Russell Train | |
---|---|
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency | |
In office September 12, 1973 – January 20, 1977 |
|
President |
Richard Nixon Gerald R. Ford |
Preceded by | Robert Fri (Acting) |
Succeeded by | John Quarles (Acting) |
Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality | |
In office January 1, 1970 – September 12, 1973 |
|
President | Richard Nixon |
Preceded by | Position established |
Succeeded by | Russell Peterson |
Personal details | |
Born |
Russell Errol Train June 4, 1920 Jamestown, Rhode Island, U.S. |
Died | September 17, 2012 Bozman, Maryland, U.S. |
(aged 92)
Political party | Republican |
Spouse(s) | Aileen Bowdoin Travers |
Education |
Princeton University (BA) Columbia University (JD) |
Russell Errol Train (June 4, 1920 – September 17, 2012) was the second Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), from September 1973 to January 1977 and the Founder Chairman Emeritus of World Wildlife Fund (WWF). As head of the EPA under U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Train is generally credited with helping to place the issue of the environment on the presidential and national agenda in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a key period in the environmental movement. He promulgated the idea that as the economy of the nation was growing quickly, public as well as private projects should consider and evaluate the environmental impacts of their actions.
Train was born on June 4, 1920 in Jamestown, Rhode Island, but grew up in Washington, D.C.. His father was an officer in the United States Navy who was frequently away on assignment. The youngest of three boys of Rear Adm. Charles Russell Train and the former Errol Cuthbert. His paternal great-grandfather had been a congressman during the Civil War. An ancestor, John Trayne, had emigrated from Scotland to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635.
A man of exquisite manners, he was trained in the ways of Washington from an early age. His father had an office at the White House, where he served as President Herbert Hoover’s Naval aide. In 1932, Mrs. Hoover invited Mr. Train and his older brothers, Cuthbert and Middleton, to spend the night at the White House, where they slept in the Andrew Jackson bedroom and breakfasted with the president and Mrs. Hoover on the portico overlooking the Ellipse and the Washington Monument.
“I think what made the greatest impression on me,” he wrote years later, “were the tall glasses of fresh California orange juice. I had never seen anything like those large glassfuls before.”
Young Russell attended the Potomac School and then the St. Albans School and graduated in 1937. Train matriculated to Princeton University, where he received an A.B. in political science in 1941. While there he was in the United States Army ROTC program and upon graduation entered the Army as an officer. Train remained in the Army for four years during World War II, stationed both home and overseas and ending up on Okinawa. He attained the rank of major, before being discharged in 1946.