Philip Ross died peacefully at Maplewood Park Place in Bethesda, Maryland, on September 4, 2023, at the age of 96. Phil was predeceased by his wife Jane, and is survived by his two sons, John Forrister (Diana Ingraham) and James Gardner (Victoria), and four grandchildren (Grace, Forrister, Olivia, and Emmett).
Phil served as an electronics officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II and as a reservist for 15 years following. He matriculated at Brown after the war, meeting his wife Jane at Northfield Mount Herman where she was a waitress and he taught golf and tennis. He earned a PhD in Botany and later a Master of Public Health, both at Harvard. He served as a park ranger at Crater Lake and Mount Desert Island, completed a Fulbright in Trinidad in tropical biology, worked for military intelligence at the U.S. Geological Survey, and traveled extensively for the NIH’s U.S. Japan Cooperative Medical Sciences Program studying infectious disease mitigation. He joined the Explorers Club of New York in 1959, publishing articles for the Explorers Journal, including one about his experiences analyzing parasitic diseases in a remote town in Pakistan.
Phil ended his professional career at the National Academy of Sciences, where he served as the lead science administrator on the Board on Agriculture and Renewable Resources, and ran the Academy’s study on Agent Orange for the U.S. Congress, which necessitated long visits to war hotspots in Vietnam. Among other studies he organized were how to protect U.S. agriculture from foreign animal disease, how to curtail the destructive impact of wild horses and burros on the landscape in the American west, and how to manage Capitol Reef National Park in Utah. When the Italian government asked the U.S. for help in handling a national emergency when a factory explosion in northern Italy released extremely dangerous chemicals, Phil organized an international team of scientists to address the accident.
In his retirement, Phil worked on his memoirs and served as a highly sought after tour guide at the U.S. Botanical Gardens in Washington, DC, particularly with his knowledge of orchids. He and his wife traveled internationally, often with their grandchildren. He spent weekends sailing his beloved sloop Bay Prince on the Chesapeake. Right to the end of his life, he continued to care for a couple dozen houseplants, generously dispensing advice to those who claimed they didn’t have a green thumb. He and his family attended St. John’s Norwood Parish in Chevy Chase since the late 1960s.
A funeral will be held on Saturday, October 28, at 11 am, at St. John’s Norwood Episcopal Church in Chevy Chase, Maryland. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be sent to Nourishing Bethesda or the Epilepsy Foundation of America.
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