Robert Orin Curtis

Born to Walter and Ruby Curtis on October 27, 1927 in Portland, Maine, Bob served in the U.S. Army and then obtained a scholarship to Yale to pursue his undergraduate studies. He continued his studies to complete his Master’s degree at Yale. While there he met and married Helen L. Thompson of Cedar Falls, WA and they were married for 68 years.

Bob went on to obtain his doctorate in forestry at the University of Washington and worked for the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service until 1996 as a research forester. He had long-term interests in forest history and forestry practices. He installed many studies to see how trees grow in response to practices such as spacing trees at different distances and seeing how young trees grow when foresters leave different amounts of overstory trees during logging. He was also interested in the total amount of tree growth when trees were harvested at different ages. He studied many species of trees such as Douglas fir, western hemlock, pacific silver fir, noble fir and red alder. Bob received numerous awards including the Award for Superior Service from the USDA. He was a member of the Society of American Foresters for 50 years. When he retired in 1996, Bob continued to volunteer his time to his research and became an Emeritus Scientist with the USDA Forest Service.

He loved the outdoors and the career that allowed him to be outside much of the time. His love of the outdoors spilled over to his family who joined him on backpacking, hiking, and climbing adventures. With his wife Helen he traveled to Europe, Kenya, Central America and across the United States.

He is survived by his wife, Helen, daughters Anne (Olympia) and Ruth (Portland), and son Stephen (San Rafael).

Remembrances may be made to The Nature Conservancy.