Robert A. Whitney, DVM, MS, ACLAM is Earthspan’s founding President. Retired from a long and distinguished career with the U.S. Public Health Service, his professional accomplishments and contributions are truly too numerous to detail here. Because we are shameless name droppers and want to bask in Bob’s reflected glory, we cannot resist saying that our first President served as both Deputy Surgeon General and Acting Surgeon General of the United States. The capacity in which we have known Bob, however, is as a kindred soul dedicated to the preservation of the natural world. Bob lent his energy and expertise to the peregrine surveys from their inception in 1970. He has labored long hours beside us at Assateague and Padre Islands, and dutifully shouldered his pack in Greenland, returning to civilization weeks later looking just as scruffy as his fellow peregrine researchers. He saw the vision of a not-for-profit Earthspan through to fruition, enabling us to carry on the work we all value so highly. Through it all, his humility and humor have endeared him to each of us just as certainly as did his many professional contributions. Speaking of contributions, Bob and his wife Beth Whitney-Teeple have reached into their own pockets on more than one occasion to assure the continuance of Earthspan programs. Everyone having the good fortune to know Bob has been positively affected; count the Earthspan family in that group as we offer thanks for his friendship and his time and labor so freely given.
