Ed Newton Harrison, a member of the AOU since 1934 and an Elective Member since 1969, died on 25 September 2002, in Los Angeles. He was born near Cody, Wyoming, on 29 September 1914, but spent most of his life in southern California. He owned and managed commercial properties in West Los Angeles, including Westwood Center, a 21-story office building, and was involved in his family oil business.
He became involved in bird work as a teenager through the influence of geologist-ornithologist J. R. (Bill) Pemberton. With Bill Pemberton as his mentor, Ed passionately collected bird eggs and skins for his personal collection from the late 1920s well into the mid-1960s. He was physically strong and became a daring climber of tall eucalyptus trees and rocky cliffs. In the late 1930s, he accompanied Pemberton and several well-known southern California biologists on two long cruises of Pemberton’s yacht, The Kinkajou, to document the natural history of the major islands off the coast of western Mexico.
Following Pemberton’s example, and with his collaboration, Ed obtained rare film footage and photographs of the California Condor during frequent trips to the Sespe region of Ventura County, California, with the legendary field worker, Carl Koford, between 1939 and 1941. He had a lifetime interest in condor conservation, giving frequent lectures to civic and conservation groups, showing condor film vignettes that he and Pemberton had taken. Their footage, then the only high-quality color film of the condor in existence, was featured in virtually every condor news piece and educational film well into the 1970s.
Ed did not attend school at any level in a conventional sense, but his lifelong tutor, Mrs. Frances Roberts, encouraged him in his natural history interests and took an active role in his wildlife filming adventures. With her assistance and guidance, Ed filmed other bird and mammal species, selling stock footage to the major Hollywood studios in the pre-Disney days; the team was among the premier wildlife filmmakers in the 1940s and 1950s.
Ed joined the Cooper Ornithological Society (COS) in 1931 and became an Honorary Member in 1960. At the time of his death, only one other had belonged for a longer time. Starting in the 1940s, he held a number of offices and was eventually elected president after a successful proxy battle with Alden Miller and several of his influential former students. That led to a bitter feud between the professional ornithologists in the society and the still large amateur contingent, including Ed, who wanted to retain and broaden the popular appeal of Condor, albeit at the inevitable expense of its scientific stature. Unlike most of his principal supporters in that unusual but ultimately unsuccessful venture, Ed remained faithfully active in the COS for many years after.
Museums were Ed’s real business. He had a particular passion for serving on museum boards, including the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, San Diego Natural History Museum, and Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, where he stoutly defended the interests of the respective scientific staffs to less-sophisticated or indifferent fellow board members. His vision and persistent efforts behind the scenes were largely responsible for the creation of the well-regarded Page Museum at the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.
He founded the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology in 1956, initially as a strategy to maintain his scientific collecting privileges (and to keep his private collections), but also to serve as a depository for orphaned egg collections. The foundation, located in Camarillo, California, now houses the largest bird egg and nest collections in the world, a study skin collection containing over 50,000 specimens, and one of the largest ornithological libraries in the world. He also initiated several technical publication series at the Western Foundation, including the respected Proceedings series.
Ed was an old-fashioned philanthropist with both his time and money. He helped many struggling organizations and starving biologists, usually with scant publicity and often at greater personal sacrifice than was generally realized. Although he lacked a formal education, his “can-do” attitude and unusual enthusiasm for life conveyed an irresistible charisma and confident air that opened many doors for him among California’s socially and scholarly elite. Ed was the last of the Victorian-style natural history collectors in America.
