Byline: Tim Eisele
PORTAGE -- April 21, 1948 was a sad day for generations of people who enjoy and appreciate the great outdoors.
That was the day that Aldo Leopold suffered a fatal heart attack while helping a neighbor fight a grass fire on the farm adjacent to Leopold's 'Shack' on land near Portage. Leopold had been working on his land while the University of Wisconsin was closed for spring break and had seen the approaching smoke and went to the aid of his neighbor.
Irwin J. Ten Haken was one of the students enrolled in Leopold's Wildlife Ecology class that semester, and the following week professor Joe Hickey walked into the classroom and announced that Leopold had died.
'That Monday morning, Leopold's dog was on the campus sniffing everybody, trying to find out where Aldo was,' Ten Haken said. Leopold's dog, a German short-hair pointer, often accompanied Leopold to class.
'We were all stunned,' Ten Haken said. 'I really felt bad when we lost him. What a genius,' he said.
Hickey took over and taught the class for remainder of the semester.
Ten Haken, now 82, was from Cedar Grove and had served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II as a flight engineer on a B-24 in the Pacific Theatre. He flew 51 missions from the same airfield where the late Richard Bong was stationed.
After returning from the war, he came to Madison in February of 1946 to major in soil science, with a minor in agronomy. He married his wife, Jane, in 1947.
'I really wanted some wildlife management classes and my advisor, professor Robert Muckenhirn, approached Leopold for special permission for me to attend his class,' Ten Haken said.
Leopold's program was only for graduate students, but Ten Haken was one of a handful of undergraduates allowed to take the class, perhaps because Leopold placed emphasis on soil conservation and thought a soils student could promote wildlife management during his career.
'That class was one of the best I've ever taken,' Ten Haken said. 'He was very informal yet he had a world of experience from out west that he related to us. He really wanted to get his thoughts across to us.
'He often wore a patch over one eye, following surgery, but he'd stand there with his pipe and prose would come out of him. He talked like he wrote.
'He talked about his experiences on the Kaibab Plateau, which is when I learned that deer management was important,' Ten Haken said. 'I knew then that we really had to shoot does.'
Ten Haken remembers an experience when he watched a squirrel scamper across a telephone wire with a young baby squirrel holding on around the adult's neck. He was intrigued by what he saw and reported it to Leopold later that week in class, because he'd never seen it before and Leopold was interested in the observation.
'He got his little memo pad and asked my name again and made a note of the observation. He wanted all the data, and would gain knowledge wherever he could,' Ten Haken said.
Ten Haken remembers Leopold's demeanor. 'He was so common, yet so knowledgeable.'
'He really wanted to get the word out and help you understand things,' Ten Haken added. 'You couldn't help but like the guy, because he treated you like a human being. He was special, which is why all the graduate students were there, but we never realized that he would be world renown.'
Ten Haken graduated in 1949 and worked as a District Conservationist for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service in Waupaca and Columbia counties in Wisconsin, and in Manistee and Escanaba, Mich. He moved to Portage in 1967, ironically only a few miles from where the Leopold Shack is located, and retired in 1980.
'I used his philosophies about land management all my life,' Ten Haken said. 'For example, I learned about deer management, which was a big argument in Lower Michigan, the U.P. and here in Wisconsin. His thoughts, that you've got to shoot does and manage deer populations, were with me all the time.
'I never heard 'Irky' talk about anyone as much as he talked about Leopold,' Jane Ten Haken said about her husband. 'He was so impressed with him. He passed that philosophy on to our children and our grandchildren, and they have all read 'A Sand County Almanac.' '
When Ten Haken took his final exam in the class, Hickey allowed Jane, who was waiting at the back of the classroom for Irwin, to read some of Leopold's unpublished original manuscripts that eventually were published as 'A Sand County Almanac.'
E-mail: tctsports@madison.com
CAPTION(S):
TIM EISELE
Some memorabilia from the late Aldo Leopold is housed at the University of Wisconsin, where Leopold was the nation's first professor of game management in 1939. Shown are Leopold's binoculars and carrying case, his 1938 archery deer tag, and his fly fishing reel.
