In memoriam: David F. Parmelee, 1924-1998

David Freeland Parmelee passed away in Las Vegas, Nevada, on 16 December 1998. Just a month earlier, David and his wife Jean were in the field collecting data and birds to complete their pioneering study of the birds of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Upon return from the field David felt sick, and about two weeks later he was diagnosed with advanced adrenal cancer. His rapid decline from an active, healthy field ornithologist was a surprise to all.

David was born on 20 June 1924 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and lived in Iron Mountain, Michigan, until enlisting in the Marine Corps in 1943. He served 33 months in the South Pacific. After military service, he received his B.A. in 1950 from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, his M.S. in 1952 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and his Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of Oklahoma, Norman, under George Miksch Sutton. He served as Assistant through full Professor at Emporia State University, Kansas, from 1958 to 1970, and then as Director of the University of Minnesota Lake Itasca Forestry and Biological Station (1970 to 1986), Director of the Cedar Creek Natural History Area (1970 to 1984), and as Professor in the Department of Ecology and Behavioral Biology (1970 to 1992). From 1986 to 1992, he was Curator of Birds at the University of Minnesota's Bell Museum of Natural History. In 1992, he retired from the University of Minnesota and became the Research Curator of Ornithology at the Barrick Museum of Natural History, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He joined the AOU in 1948, became an Elective Member in 1970, and was a life member of four other North American ornithological societies.

David's ornithological research career blossomed in the Arctic, but when he became director of the Itasca field station, his boreal summers were otherwise occupied and he turned his research efforts to the Antarctic. His coauthored monographs on the birds of Ellesmere and Victoria islands in the Canadian Arctic (National Museum of Canada Bulletin 169:1-103, 222:1-229) and his books on Antarctic birds (Bird Island in Antarctic Waters; Antarctic Birds: Ecological and Behavioral Approaches) reflect this bipolar career. His more than 120 scientific and popular articles also reflect these geographically widespread research efforts. He was active in the field and in his writing and art until his final illness.

As an artist, naturalist, and explorer, David represented a type of scientist common in the 19th century, but that is now all but gone. He traced the lineage of his training through George Miksch Sutton and Louis Agassiz Fuertes to Elliott Coues, Spencer Fullerton Baird, and even to John James Audubon through a succession of important mentoring and sponsoring relationships.

During his career at the University of Minnesota, David directed the growth of the Biology Colloquium, a forum that introduced hundreds of freshmen and sophomores to biology outside the classroom. The Colloquium had a profound influence on many budding biologists. It was on a Colloquium trip to the Itasca field station in 1980 that I first met David. He was showing a group of students part of his world, and as he drove a boat along the lake in a spring snowstorm to see which migrant birds were back and how they were behaving in this late snow, I recall wondering who this quiet man was, obviously enjoying himself without hat or gloves and apparently impervious to the cold.

Students of David's ornithology course will recall him walking through the classroom holding for demonstration a high-latitude specimen such as a penguin, extolling its life-history characteristics, and proclaiming it a "prince of a bird." He was proud of the research careers of his graduate students, some of whom continued his tradition of high-latitude avian studies.

David was a renowned collector, especially of eggs and nests, and his meticulously prepared specimens from remote localities are as important and enduring a legacy as his art and his publications on avian ecology and natural history. Although most knew him as a gentleman and scholar in the museum and university, those fortunate to spend time with him in the field knew where he was most at home. His ability to tune in to the birds around him was remarkable, and his nest-finding skills were uncanny. He was also an excellent shot. His research took him to very remote places (including the North Pole), and, fittingly, he was a Fellow of the Explorers Club. Perhaps his favorite among the many honors received was "Parmelee Massif" in Antarctica at 70deg58'S, 620'W, which was named in his honor.

Since 1986, both David and Jean were able to spend time in the Arctic and Antarctic, and in their working retirement after 1992 they led an active and productive life most of us would envy. David is survived by Jean, his wife of 55 years, and their daughter and son-in-law Helen and Stephen Bruzzone. He will be greatly missed.

University of Alaska Museum, 907 Yukon Drive, Fairbank, Alaska 99775, USA

Copyright American Ornithologists' Union Jul 1999
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