know, giving him clarity of purpose for how he would spend the rest of his life. continued on page 26