[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 97 (Thursday, June 25, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7063-S7064]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 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.

[[Page S7064]]

       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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