Tribute to John M. Kingsbury

In Memoriam

John M. Kingsbury 1928 - 2023

REMEMBERING JOHN M. KINGSBURY John Merriam Kingsbury was born in Boston, MA on July 4, 1928, the oldest son of Willis and Constance Kingsbury. Constance died when John was just six years old. John, or Jack, as he was known throughout his life, grew up working on Woodside Farm in Framingham, MA during the great depression and World War II, an experience that instilled in him the value of hard work, an interest in plants that would later form the basis for his career as a botanist, and a resourcefulness that he would call on throughout his life. Jack also spent part of each summer at his grandfather’s home on Cape Cod, developing a love for the ocean that never left him.

When the U.S. military draft for World War II ended shortly before Jack turned 18, he volunteered with the Unitarian Service Committee, which sent Jack to Czechoslovakia the summer of 1947 and to France in 1948, where he worked at a home for the children of Spanish refugees. His observations and experiences traveling around Europe, including to Andorra, France, and Germany, on a small motorcycle were captured in reports he sent back for the Framingham, MA newspaper.

Jack earned a bachelor’s degree in botany and animal husbandry in 1950 from the University of Massachusetts, where his botany professor Ray Ethan Torrey encouraged him to pursue further study, which Jack did, earning a master’s (1952) and a doctorate (1954) in botany from Harvard University.

Jack served as an instructor at Brandeis from 1953-54 while completing his doctorate, then joined the faculty at Cornell University in 1954 earning appointments as a Professor of Botany in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, where he taught courses in phycology (“Biology of the Algae”), and a Professor of Clinical Sciences in the Veterinary College, where

Photo from the SML archives

he taught “Toxicity of Poisonous Plants.” He also served as a Fulbright Senior Scholar and visiting professor at the University of Tasmania, Australia; a lecturer for the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA, including for the yearly Aquavet Program of the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell, and for the Massachusetts Audubon Society Wellfleet Sanctuary at Cape Cod; Interim Director of the Cornell Botanic Gardens; President and Trustee of the Sea Education Association at Woods Hole; and Board member of the New York State Nature Conservancy.

Jack’s father was a lawyer by profession and an amateur naturalist and philosopher, and he taught Jack reasoned argument and precise writing. Jack used these skills and his love of teaching to write a dozen books, including Poisonous Plants of the United States and Canada, a textbook for doctors and veterinarians, Deadly Harvest on the history of plant poisoning in humans and animals, which was illustrated by noted artist/illustrator Elfriede Abbe, with drawings from Jack’s wife Louise Kingsbury, and The Rocky Shore on seashore biology. His articles appeared in numerous academic journals, most notably the Journal of Botany and Clinical Toxicology, and in the popular press, including American Agriculturist, National Wildlife, The Herbarist, and The New York Times. Jack’s scholarly work was recognized by the American Academy of Veterinary and Comparative Toxicology, which named him a fellow, and by an honorary doctorate from Dickinson College.

In the 1960s, Jack’s work on seashore biology led him and a Cornell colleague, John Anderson, to conceive of a teaching and research laboratory on Appledore Island off the coast of Maine, a collaboration between Cornell and the University of New Hampshire. Jack served as the founding director. Years later he wrote an informal history of the planning and building of the Shoals Marine Laboratory, called Here’s How We’ll Do It, which explains how he and others managed to build a million-dollar laboratory with no authorized budget. Fifty years later, students continue to enroll Photo from the SML archives

Photo from the SML archives

in summer courses and engage in research at the Laboratory.

While serving as director of the Shoals Laboratory, Jack restored Celia Thaxter’s historic garden on Appledore Island, made famous in an 1890 Childe Hassam painting.

Jack’s primary source was Celia Thaxter’s own book, An Island Garden, which includes a detailed diagram and list of plants. Jack republished Celia Thaxter’s book with Childe Hassam’s illustrations. In 1973, when the Shoals Laboratory faced a crisis due to a proposal by Aristotle Onassis to build an oil refinery on the coast of Durham, New Hampshire, with a supertanker terminal adjacent to Appledore Island, Jack and other New Englanders banded together to oppose the project, which would have destroyed the pristine natural environment around the Laboratory. This effort was described in “Oil and Water, the New Hampshire Story,” published by the Shoals Laboratory.

Shoals Marine Laboratory recognized Jack’s vision, his leadership, and his

indomitable spirit (which enabled him to accomplish things others thought impossible) by naming a research vessel, the John M. Kingsbury, and renaming the director’s position after him.

After becoming emeritus professor in 1983, Jack, together with his wife Louise, planned and led Cornell Adult Education trips to Australia, Hawaii, the Caribbean Islands, and Puerto Rico. During these years, Jack wrote and took the photographs for his book, 200 Conspicuous, Unusual, or Economically Important Tropical Plants of the Caribbean. He founded Bullbrier Press, named for a plant growing near the pump house where Jack made his office each July when he and Louise decamped to the summer cottage on Cape Cod, and edited and published a variety of books by himself and others. He pursued his interests in New England history, including early agricultural practices, genealogy, and the genetic impact of intermarriage of the Massachusetts Bay Colony settlers. He

served as Trustee and President of the Bullard Memorial Farm Association and published several books and wrote a series of booklets on the history of the Bullards and the Bullard Farm, first settled by his ancestors in 1652 and now on the National Registry of Historic Places.

Jack passed away peacefully at a hospice facility near his home in Norwich, Vermont just shy of his 95th birthday. He is survived by his younger brother, Edward (Nancy); wife of 67 years, Louise; daughter, Joanna Merriam Kingsbury Smith (David); granddaughters Celia Elizabeth Smith Luterbacher (Jeremy) and Molly Smith Dunn (Stephen); and great-grandsons Ezra Joseph Luterbacher and Aldo Smith Luterbacher.

Photos by Peter Randall

KINGSBURY’S LEGACY In 1972, one of the Shoals Marine Lab teaching staff, Dr. Ollie Hewitt of Cornell, was not available to teach. Jack Kingsbury asked if I could join SML as a member of the teaching staff that summer, and that began a long association with the lab that has allowed me a certain perspective on Jack’s aptitudes and style.

I particularly have admired his ability to design programming and infrastructure imaginatively, judge people effectively, and communicate with great clarity.

He recognized the value of teaching students about marine subjects from a holistic viewpoint, including government policies, fishing regulations, and how the marine community responded to such guidance. He also planned carefully the design and layout of the lab buildings.

At times when spontaneity was warranted, he was flexible enough to alter schedules around weather fronts, the “sea state,” as well as the sudden appearance of situations of broad academic interest, thus not missing teaching opportunities. One day when I was supposed to be lecturing on whales, in the middle of my class he burst into the room and emptied the whole group outside to see an Italian weather balloon.

His judgment of people was evident in his hiring and team management.

He emphasized to students upon their arrival that all SML staff were teaching staff. He felt that policies on island must be rational and explainable. He was effective in judging staff capabilities well enough that he could delegate jobs to a staff member with a minimum of oversight and show confidence in the completion of the task. For example, he had me set up a party line phone system to connect all the lab buildings using old Army field telephones. I had absolutely zero experience with this technology, but he expected me to do it, so I did. We called it AT&T: the Appledore Turn-A-Crank and Telephone Company.

Photos from the SML archives

He championed full participation by students, from fish cleaning to a bucket brigade to move gear and groceries from dock to roadways to final destinations.

Jack’s communication skills were impressive. He could interact with many types of people, from university administrators and local mainland community members to crews of fishermen from Portsmouth, Rye and Gloucester. He made constructive contacts and had personal visits with surviving “Barnacles” of Prof. C. F. Jackson of UNH (students on Appledore in the 1930s).

Jack’s marine radio contacts brought fishing boats, vessels of the Sea Education Association and other boats to the SML dock to enrich the teaching environment. And let’s not forget his publicizing of the potential but ultimately failed attempt by the Onassis folks to make changes near Lunging Island as

part of their desire to build an oil refinery in Durham.

Jack had a superb ability to encourage financial support for the island. He convinced university authorities of the special sorts of expenses of an offshore operation. He designed a marketing strategy enlisting support from Cornell friends, bringing in Cornell and UNH alumni to see the lab in action and hosting an annual fall planning meeting in Ithaca. Perhaps most crucially, he perceived the importance of a strong SML alumni program, able to induce alumni, staff, and people interested in marine education to contribute to the success of the lab, and he summarized all this in a remarkable publication: “Here’s How We’ll Do It.” Arthur C. Borror Pittsfield, NH June 2023

MEMORIES OF DR. KINGSBURY I first met Jack in 1993 when I was an undergraduate at Cornell and was introduced to him and Louise by my advisor Mary Sansalone.

I was instantly charmed by Jack — by his stories, and the twinkle in his eyes, and by his relationship to the land and to his garden.

He seemed so happy to be driving his tractor and working on his small farm outside of Ithaca. We bonded while eating his homegrown popcorn and sharing tales of Tasmania.

For the next few years, I did hourly work for the Kingsburys on their farm, which gave me crucial income to help cover my undergraduate education in Cornell. When I look back on those years with the Kingsburys now, I realize that I was learning

as much or more from them as I was learning in any classroom. They were wonderful teachers and I will always treasure their inquisitive approach to the world, which was truly contagious for me.

In 2006, Jack and Louise came to our wedding in rural West Virginia and they participated in a Cambodian blessing as one of the few long-married couples in attendance. I am so grateful for the example that they set for me.

I have still never visited Appledore but I plan to get there soon. I will always cherish my time with Jack Kingsbury. He taught me so much and he was absolutely unique.

Godspeed Dr. K. I will miss you.

John Ochsendorf

Photo by Jonathan Shenker

Photos from the SML archives

As a graduate student at Cornell most of my interaction with Dr. Kingsbury was as a TA for his Phycology course. I had studied algae with Dr. Bold at UT-Austin but was not majoring in phycology for my doctorate work. However, Dr. Kingsbury did serve on my dissertation committee, which I defended in 1988.

It was wonderful to TA for him. There was always so much laughter, especially over LRGTs (little round green things). The students would groan over yet another LRGT that they had to draw after observation under the microscope, but he was so enthusiastic that the students really put their best effort into what they considered a dubious enterprise. He taught from his own text which was, like him, very sprightly and to the point.

He was entirely forward thinking at a time when much of academia was not when it came to women's issues. He would let me TA the labs with my baby in a snugli. The students would beg for me to take little Jack out of the snugli during the lab, but I never did because I did not want to trespass on his kindness in that regard. Fortunately, little Jack never woke up during any of the labs.

Dr. Kingbury's admirable qualities were many: enthusiasm, kindness, good humor, intelligence, common sense. He was a breath of fresh air in the academic community.

Elizabeth Lawson

Photo by Peter Randall

Almost 50 years ago, I spent the month of June on Appledore Island as a student in FMS 1. Having finished my sophomore year at Cornell, I bought my first wetsuit, packed many pairs of sneakers, and was extremely proud of the yellow rain gear that made me look like a Gorton’s fisherman.

I remember so much of summer 1976— the first view of the Islands, the duffle-bag line to unload the boat, the dusting of ceiling ick that rained down on me every time a gull landed on the dormitory roof. I learned the “Appledore hop” jumping from rock to rock as I headed out to the farthest transect, watching for chicks.

It was all so new: frigid snorkeling, fertilizing urchin eggs, ghost stories among the tidepools, bioluminescent toilet water, sandlot volleyball, keying out algae—the romance, the intellectual excitement, the sheer adventure was beyond my wildest dreams.

My teachers that summer were a parade of giants: Kingsbury, Anderson, Borror, and Heiser. I was awed by the professors who created a marine laboratory in the middle of the Gulf of Maine. As I graduated from

Cornell and moved through Duke and Yale, I began a long career as a biology professor at Mount Holyoke College.

I stayed in touch with Dr. Kingsbury and his family. We shared iced tea in Scraggy Neck, Ithaca, and Norwich, and I always drove away feeling energized by the connection. I never could call him Jack. To me, he was always "Dr. Kingsbury", the keen-eyed boat captain, New-Englandaccented raconteur, warm mentor, and larger-than-life gatekeeper to the magic of Shoals.

I’ve had a wonderful career as a developmental biologist, with microscope imaging systems, tanks full of urchins and killifish, and generations of students. If I think back on when it started—when I saw the promise of a life combining saltwater, teaching, and research, I credit one perfect month on Shoals when my life was forever changed. As I rode the ferry back to the mainland that summer, I was flung forth on a wondrous trajectory with such force that I will be dancing on its energy for the rest of my life.

Rachel Fink

Dr. Jack Kingsbury. Shoals Marine Lab. Both are inextricably imbedded in my life, for without the man, there would be no lab and without the lab there would be no…me. I was among those first forty-two to take FMS on Appledore. My first memory of Dr. Kingsbury was that first Fire and Water Speech—first for me, and while not the first for Dr. Kingsbury, it was the first one for a class on Appledore.

While I do not remember his words, I clearly remember the impact they had on my 1973-self. He instilled a sense of respect for the risk so many had taken to start the lab and the responsibility we all had to make this first class a success. He did it clearly, yet with a graceful vagueness that I just understood.

That was the first of many, many “lessons” he taught me over the following years as a graduate TA and returning alumnus. He was teaching by example. If there had been a course title, it would echo from his book, Here’s How. Although neither of us knew it at the time, he showed me how to start a marine education institution, Seacoast Science Center, in the (almost-an-island) Odirone Point State Park. Dr. Kingsbury set the standard for giving credit to others first, for finding ways around obstacles that do not make sense, focusing on solutions not fault, and welcoming unexpected ideas with acceptable risk.

I am grateful that Joanna and Dave invited me to visit them all in Vermont.

When I saw Dr. Kingsbury, after too many years, the way his eyes lit up when he gave me his wonderful smile, I finally felt I earned the honor to call him Jack.

Wendy Lull Photo by Peter Randall

Photos by Peter Randall

I first met Dr. Kingsbury in the fall of 1975. I was a continuing education student at UNH and took advantage of an ad for a weekend at SML. I fell in love with the place and the man.

At that time, things were still pretty primitive - I came back from breakfast to find a flicker sitting on my bed - it had come in through a hole in the wall of Hewitt Hall, a decrepit building long since gone. Dr. Kingsbury was everywhere, telling stories, teaching, fixing things, and talking to everyone about his beloved lab.

I was back for Field Marine Science for 5 weeks in June of 1976. Hands down, it was the best educational experience I have ever had. Dr. Kingsbury, Dr. Anderson, and Dr. Borror were the steadfast trio, but I met and learned from any number of other professors.

Dr. Kingsbury was so energetic, kind, and so, so smart.

He was constantly pulling rabbits out of hats to solve problems.

One evening, he had to escort me to the emergency room in Portsmouth on the old Wrack. I had sprained my ankle badly on the only flat spot on the island: a concrete slab on the way up the hill from the cove.

I began contributing to SML that year, and have ever since, to the lab or to the scholarship fund. That first year, Dr. Kingsbury declared me the owner of the cab and controller of the used backhoe he had just acquired, his newest rabbit out of his hat. I remember him as if it was yesterday.

Photo from the SML archives

Mary Clark

I was first introduced to Dr. Kingsbury in 1970 when I took his algae course. He was one of my all-time favorite professors.

I attended a Teachers Program at Appledore in 1977. My memory of Dr. Kingsbury in this program was during the last day lobster/snail feast. He insisted we eat our seafood with no regular tools, sitting on the rocks and using smaller rocks to crack the shells!

In 2000, I attended a Celia Thaxter program on Appledore Island. I have great memories of that trip. Once we visited the cemetery on Appledore with Dr. Kingsbury and he shared with us the title of one of his favorite hymns and sang it for the group!

Susan K Weeks

Photo from the SML archives

Photo

n Shenker

Photo by Jonatha

Photo by Mic

hael Pendl

Photo by Susan Weeks

Photo by Peter Randall

from

the S

ML a

rchive

Photo by Susan Weeks

I ffirst met Jack Kingsbury in the spring of 1973 as an undergraduate student at Cornell when I was applying to take Intro to Marine Science 364 at SML. Unlike most applicants, I was enrolled in the College of Engineering, majoring in civil engineering. Later that spring, I learned that I had been wait-listed for this class and it was not until shortly after I had left Ithaca for the summer that I learned that I had been accepted to the four-week class beginning August 1st, the first to be held on Appledore.

As one of about 40 students, I got to observe Jack daily. Seemingly always wearing a longbrimmed hat (later immortalized on the first Appledore T-shirt), Jack presided over the daily schedule, taking advantage of whatever opportunities that presented themselves (weather, passing fishing boats, etc.) What an adventure Jack set before us that summer!

All too soon, that wonderful summer came to an end and back to Ithaca I went. Occasionally, I saw one of my fellow classmates from that magical summer on campus, but those meetings were rare. Nine months passed, and I graduated from Cornell and headed off to graduate school to study Ocean Engineering. In this pre-internet era, I primarily kept up with the goings on at SML via “The Appledore Times,” the newsletter that Jack published.

Fast forward about 5 years during which I attended classes, spent countless hours writing computer code and building a buoy for the US Coast Guard, I finally completed my master’s thesis in August 1979. In my limited spare time, I was hiking primarily in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. As a graduation present to myself, a high-school friend and I planned to head off to New Zealand for a few months of hiking. Unexpectedly, another high-school classmate, informed us that he was getting married in Switzerland. Would we attend his wedding? Suddenly, a few months in New Zealand had morphed into a trip around the world.

Just prior to my departure, I learned that Jack was taking a sabbatical from Cornell and heading to Hobart, Tasmania, the land mass that is farthest from Appledore. At the same latitude

Photos by Peter Randall

Photo by Peter Randall

in the southern hemisphere as Appledore is in the north, Jack wanted to study the seaweeds of this area to see how similar or different they might be from those around Appledore.

A few months later and I was in Nepal, hiking to the base of Mt. Everest. Initially, there were 10 of us, but five departed after 23 days and the remainder of us continued for another 20 days or so. Included in this small group was a woman from Tasmania who invited us to visit when our travels brought us to Australia.

A few months later in mid-January, we arrived in Launceston, Tasmania. Shortly thereafter, we took off on a trek across the wild South Coast Track in Southwestern Tasmania. There were five of us on this trek including a professor from the University of Tasmania in Hobart.

About 10 days later, the professor, my highschool friend, and I were on a tiny plane flying out of the bush to Hobart. Back at the professor’s home, I asked if he knew the visiting professor from the US. A shower and a few phone calls later, and I was directed to a lab to meet Jack & Louise. It was a Sunday afternoon, and the lab was otherwise deserted. Both Jack & Louise were delighted to see me despite having no idea that I was in Tasmania until a few hours before.

Tracking down exactly where a foreign professor with a funny accent was living turned out to be not that difficult. We spent several wonderful hours catching up on Shoals and Shoals’ alums. In addition, I learned that Louise’s father and sister lived in the same town in RI where I had grown up and my parents still lived! Small world indeed.

Many, many meetings later in Ithaca, at UNH, on Appledore, at Scraggy Neck and elsewhere, Jack frequently recalled that memorable get together in Hobart. Traveling to the ends of the earth to meet Jack & Louise led me to a lifetime of friendship.

Jack Cutler

Jack was very proud of his strong handshake. He related to me that he had to milk (by hand, no machines like now) several cows every morning before school when he was young. That skill and strength never left him. He was proud of the chores he did on a farm working with animals and machinery, skills he would use for the rest of his life and that they don’t teach you in college.

Like so many kids brought up during the Depression, Jack’s experiences growing up in such hard times instilled a resourcefulness he would call on throughout his adult life. One favorite saying his father regularly reminded Jack of was “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” Jack would often quote this saying and demonstrate it on Appledore when trying to build a million-dollar-plus facility with no budget.

Photo by Bob Meadows

Photo by Michael Pendl

Family photo of Jack as a young boy (on the right in women’s lap) at their cottage on Scaggy Neck, Cape Cod (photo via Bob Meadows)

Back in our days, we didn't call him Jack, it was always John, and he was on the faculty of the Veterinary College at Cornell from 1956 to 1958. He taught a required course for Veterinary Students called Poisonous Plants. It was a most important course because grazing animals and pets often eat plants and mushrooms, that make them sick, sometimes causing death.

John put together a course syllabus that was concise, organized, and made sense to us students. Previous books and papers on poisonous plants seemed fragmented and incomplete.

John's course was a wonderful introduction to dangerous flora with lots of plants foraged live from the pastures around school. We also got stories of his life on the New England Coast.

Soon enough, he had forged a collaboration with the University of New Hampshire to start the Shoals Marine Lab. My wife and I were honored to attend one of his alumni retreats on Appledore where we were driven to the island by John himself in a Boston whaler. What a grand guy!

Thomas F. Nytch

Photos by Reinald Smith

Photo by Peter Randall

Ih have had several mentors in my career, not the least of whom was Dr. John Kingsbury. I am not a scientist, just a journalist and photographer. My first time on Appledore was in the early 70s when I joined Dr. Art Borror and his ornithology class for a research trip to view a fledgling colony of snowy egrets, black-crowned night herons, and glossy ibis. There was no one else on the island. A few years later, when I was editor of New Hampshire Profiles magazine, I heard about a Cornell professor who was creating a marine laboratory on Appledore.

Jack invited me out to do a story, and when I arrived I saw students living in tents, the Commons under construction, and the dining room in the Coast Guard building. I was still intrigued by the heron colony and asked Jack if I could come again to photograph the birds. He quickly agreed and in April 1976, I erected a pre-fab bird blind, then came out nearly every other weekend through June. Every Friday, I would meet the Wrack, captain Ron Harelstad, and crew, and would spend my days watching the birds.

Thus began my 40 plus years of friendship and support from Jack Kingsbury. I visited the island often to photograph, lecture on Shoals’ human and natural history, and conduct photography workshops. The end result of Jack’s early support was two books of Shoals photographs and a video of Celia Thaxter’s Garden, Jack’s passion project. When I was working on the video, I timed a visit to Appledore when I knew Jack was out there. I set up my camera and microphone on the Laighton porch and recorded the story of why and how he recreated the garden. It was our last visit together.

Peter Randall

In the late 70s, Dr. Kingsbury was my d academic advisor and course instructor during the final two years of my undergraduate studies at Cornell University.

To me, he was a warm, level-headed, selfeffacing yet supremely confident professor of biology. Though some might have seen him as the prototypical New Englander, in my eyes it was his openness, his smile, the twinkling of his eyes, and his steadfast sense of curiosity that welcomed me and my fellow students to join him in his explorations of the natural world.

I only took a single course under his tutelage – Botany 348 (Phycology). During our weekly collecting excursions, he unfailingly encouraged us to seek out as many representative species as we could, and in as diverse locations as they might be found. I distinctly recall his glee when I informed him that we had found a particularly sought-after representative in a lily pond located in one of the outdoor alcoves on the south side of the Plant Science building.

A distinctive feature of Dr. Kingsbury’s approach to teaching and learning was his use of an elaborate honors system for administering his term exams. This system imposed no time limits, allowed students to select a minimum number of questions from a larger menu, and prevented the grader from knowing the identity of the examinee. I am not sure his students fully comprehended the scrupulousness of this approach to assessment. Clearly, Dr. Kingsbury had thought long and hard about what constituted a fair examination. Reflective of his views on testing, each exam began with an enigmatic quote from the Golden Sayings of Epictetus directing the reader on how to judge the quality of a person’s character.

One of my fondest memories of Dr. Kingsbury was a trip that he invited me to

Photo by William Cliff

share with him on his way from Ithaca to the docks in Portsmouth in May 1978. In a truck crammed with the odds and ends that he was ferrying from Cornell to Appledore Island, we traveled east on a journey that yielded eye-opening discoveries for this budding young biologist. To a Cornell undergraduate who was accustomed to a proper academic (and personal) distance between student and distinguished professor, his candidness during our ride was singularly satisfying. I was taken aback by the welcome I received into the company of such a thoughtful, down-to-earth, and engaging conversationalist. In addition, it was head-shaking to find the “illustrious” Director so unassuming in his willingness to undertake the chore of trucking equipment and supplies to the Lab before the start of the season. For him, it was a job that needed to be done.

I also learned that Dr. Kingsbury was particularly fond of a certain Friendly’s restaurant at an exit off the Mass Pike in Lee. I don’t recall what we ordered, but I do

remember his delight in sharing one of his favorite stop-offs on his journeys east from Ithaca. This trip for him to New Hampshire included a detour to Cape Cod where he was to stay for a few days at his summer home on Buzzard’s Bay. I found this convenient since I intended to get to my family’s house in East Falmouth. Shortly after we arrived, we parted ways, he to continue his truck ride to the Isles of Shoals and me to eventually spend the rest of the summer working at the National Marine Fisheries Laboratory in Woods Hole.

At the beginning of the fall semester, he invited a couple of us who were associated with the Lab’s office in Ithaca to accompany him on a cruise from Boston to Stellwagen Bank aboard the R/V Westward. We were to join him for an immersive, onboard Cornell alumni event over the Labor Day weekend.

Despite the rather blustery weather, we enjoyed the opportunity to share his enthusiasm for the marine sciences with the assembled alumni. It is from this memorable

trip that I possess the only photograph I think I ever took of Dr. Kingsbury.

At the time, I labeled this slide: “Crewmembers on Westward. Dr. Kingsbury in center.” To me, it captures the characteristic posture and position of influence that I remember him to have had.

The last recollection that I have of Dr. Kingsbury comes from my final days as an undergraduate. It involved his help rescuing me from the consequences of my procrastination as a senior at the end of the spring 1979 semester. Due in part to his tempered advice and intercession, I was able to successfully appeal a failing grade in a limnology course that I needed to graduate, and that an overzealous visiting professor was determined to impose on me because of a late submission of the final written assignment. In the end, I am indebted to Dr. Kingsbury for a gracious intervention that enabled me to graduate on time.

As I look back on the season that I spent at Cornell with Dr. Kingsbury, there was much about his relation to me as an instructor and advisor that has influenced me during my career as a teacher and mentor to my own students. Although my professional trajectory diverged from the marine sciences soon after I finished my studies as an undergraduate, I have come to realize that he epitomized what I think a fair professor and caring academic advisor ought to be. I trust that I have treated my students with the same degree of dignity, friendliness, and respect that he showed me. In gratitude, I warmly remember Dr. Kingsbury for his unassuming generosity to me, and for the memorable ways he invited me as a student to join him in his work both inside and outside the ordinary walls of academia. a.

William Cliff

Photo by William Cliff

Photos by Peter Randall

As the steward of Celia's garden on the island, I had the honor of giving Dr. Kingsbury a tour of the garden during the summer of 2016. I was new to the newly created position and not quite familiar with all the history of SML, so I was both anxious and excited about this opportunity.

Though well into his senior years, Dr. Kingsbury wanted to make the long walk from Kiggins, where we had just dined, to the garden, on foot. I had promised to have him back up to the dining hall for dessert and was concerned about running out of time, but I shouldn't have been.

He eagerly shared his stories with me; locating the foundation of Celia's house, finding the corners of the enclosed garden, his research for the varieties of seeds used, etc. I remember the glimmer in his eyes when he spoke of using a large piece of equipment to move the missing corner of the

Photo by Peter Randall

garden back into place once he discovered that corner had indeed been leveled by the military for an encampment at the garden's edge. It was like watching a little boy talk about construction with a Tonka truck!

We even shared a secret about a corner of that garden that only he and I would understand...

I dutifully brought our visit to an end in time for dessert, making the trek back to the dining hall on foot, as arduous as I thought it might be for him because he refused a ride in the gator.

My first encounter turned out to be my only one with this fascinating man. One can never forget sharing stories with Jack Kingsbury.

His spirit will live on upon the rocks of Appledore.

Marie Georgi Nickerson

Special Thanks Arthur C. Borror David Buck Helga Burre Mary Clark William Cliff Jack Cutler Elizabeth Dougherty Rachel Fink Louise Kingsbury Elizabeth Lawson Wendy Lull Bob Meadows Marie Georgi Nickerson Thomas F. Nytch John Ochsendorf Diane Parsons Michael Pendl Peter Randall Jonathan Shenker Reinald Smith John R. Stewart Susan K. Weeks