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2019 Katchen Coley Award for Excellence in Conservation
When growing up in the 1920s and 1930s, now almost a century ago, Lem Sperry particularly loved swimming, fishing, skating, and spending time in a rowboat on a pond his grandfather had created along Straits Turnpike in Middlebury.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Lem came to see the importance of keeping land like that where he played as a boy forever open and protected.
What is surprising, however, is that Lem’s vision for protection of open space in perpetuity came about before such programs were at all well-known — some 50 years ago — leading to the creation of the Middlebury Land Trust.
