prologue
It was common for boys to go on to trade
schools.
One of the reasons that the fi rst Earth Day
changed history was that, like the hand-
sewn fl ag, it was do-it-yourself. In Septem-
ber 1969, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wiscon-
sin vowed to organize “a nationwide teach-
in on the environment,” but did not insist
on a specifi c format, instead encouraging
local organizers to shape their own events.
As a result, the teach-in became something
much bigger than Nelson had imagined,
inspiring and uniting people of varying
lifestyles and ideologies. Roughly 10,000
schools, 1,500 colleges and universities and
hundreds of communities held Earth Day
celebrations. Millions took part.
At Lanphier, the school’s Earth Day pro-
test lifted the spirits of senior Georgene
Curry. Writing in the student newspaper,
she confessed that she feared pollution
would soon turn the song “America the
Beautiful” into a pathetic joke. But Earth
Day had given her hope. “Lanphier stu-
dents, under the direction of Mr. Bru-
zan, have already taken a step forward,”
she wrote. “The petition-passing and the
march to the capitol building made the
public aware of the problem, if the public
had been blind enough not to notice it be-
fore Earth Day.”
Nationally, the mass demonstration of
concern led to a series of landmark envi-
ronmental laws, beginning with the Clean
Air Act of 1970. Earth Day also built a po-
litical and educational infrastructure that
still bolsters the movement today: lobbying
groups, environmental reporters, college
environmental-studies programs.
Though Bruzan never led another protest
march, each year he hung the ecology fl ag
in his classroom on April 22—until 1994,
when he gave it to the Smithsonian, six
years before he retired from Lanphier. In
Bruzan’s view, the fl ag represented not the
political fringe but the nation’s can-do spir-
it : If we could put someone on the Moon,
he thought, we should be able to restore
our environment. “Now I know it’s not that
simple,” he says. “But I remain hopeful.”LEARN MORE ABOUT Smithsonian’s
Earth Day conservation summit at
Smithsonianmag.com/earthoptimismOn the Grid
OUR ANNIVERSARY ISSUE IS A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
By Sam EzerskyAcross
1 Sch. in Dallas
4 Forms bubbles, as on the
seaside
9 Food ___
10 Dr. ___ Ford, testifi er in a
trial on Michigan’s campus
12 Chemical suffi x with oct-
13 Pope’s domain
14 Machine for a water-based
power generator
16 Many a recycled food item
17 Greeting in Brazil
18 Animals in the deer family
19 Kind of energy produced
by a 14-Across
22 “The ones over here”
23 Work without ___ (take
risks)
24 Unhappy fan’s utterance
25 Computer port inits.
26 Tries to scratch, as a cat
might
30 Product from Purina
32 Trident-shaped letter
33 What an “e” overlapping an
“o” symbolized on 1970s
protest fl ags
34 Muslim observance at the
end of Ramadan
35 Bridge framework
36 Earth ___ See the solution on Page 100.Down
1 Give a “Whap!”
2 List of options
3 Major company in the gig
economy
4 Shrek’s love
5 Look the wrong way?
6 Youngest March sister in
“Little Women”
7 One of close to 40,000
in an elephant’s trunk
8 Moves furtively
10 Secret stakeholder, perhaps
11 Not so quick on the uptake
15 SMEagol in Nova Scotia’s
Grand Passage, e.g.
18 Website for self-help
19 Brownish-gray color
20 One of “the little things
that run the world,” per
E.O. Wilson
21 Person with an I.O.U.
22 Sycophant
24 Many links on Twitter bios
26 Doves’ calls
27 Went 90 on the highway, e.g.
28 Where elephants continue
to face land scarcity issues
29 Neat and clean
31 Ailment with a “season”1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 79 9 10 1112 1314 15 1617 1819 20 21 2223 242 5 2 6 2 7 2 8 2930 31 30 3233 32 3433 35 3628 SMITHSONIAN | April 2020