Creating Waves of Conservation: John Woollam

Every summer as a young boy, John Woollam would awaken to the sounds of the birds, the frogs, and the waves. While his siblings slept inside, John chose to sleep on the screened porch of the family cottage, 50 feet from Pretty Lake. His days on this lake near Kalamazoo were spent outdoors where the love of nature and a passion for sailing were born. “My first sailboat was a rowboat with a sheet,” Woollam reminisces. In sixth grade, young John began crewing on a snipeclass sailboat and in eighth grade, he bought his first sailboat for racing around southwest Michigan. When old enough to drive, he pulled his boat to Saugatuck to sail a section of the Kalamazoo River that would take him to the “big lake.” It was there that the conservationist in him began to take root. “I loved how the dunes go up on both sides along the river,” said John. “Much of it is still natural.” In 11th grade, he wrote to the governor asking if this section of the river could be saved. Today, as just one of his many conservation endeavors, John is part of a consortium of people seeking to permanently protect the Saugatuck Dunes and surrounding Lake Michigan shoreline.

His early immersion in the natural world prompted John to pursue physics in college. After 13 years with NASA, his research priorities changed, and Woollam moved to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he taught, headed up the school’s ellipsometry center, and eventually started his own enterprise, J.A. Woollam Co., now a worldwide leader in spectroscopic ellipsometry. (Ellipsometers are used in items ranging from space shuttles to telecommunications equipment.)

John also attributes his current passion for saving wild lands from development to more than 40 years spending time in the northern Michigan wild areas with his family and in-laws, Robert and Vivian VanCampen of Harbor Springs. The family has spent many memorable times fly fishing, bird watching, and enjoying good meals together. About five years ago, John made contact with Conservancy staff and described his conservation intent. “From the first day, he told us his goal was to protect shoreline for the public to enjoy,” said Tom Lagerstrom, associate director for the Conservancy. “And he has stuck to that goal, without any personal agenda other than the pure delight of protecting land.”

If we look back at some of our most notable projects from the last few years, John has played a role in almost all of them that involve shoreline,” Lagerstrom added. A sample of these projects includes the Round Island Point Nature Preserve (2.5 miles of Lake Superior shoreline), St. Helena Island (2.8 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline), the Bailey-Lagerstrom Preserve on Sugar Island (nearly a mile of St. Mary’s River/Lake Huron shoreline), and the Helmer’s Dam-Robert D. VanCampen Preserve (1.1 miles along the Pigeon River).

John is supporting conservancy work throughout Michigan, his adopted state of Nebraska, and most recently an effort to help protect 21 million acres in the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia, Canada. “There is incredible power in matching grants,” John says. “I love offering a grant and seeing how much the community can do to make a project happen.”

When asked if he was the “Santa Claus” challenge donor for the Black Hole project on the Pickerel Lake/Crooked Lake channel in which $950,000 was raised in only six weeks, Woollam’s response was “I don’t have a beard, but that’s my kind of fundraising!”

Recently featured in the cover article of Industrial Physicist, Woollam’s contributions to the scientific world are numerous. And thanks to John’s partnership with Little Traverse Conservancy, thousands of feet of Great Lakes, inland lakes, and river shoreline have been protected for generations to enjoy. The Little Traverse Conservancy is challenged to adequately express the significance of his enduring and generous gifts intended to benefit us all.

Examples of projects that John Woollam has helped support:

Helmer's Dam - Robert D. Van Campen Preserve (Cheboygan County)	Pickerel-Crooked Lake Channel (Emmet County)	St. Helena Island (Mackinac County)
	Round Island Point Nature Preserve (Chippewa County)	Bailey-Lagerstrom Preserve on Sugar Island (Chippewa County)