CHARLES E. LITTLE ’55

CHARLES E. LITTLE, 83, a conservationist, author, and land use expert, died June 20, 2014. A member of Beta Theta Pi, he received his degree with distinction in creative writing. He was the great-grandson of Gaybert Barnes of the class of 1869, the grandson of C.E. Little of the class of 1894, and the son of John R. Little of the class of 1926. During the Korean War he served in the U.S. Army. He was an advertising executive at Foote, Cone, and Belding until 1963, when he became chief executive officer of The Open Space Institute and published its Open Space magazine with the objective of preserving areas of natural beauty in the New York metropolitan region. His entire life’s work then became devoted to the appreciation and protection of American landscapes, rural or urban, public or private. In 1972 he joined the Conservation Foundation in Washington, D.C., and then became head of the Natural Resources Division of The Congressional Research Service, which he left in 1978 to establish the American Land Resource Association and edit its publication, American Land Forum. The author of many books, he founded Voices from the American Land, a quarterly publication of poetry celebrating outstanding landscapes of North America. Survivors include his wife, Ila Dawson Little, three children of his first wife, two stepsons, 12 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.