Mary Carol Cooper
May 9, 1942 – May 17, 2016

On May 17th, 2016, Kentucky lost one of its brightest and dearest conservation champions, Mary Carol Cooper. Mary Carol served KNPS for over 15 years in many different capacities, including director, Vice-president, field trip and hike leader, stewardship certification instructor, and newsletter contributor. In 2010, she retired as the director of Salato’s Native Plant Program, where she managed the greenhouses, propagated and cared for over 100 species of native plants, designed and installed native plant demonstration gardens, led workshops on developing backyard habitats, and inspired countless others to develop an interest in Kentucky’s plants and animals.

Dr. Thomas G. Barnes, 1957-­‐2014

Tom Barnes passed away on October 12 after a long battle with illness. This is a great loss to the KNPS family and the conservation community of Kentucky as well as to his loved ones. Tom was not only a former KNPS president, but also a generous man who gave freely of his time and talents to this and many other conservation organizations. He regularly led field trips and gave presentation on biodiversity issues to groups of all types, from local garden clubs to the KNPS Wildflower Weekends. In many ways, Tom personified the KNPS; he was a respected academic whose invasive species management research influenced land managers in Kentucky and throughout the nation, including the graduate students he mentored, but his real passion was educating the general public about biodiversity issues. He truly loved nature for its beauty, as well as understanding its scientific importance. An accomplished photographer, his photographs appeared in books, websites, calendars, magazines, and other outlets all over the world, including at the Chicago Botanical Garden, the Audubon Aquarium, the Smithsonian and the Bronx Zoo—but he allowed groups like KNPS free access to his photos provided they were used to educate the public on biodiversity issues.

IN MEMORIAM
LANDON E. McKINNEY
(1949–2014)

Landon E. McKinney, a talented field botanist and naturalist, passed away on Thursday, June 5th, 2014, at the Wade Park Veteran’s Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, at the age of 65. Landon Earl McKinney was born May 17, 1949 in Nashville, Tennessee, to the late Lawrence Vern and Constance Joy McKinney. After graduating from Donelson High School in Nashville in 1967, Landon joined the Navy and served as a Marine Navy Corpsman from 1968–1970; he was a field combat corpsman in Vietnam during 1969. He earned a B.S. in Biology in 1973 from Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) and subsequently his M.S. in Botany in 1977 from MTSU. His master’s thesis was “Preliminary Studies of the Acaulescent Blue Violets (Viola) with Special Reference to Middle Tennessee,” which began his life-long fascination with the stemless blue violets. He was a Research Associate in Plant Taxonomy at Vanderbilt University from 1985–1989, where he worked with Dr. Robert Kral.

Charles J. Lapham (1934—2009)
By Ronald L. Jones, Eastern Kentucky University

Over the past decade Charles J. Lapham has been one of the most important figures in the Kentucky Native Plant Society, in Kentucky botany, and in the botany of the southeastern United States. Charlie, as he preferred to be called, passed away on October 26, 2009, of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He had been in poor health for several years, mostly related to heart disease and diabetes, and was only recently diagnosed with lymphoma. In recent emails he informed his close acquaintances of his situation, and was characteristically matter-of-fact in describing his time remaining. He expected to have a few more months, or maybe a few years, but he suffered a major setback on Wednesday, the 21st, and never recovered. He was 75 years old.