Q.E.P.D., Dr. James Earhart
12/22/1935 – 03/26/2023
Dr. Jim Earhart died at his home in Hillsboro on March 26, leaving many hearts in ache over the loss.
He is survived by his wife, Rukmani Kuppuswami of Hillsboro; son, Dr. James Earhart Jr., M.D. (Claire) of Hillsboro; daughter Dr. Judith Cutting of Monterrey, California; and grandchildren Ashley Earhart, Nathaniel Earhart, Timothy Earhart, Steven Cutting, and Christina Momdjian.
He leaves behind an immense legacy of commitment, love, and stewardship for the Río Grande and its watershed, ecosystem, wildlife, and all that draws life from its waters.
The many who stood in the circle of his light, kindness, and joy have lost a friend like no other. He was a warrior, inolvidable.
Plans are in motion to celebrate the life of Jim Earhart and will be announced once they are finalized.
Should you wish to share a remembrance of him at this site, please send it to meg@laredosnews.com.
RUKMANI KUPPUSWAMI
What does one do when you lose your best pal? What does one do when you have lost your counselor and confidante? What does one do when you lose someone filled with vim, vigor, vitality, and an incessant love for life? What does one do when you lose someone quickly, as written in the poem below by the same pal?
There just seems only one thing to do, also told by the same pal – you rejoice!
What a tall order from a man as big as that tall order! That is my Doctor.
The Prayer
By Jim Earhart
Today I saw a toad squashed in the road.
what an ecological goad to my
psychological guilt load.
Therefore I recite this ode to the
squashed toad in the road.
My mind doeth try to fathom why the toad
had to die,
No struggle or sigh as a tire flattened it
like a pie.
I do not know when I must go
and do I want to? — No.
But I pray so that when the moment
of truth I know,
Like the toad’s it’ll be quick — not slow.
DR. TOM VAUGHAN
I’m saddened by the news of the passing of my good friend and colleague Jim Earhart. I met Jim in December 1980 when he was instrumental in me becoming a faculty member at Laredo Junior College. Jim was truly a multi-talented individual: a superb teacher, researcher, musician, thespian, artist, poet to mention a few.
I believe one of Jim’s greatest impacts on Laredo was his desire to improve the health of the Rio Grande and the local environment. Jim’s vision led to the founding of the Rio Grande International Study Center almost 30 years ago. Even though Jim moved back to the Dallas area to be near his family a few years ago, his legacy continues to be felt in Laredo.
PAMELA VAUGHAN
Dr. Jim Earhart – the Man with the Great Big Heart
So sad to have such a loss of a dear, dear friend. When Tom and I first came to Laredo to teach at Laredo Junior College over 40 years ago, Dr. Earhart welcomed us with his great big smile and his great big heart. He welcomed us to the college and into his home. He took a shine to our little 2-year-old son. He made us feel right at home. He had the same effect on his students. He was instrumental in teaching Anatomy and Physiology and in creating many, many budding health professionals. Always caring and understanding and emphasizing how important everyone was in making their world and their careers and their environment a better place. The scientific process was very important to Dr. Earhart. He and his students (and Tom, our sons, and I) gathered and analyzed data. We realized how endangered our river was and so after a decade or so, Dr. Earhart and Tom, and Dr. Jacinto Juarez founded the Rio Grande International Study Center to do something about it. What an uplifting adventure this has been. How I will miss his great big heart, his wonderful smile, and his uplifting words of support and encouragement. Anyone who has known Dr. Jim Earhart has been truly blessed.
TRICIA CORTEZ
I met Jim in my early days as a reporter at The Laredo Morning Times. It was 2001 and he walked into the newspaper needing to speak to someone. A prong of Manadas Creek, and one of Laredo’s last pristine woodlands and wetlands, was about to be wiped out by two feuding developers. I was captivated by how he told the story.
“Let’s go,” he said, making for the door. Never one to wait around, Jim was always seized by an urgent drive to move, to do. I quickly followed him and was taken by the marvelous beauty and wildlife along that stream.
The news stories that followed, the attention and loud demands from the community that were created – including City Hall visits by students from Alma Pierce Elementary led by counselor Consuelo Ramirez – forced the City Council and mayor to create a new committee. It forced them to take a new view of our local ecology and urban environment. At the time, nothing existed on the books to save Laredo’s streams, wetlands, and beautiful green places.
I covered some of those meetings for nearly two years and was always surprised at how Dr. Earhart could hold his own, so capably well, in a roomful of adversarial developers and their engineers. What emerged was a Green Spaces Preservation ordinance, and the conversion of that contested land into North Central Park.
This was just one of many battles that Dr. Earhart undertook; others were:
- the research and drafting of the HazMat, Illegal Dumping, and Single Use Plastic Bag ordinances,
- his successful urging of the City to create an Environmental Services Department,
- his work to establish a river monitoring program for Laredo,
- his dogged work to try and save the Casa Blanca wetland in front of the airport and the riverbend section behind Laredo College from washouts and extreme erosion by the Border Patrol Road
- helping to build the Paso del Indio Nature Trail, and Las Palmas Nature Trail, and
- establishing what is now the Lamar Bruni Vergara Environmental Science Center at Laredo College, and creating a unique river curriculum that he taught on the college campus.
Jim also fought to save an old growth mesquite forest behind Mary Help of Christians School which the City ignored and condemned in order to extend Springfield Ave. and to favor a particular developer.
He lost many of those battles but he taught and inspired thousands of us along the way.
He could drive you nuts with his phone calls, and unrelenting demand for action. You couldn’t escape him, nor get around his logical and deeply thought out plan of action.
He often asked me to work for RGISC, and years later I accepted a part-time job to work on an EPA watershed grant. I came at a time of internal turmoil for RGISC. Jim, who had previously served for years as a volunteer executive director, decided to come back from the Piney Woods and work with a small group of us to save RGISC and keep it open. He quickly hired me as a part-time assistant director and paid me out of pocket for months until we stabilized the organization.
He believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. When he asked me to serve as executive director, I told him that I didn’t know anything and didn’t even know where to start. “You were a reporter, weren’t you?” he responded. “You know how to read. You know how to pick up the phone and ask questions, don’t you? Well do it.” And then he was gone again, this time for good.
He wasn’t a very emotionally expressive person, but he could look you in the eye and connect with that better angel of your soul.
I wanted to be like Jim. Someone who possessed that kind of passion and integrity. He was so formidable in how he could effect change, and talk with people especially adversaries. I feel lucky that I got to know him and observe him in action.
What often surprised me about Jim was his desire to protect vulnerable people who stood to be impacted most by decisions that would greatly benefit someone else. That was his fight with the Casa Blanca wetland. Yes, he wanted to protect one of Laredo’s most stunning green spaces, one that looked like a scene out of Jurassic Park. Yes, he wanted to save the wildlife and pretty stream that filtered out toxins in runoff from the airport and Loop 20 before entering into the Lake. But more than anything, he wanted to save that little green spot for those who didn’t have the money to go out of town and enjoy nature. He didn’t want their views marred by shopping centers or hotels or parking lots. How do you explain that to a city planner or developer?
I feel a great hueco inside but I know that Jim’s spirit and legacy lives on at RGISC and in the work of key changemakers in our community.
From the RGISC 25th Anniversary Gala, held October 2019
The story of Jim Earhart is the story of a man and a river. Until his retirement from Laredo in the 2000s, Jim stirred the waters and the brush, and upset the halls of government on behalf of the humanity that depends on Mother Nature for its survival. He dared to ask questions, demand answers and advocate on environmental issues while adversaries agreed with him in silence. Jim harnessed the winds and made a difference.
Named Laredoan of the Year in 2002, Jim brought a staunch fighting spirit to the forefront, one that was calibrated by careful attention to details and a forward-looking vision of a brighter future.
Born near the Piney Woods of East Texas, he fell in love with Laredo long before arriving in 1967. His mother would sing “The Streets of Laredo” to him and his sister in bed and instilled in him a lifelong mystique and fascination with the border city.
His observations of raw sewage pouring into the river, and the thick coating of baby diapers covering rocks at the bottom of the river, set him on an unyielding course of action. He began developing maps of the city’s watershed and key creeks to educate the community. He soon realized that Laredo’s NAFTA-fueled explosive growth was wreaking environmental havoc at an alarming pace, and “it began to soak into me that the pattern of development did not fit into what I thought it should be,” he recalled.
His efforts at speaking out often brought little more than contempt from local officials, and the lack of public outcry often made him feel like Don Quixote chasing and jousting with windmills. The winds shifted in 2001 when a local developer invited him to testify against a neighboring landowner. Jim used the opportunity to focus attention on the impact both developers were having on one of Laredo’s last remaining wetlands along Manadas Creek. When schoolchildren from Alma Pierce Elementary held a conservation rally to protect Manadas and testified before city council, Jim realized that he had hit a nerve.
The Manadas controversy sparked real public debate and led to a broader realization of the ecological costs of Laredo’s unchecked development. For two long years, Jim worked within a committee of developers, builders and planners to hammer out the city’s first Green Space Preservation ordinance.
His educational background in zoology, botany and molecular biology allowed him to not only teach thousands of students but to testify expertly before the state on how levels of mercury, arsenic and other metals were reaching hazardous proportions in the Rio Grande at Laredo as a result of runoff from warehouses. The state decided not to launch a broader study.
“I was almost out of here. I was just chronicling the demise of one of Laredo’s last woodland/wetlands (Manadas) when things started to change,” he said.
Thank goodness he stayed. His activism, and his ability to connect with decision makers while building the grassroots, lit a torch of environmental activism and community awareness that continues to burn at RGISC today.
Tonight we are honored to highlight his legacy and relentless demand for change.
JULIE KELLY
After graduating from St. Edward’s University in Austin, I returned to my beloved bordertown in January 2000. I was down on my luck, with a Biology degree and jobless. I remember sitting at my parents’ house and viewing the evening news. The news segment had two individuals discussing maintaining water quality along the river. These two individuals were Dr. Jim Earhart and Dr. Thomas Vaughan. Immediately after viewing the news piece, I knew I had to contact these individuals to discuss potential job opportunities. That evening without hesitation, I revised my resume, made a few copies, and set my mind on finding a job. I knew my resume aligned with their work, as I volunteered for Texas Streams and tested the water quality on Town Lake right at the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue. The next day, I drove to Texas A & M University and searched for these individuals. With my luck, I did not find either of them, but I was able to slip my resume under Dr. Thomas Vaughan’s office. Dr. Vaughan called me the following day, and we met to discuss a part-time job opportunity with RGISC. I immediately took the job, and this is where I finally met Dr. Earhart, who worked at Laredo College.
Dr. Earhart was kind, gentle, and soft-spoken. He was never angry, or at least that is the Jim I got to know. We would take long walks to the river, and I could see his passion and love for his endeavors. I could see the challenges he experienced and his resilient nature. He was a warrior for what he believed in. I learned many lessons on our walks, but the most important conversations were on the destruction of nature and ecosystems by development. Dr. Earhart would look at me with eyes that touched my soul, “The destruction of ecosystems doesn’t benefit anyone. It is like a business deal (development and nature/ecosystems). In a good business deal, both parties benefit and win, right? So why can’t development and nature benefit?”
I carry this with me; it is my everyday mantra. I am guided by the belief that development and nature/ecosystems can coexist harmoniously and sustainably. It is not one-sided. It is a give-and-take. Just as the riverbanks of the mighty Rio Grande continuously change, so should our City, County, community, and neighborhood development change so that nature and ecosystems don’t have to lose.
Rest in Peace, friend. Thank you for our conversations that I will carry for my lifetime.
Driving the Green Space Ordinance
MEG GUERRA
In 1954 Pulitzer Prize Winner Paul Horgan wrote in Great River/The Río Grande:
“Landscape is often seen as static, but it is never static. From its first rock in the sky to its last embrace by the estuary at the sea, the river has been surrounded by forces and elements constantly moving and dynamic, interacting to produce its life and character. It has taken ocean and sky; the bearing of winds and the vagary of temperature; altitude and tilt of the earth’s crust; underground waters and the spill of valleys and the impermeable texture of deserts; the cover of plants and the uses of animals; the power of gravity and the perishability of rock; the thirst of things that grow; and the need of the sea to create the Río Grande.
The main physical circumstances of the Río Grande are timeless. They assume meaning only in terms of people who came to the river.”
I add this:
Dr. Jim Earhart came to this river, a force and an element constantly moving and dynamic, blessing its flow with his love for so magnificent, though beleaguered, an ecosystem and conscripting us, the willing, into the posse of like-minded environmental stewards who would become the Río Grande International Study Center.
Lucky were we who had the opportunity to work alongside him, to hear the thoughts of so learned a biologist, an eloquent advocate for the entire food chain that depends on this river. We were listening to the soul of this river.
