Greg Haegele: In Memoriam
You're invited to remember and celebrate Greg's life:
Sunday afternoon, April 25, 2010
Marin County, California
The Haegele Family and the Sierra Club invite Greg's friends and colleagues to join together to remember and celebrate his life. The gathering will be held on Sunday afternoon, April 25, 2010, in Marin County, California with details to follow. Please RSVP by email if you hope to attend and would like further information about time and location.
Strategic thinker, conscientious manager, inspired leader, mentor, visionary, friend: This is how Sierra Club staff and volunteers will remember Greg Haegele, who passed away on January 21, 2010.
Fond memories of our stellar friend and colleague are being shared not
only in the comments further down on this page, but
also on Twitter, where many, many of those who knew Greg are "re-tweeting"
tweets about him. Treehugger, where Greg had a weekly blog entry, posted
a message about him. And the Sierra
Club's Facebook group has served as a place for folks to share.
A Sierra Club staff member since 2004, Greg served as Deputy Conservation
Director, Interim Political Director, and Director of Conservation before
assuming the post of Deputy Executive Director in 2009. Before going to
work for the Sierra Club, he directed a variety of progressive activist
organizations and served as campaign or field manager for a number of gubernatorial,
U.S. Senate, and state and local electoral campaigns. He earned a Ph.D.
in philosophy from Emory University and a B.A. in philosophy from Whitman
College, and taught philosophy at Emory and Carroll College in Helena, Montana.
Last year, Greg was chosen by the Executive Committee of the Sierra Club Board of Directors to receive the John Muir Award, the Club's highest honor. The award honors a distinguished record of leadership in national or international conservation causes, such as continuing John Muir's work of preservation and establishment of parks and wildernesses.
Reflecting on Greg's contributions to the Club, Executive Director Carl
Pope said, "Greg had one of the greatest strategic minds the Sierra Club
has ever seen. He was like a general, always thinking a few steps ahead,
analyzing how best to deploy resources, motivate his troops and win. Greg
pushed us all to succeed with mentoring, leadership and passion. He waged
war on climate change with a piercing intensity fueled by beautiful places
in nature." (Read more from Carl.)
In a 2008 interview with a Sierra Club writer, Greg said he loved the challenge
of figuring out how to combine being right and winning. He said he was both
daunted by and excited about finding solutions to one of the biggest challenges
ever faced: global warming.
Greg is survived by his parents, Wayne and Donna Haegele; his sister Gretchen
Flaum, her husband JP, and their children Porter, 6, and Melina, 5; and
his sister Kristen Snyder, her husband Scott, and their children Casey,
18, Brittany, 16, and Mikayla, 11.
Greg's family requests that those wishing to make a contribution in his memory should make
a donation to the Sierra Club.
Read more about Greg.
We invite Greg's friends, family, and colleagues to pay tribute to Greg by adding a comment below.