On Feb. 21, the folks at the Stroud Water Research Center celebrated the joint birthday of President George Washington and the center's co-founder, W. B. Dixon Stroud Sr., by baking their own "cherry creations" and bringing them to share as part of an office-wide luncheon.
Thirty years ago I met Mr. Stroud when I was invited to dinner at his home, Landhope, and he impressed me as a worldly, distinctive, somewhat larger-than-life character. I went to the center's website to learn a bit more about him:
"The story of one of the world’s foremost freshwater research institutions began in the salt waters of the Pacific Ocean. In 1956 W. B. Dixon Stroud joined a snail-collecting expedition from the Academy of Natural Sciences and spent two months off the coast of New Guinea diving for live shells. This was not Dick Stroud’s first immersion in Pacific waters. Eleven years earlier he had been officer of the deck when the USS William D. Porter was hit by a kamikaze pilot during the Battle of Okinawa. The ship sank in 90 minutes. None of the crew was killed in the attack, but, as second in command, Lieutenant Stroud was the next-to-last man off.
His subsequent Pacific voyage left a better memory. It also introduced Dick Stroud to the scientific research efforts of the Academy. That introduction bore fruit nine years later when he and his wife, Joan, met Ruth Patrick, the head of the Academy’s limnology department. The three quickly became friends, and Dr. Patrick urged the Strouds to build a small laboratory dedicated to freshwater research along White Clay Creek on their farm in southern Chester County. . . . In the summer of 1966 the Stroud Water Research Center began its existence as a field station of the Academy in a hastily cleared space above the Stroud’s garage."
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