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Clarence “Clancy” Conrad Gordon ~ 2025 Inductee
Clarence “Clancy” Conrad Gordon
1929 – 1981
Though it might have surprised his high school teachers, Clarence “Clancy” Gordon grew to be an articulate and effective force for clean air and water in Montana.
Born in Seattle, Wash., just before the stock market crash of 1929, Gordon grew up in poverty. He loved the outdoors and preferred hunting and fishing to sitting in a classroom. His experiences in the natural world were an invaluable informal education, sparking his future passions. Despite truancy, he still managed to graduate at the age of 17.
Finally free from school, Gordon escaped to Alaska and worked as a commercial fisherman before he was drafted to serve in the Korean War. He returned to fishing in Alaska until he met his wife-to-be and decided to settle down. Using the GI Bill, he earned a degree in mycology at the University of Washington and a Ph.D. in plant pathology at WSU Pullman. In 1960, he joined the botany faculty at the University of Montana.
The following decade saw growing awareness of humanity’s impact on the planet. In 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring alerted people to the harms of pesticides. Rivers were becoming severely polluted—Ohio’s Cuyahoga River caught fire several times. Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson organized the first Earth Day in 1970.
Like Carson and Nelson, Gordon played a major role in raising awareness of the health of the environment. He studied the effects of air pollutants on the flora and fauna of Glacier National Park for the National Air Pollution Control Administration. The resulting regulations also benefited Montana’s farmers and ranchers by protecting crops and livestock.
He studied the impacts of the Colstrip power plant as Montana Power was planning to add more plants. He addressed the effect of fluoride emissions from many types of industrial plants, including phosphate facilities along the Clark Fork River.
Gordon worked to ensure that his research had real world impacts. There were few laws to protect the environment in the 1960s and 1970s, so he testified as an expert witness on the effects of air pollutants on plants and animals in many legal cases against powerful companies such as Anaconda Aluminum, Montana Power, ASARCO, and more. Those lawsuits often reduced pollution and helped inspire legislation like the Clean Air Act.
As a teacher, Clancy sometimes used unconventional methods to encourage environmental activism—including sharing the Ten Environmental Commandments (Montana Kaimin April 10, 1979). His students claimed that he collected plant samples from the top of tall trees with a rifle. In 1963, he created an Environmental Studies Laboratory and, with others, established the University of Montana’s Environmental Studies Graduate Program in 1970 (both were among the first of their kind and produced hundreds of activists who continue Clancy’s legacy).
Clancy died of cancer in 1981 at the age of 53. In his short life, he did much to protect Montana’s land and inhabitants, including teaching his three children to love and steward our precious earth and Montana home.