Volume 155, No. 97 covering the 1st Session of the 111th Congress (2009 - 2010) was published by the Congressional Record.
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“COMMENDING HUBERT AND THOMAS VOGELMANN” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the Senate section on pages S7063-S7064 on June 25, 2009.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
COMMENDING HUBERT AND THOMAS VOGELMANN
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I would like to bring to the Senate's attention a recent article published in The Burlington Free Press on Father's Day, which featured father and son botanists Hubert and Thomas Vogelmann from Jericho, VT, and the University of Vermont.
Now professor emeritus at the University of Vermont, Hub Vogelmann was the pioneer researcher calling attention to the impact of atmospheric deposition--acid rain--on the forests of the Northeast. Hub led a field trip on the western slopes of the Green Mountains to view the damage in person with the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, Administrator. His contributions to the stewardship of our natural resources are many, particularly concerning the health of the forest ecosystem.
Now dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Vermont, Hub's son Tom is carrying on in the Vogelmann family tradition of science, service and stewardship.
As if this were not remarkable enough, Hub and his late wife Marie's two other sons are scientists as well, Jim a botanist and Andy, a physicist.
I value the working relationship I have enjoyed with Hub over the years and look forward to working with Tom in his new role as dean.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the article ``Like Father, Like Son--Fellow botanists have a lot in common,'' be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Like Father, Like Son; Fellow Botanists Have a Lot in Common
(By Tim Johnson)
Jericho.--This is a story about the family Vogelmann, father and son. They're next-door neighbors.
Hub, the father, grew up in a city, married, had three sons, moved here to the country, and tried his hand at raising beef cattle--grass-fed, back before that was fashionable.
Tom, the eldest, proved adept at haying. He was a bit of a handful, into everything, but he was good at tossing bales into the barn.
Hub had a day job, and he used to joke that's what made it possible for him to lose money on the cattle. Tom helped out but ``he always had a mind of his own--it was get out of my way,' '' Hub recalled the other day.
Tom smiled knowingly. They were sitting on Tom's porch in the late afternoon sun, reminiscing.
Hub's day job was professor of botany at the University of Vermont. He was there 36 years, retiring in 1991.
Tom turned out all right. He, too, is a professor of botany
. . . at the University of Vermont, where else? He's also the new dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
If ever there was a prime example of a son's following in his father's footsteps--not just figuratively, but literally--Tom is it. That's what he's doing every time he walks along the gravel road that runs past their houses.
Butternuts decoded
Hubert W. ``Hub'' Vogelmann, son of a minister in Buffalo, N.Y., became a botanist by a kind of happenstance.
He liked science. During his last year at Heidelberg College, in Ohio, his favorite professor asked him what he was going to do after he graduated.
``I said, `I dunno,' '' Hub recalled. ``And he said,
`You've got to go to graduate school. I know some people in the botany department at the University of Michigan.' ''
On the strength of the professor's recommendation, Hub went to Ann Arbor.
``They gave me an exam, and I flunked it,'' he said. ``The department chairman was very kind. He let me stay on.''
Hub stayed on long enough to get his Ph.D. His first job after that was at UVM, and he never left.
``Vermont,'' he said. ``As a botanist, you couldn't ask for a better place.''
At first, Hub and his wife, Marie, settled in Essex Junction. In 1958, when Tom was 5, Hub bought a 120-acre dairy farm in Jericho and has lived there ever since. He later acquired the adjoining property and rented that place out.
Tom was in the first entering class at the new Jericho Elementary School. He remembers being able, from the house, to spot the distant school bus approaching from far across the fields--far enough away that he could time his arrival just right at the stop down the road. His summers were pretty uneventful. He remembers sitting in a tree and watching draft horses at work--old farming technology that was in its last throws in the '50s. He appreciated what he saw.
``When they'd do haying,'' he said, ``there was not one straw left.''
At age 14, during a year the family spent in Mexico, Tom served as his father's assistant as they studied fog in the Cloud Forest. Later Tom went to UVM, where he sampled various disciplines. He liked science and remembers being intellectually swept away by plant biochemistry and molecular biology, two courses in his senior year. He remembers one night at the family dinner table: Tom remarked how curious it seemed to him that butternuts grow next to stone walls--could it be something in their biochemistry or molecular biology?
His father looked at him.
``Tom,'' Hub said, ``you need to take more ecology. They grow there because that's where squirrels drop the nuts.''
Hub knew something about ecology, a field that began to flourish during his career. He did seminal research on the impact of acid rain on forests. He was the first to pin the decline of red spruce on industrial emissions from the Midwest, according to Walter Poleman, a senior lecturer at UVM, who delivered a testimonial May 1 when Hub received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Center for Research on Vermont. ``His findings helped establish guidelines for the Clean Air Act and set the stage for acid rain research throughout the Northeast,'' Poleman said.
Tom went his own way. He applied to graduate school in plant biochemistry and in archaeology.
``The plant people took me,'' he said. ``The archaeology people didn't.'' So, he became a botanist, earning a Ph.D. from Syracuse University and specializing in whole-plant physiology. He and his wife, Mary (also a botanist), spent three years in southern Sweden, then they went to the University of Wyoming, where he rose to full professor. In 2001, someone from UVM asked if he'd be interested in chairing the botany department--the same department Hub had chaired for 20 years.
``I thought, `Why not?' '' Tom said. ``So, I came back in January of 2002.'' He camped out in his old room in his father's place. Before long the tenant vacated the house next door. Tom and Mary moved in. ``The whole story is a bit surreal,'' Tom said, when asked how he came to be living next door to his father. ``It wasn't ever thought out or planned.
``One thing led to another,'' he said.
Growing degrees
One thing led to another for Tom's younger brothers, too, both of whom also have doctorates. Jim has a Ph.D. in botany, and so does his wife. The youngest, Andy--the odd one out in this family, unless you count their late mother, Marie, who was an accomplished musician--has a Ph.D. in atmospheric physics.
Was it something in the water? How was it that all three Vogelmann offspring wound up with advanced degrees in science?
The question brought a blank look to Tom's face.
``A lot of conversations around dinner table . . .'' he said vaguely.
About what, besides butternuts?
``Could be about anything, `` he said, ``from fossils to. .
. . We used to walk through plowed fields, we'd find artifacts, and we'd talk about them.''
Or, he mused, maybe it had to do with the ambiance in which they came of age. Some kids grow up in a corporate culture. They grew up in a university culture.
Hub still enjoys hearing Tom talk about the doings at UVM. Some things don't change, Hub said.
They don't just talk shop, though. Each one brags about the other's garden.
``He grows some of the world's best celeriac,'' Tom was saying before Hub showed up.
Celeriac, Tom explained, is a big root that you can grate into soups or salads. The leaves look like celery leaves.
After Hub arrived and sat down, the porch conversation soon got back to gardens.
``He has the biggest garlic patch in Vermont,'' Hub said.
``No, I don't,'' Tom said.
``How many plants do you have--a thousand?''
``Over a thousand,'' Tom said. ``That's a lot of holes to make with your thumb.''
``How many varieties?''
``Forty-two,'' Tom said.
Hub smiled. He seemed to know what was coming.
``It all tastes pretty much the same,'' Tom said.
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