For scholarship recipient Anthony Martin ’16, community is at the crux of environmental change.

Inspired by the Elwha River and the First Nation peoples of the Klallam, Martin applied for the George Washington Hayduke III scholarship, a new financial aid award at Evergreen specifically for students interested in environmental education, conservation, and protection.

“With this scholarship I plan on continuing my education in environmental studies as well as taking what I learn and applying it towards the community,” said Martin. “I want to help protect, enhance, and mitigate our environmental concerns and I believe it is going to take one community at a time.”

Thanks to a group of generous friends, including three Evergreen alumni, Martin is the first student to receive the scholarship.

For those at the leading edge of the environmental conservation movement in the Northwest in the late ’70s, Edward Abbey’s book, The Monkey Wrench Gang, was required reading. The book’s four main characters are ecologically minded misfits, with the gang’s leader—George Washington Hayduke III—being the most radical environmentalist of all.

For the four friends, this book holds a special place in their hearts. It represents a time when direct action, community organizing, and passionate protesting changed the landscape of Washington State.

So when Jim Lazar brought the idea of endowing an environmental scholarship in the name of Hayduke to his friend John Stocks ’81, the two knew right away that they would call in the two other members of their “gang,” Kevin Bell ’81 and Ed Zuckerman ’77, to help advance environmental education at Evergreen. Stocks, Bell and Zuckerman developed their passion for the environment together in the Applied Environmental Studies program at Evergreen in the late ’70s. Lazar taught community classes on Evergreen’s campus at the time.

History in the Making

It was late March 1979, and the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania had just experienced a near-catastrophic meltdown. At the same time, The Washington Public Power Supply System proposed building five nuclear plants in Washington State, including two in Satsop, just west of Olympia.

At The Evergreen State College, Lazar, Zuckerman, Bell, and Stocks were all on campus for different reasons, but were all drawn to the same cause—environmental activism. Specifically, fighting against the Satsop power plants.

As the rally around the nuclear plants took place, the four men would bond in ways that forever changed political economy and environmental problem solving in Washington State. Bell and Stocks were often on the front line of protests and demonstrations, while Lazar and Zuckerman worked to organize ballot measures. In 1981, thanks to the tremendous effort of all involved, the Don’t Bankrupt Washington initiative 394 shut down construction of the Satsop plants.

Zuckerman, now senior vice president for state capacity building at the League of Conservation Voters remembered fondly, “We poured our heart and soul into it.”

This bond would ultimately carry the men through nearly four decades of friendship, career growth, policy change, education, and now—giving back.

Fortitude for the Future

The group took advantage of matching funds from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and drew inspiration from The Monkey Wrench Gang, to create the aptly named George Washington Hayduke III Scholarship for Environmental Education.

Stocks, who is currently the executive director of the National Education Association, explained that his motivation stemmed from what he feels is the most powerful program he attended at Evergreen, Applied Environmental Studies, which focused on the application of environmental studies on real-world problems in and around the Olympia area.

Lazar, a local consulting economist who focuses on the energy sector, values the diverse and resourceful people Evergreen brings to the Olympia area. During the Hayduke days, Lazar worked extensively with Bell and the legislature to bring about environmental policy change. His motivation for giving is the appreciation that “Evergreen has tentacles everywhere and has greatly improved Olympia.”

As a sustainability professor at the University of Santa Cruz, Bell appreciated the opportunity to leverage matching funds to reach his philanthropic goals. His feelings about environmental education? The torch must be passed to the next generation.

“One of the fundamentally amazing things about Evergreen is that you are taught how to solve problems,” said Bell. “When I look at the kind of impact our cohort had, especially with water and energy in the Northwest, we desperately need that capacity, and these next students are the ones that are going to do it.

“It’s a multi-generational project, so we’ve got to get going. If we have an opportunity to build capacity at Evergreen to make that happen—we want to do that.”

Stocks’ sentiment mirrors that of his friends: “Evergreen and the Applied Environmental Studies program set all of us on a path to have an impact around environmental and community issues,” he said. “Because of this program, I was motivated to create a scholarship that gave students an opportunity to influence important issues of communities and the environment through Evergreen.”