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<em>George Patrick Ahern</em> was born in New York City, December 29, 1859. He died in Washington. D.C., May 13, 1942, leaving behind him a distinguished record of public life.</p>
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Before the present century began, George Ahern and I were drawn together by our common interest in forestry. Already in 1889, his adventurous spirit led him to explore unmapped forests in the main range of the Rocky Mountains in northern Montana. Because of knowledge thus acquired, his advice was sought by the Forest Commission of the National Academy of Sciences, then engaged in selecting areas to be set aside as what were at first called “Forest Reserves,” but now National Forests. In pursuance of this work, George and I, with Henry S. Graves, made a pack trip through the Bitter Root country of Montana and the Clearwater country of Idaho, in the summer of 1896, which resulted in the creation of the Bitter Root National Forest.</p>
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I had been acquainted with him before that, but in such circumstances men really get to know each other. George Ahern was not merely a first-class woodsman, which was to be expected, but also a most delightful companion. He was intensely human-kindly, and a kindly critic of other men. An admirable story teller also, with an unusual experience behind him and the qualities which were to ensure a still more unusual experience ahead. Naturally enough, he was the life of the camp fire and the trail.</p>
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His training at West Point and in the Army had not erected even the slightest barrier between himself and the men with whom he came in contact. He valued men for what they were and what they had done. He was honest, in the fullest meaning of the word, and his honesty was as evident as his red hair. No man with good intentions could come to know him without trusting him.</p>
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I do not mean that he had no enemies. Every man with a real purpose in his soul must have some. But his enemies were to his credit, and part of the proof of his manhood.</p>
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He was as tenacious as a bulldog, and as good natured, and of course, utterly unafraid. I realized that at one moment on the trip when, except for him, a loaded quirt would have made connection with my head from behind.</p>
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He had the sense of humor which rightly came to him from his Irish ancestry, and the confident willingness to take chances, which is its proper mate. Routine had small appeal to his free and enterprising spirit. His constant desire was to see new country, do new things, and be of use to his fellow men. His interests lay not only in line of duty as a soldier, but in many other lines as well. Tradition had no power to shackle him. He was a free man, and the whole wide world was his oyster.</p>
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If it had not been so, he would not have been found, during that same year, or the year after (I do not remember which), giving a course of lectures on forestry at the Montana State Agricultural College. He was, as I wrote the then Secretary of Agriculture, “the first American, so far as I am aware, to give practical instruction in forestry.”</p>
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At the same time Ahern was most successful in awakening an interest in forestry among public men in the Northwest. He approached the forest question in a thoroughly practical way, and with an unusual faculty for getting at its essentials.</p>
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During the Spanish War of 1898. George Ahern won the Silver Star and was cited for gallantry in action. The next year, with the rank of Captain, he went with the 9th Infantry to the Philippine Islands. Prevented by a serious leg injury from active service in the Philippine Insurrection, which was still in full swing, he was assigned to organize the Insular Bureau of Forestry. For fourteen useful years, he was its head. I am proud to have had something to do with his appointment to that highly important post.</p>
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In 1900, he wrote me, “We have a forestry bureau out here, but it does not amount to much as yet.’’ Under his courageous and energetic leadership that situation was remedied. One of his greatest services was in giving the Filipinos their proper share in the work of the Bureau of Forestry. It was largely for this purpose that in 1910 he established the Philippine Forest School on the Peninsula of Bataan.</p>
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In those early days forestry in the Philippine Islands was full of problems. In 1902, at George’s request, and with the approval of William Howard Taft, then Civil Governor of the Islands, President Theodore Roosevelt sent me to the Philippines to study the forest question and prepare a plan for the Insular Forest Service.</p>
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At Manila Governor Taft turned over to us the gunboat, <em>General Alava</em>, which had been assigned to him by the Navy. On it George Ahern and I traveled some two thousand miles among the Islands, and made personal notes of forest conditions on about two hundred of them. It was an intensely interesting trip, partly because of the immense variety of the forests and the difficulties of handling and protecting them, partly because the Philippine Insurrection was not yet at an end.</p>
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On the Island of Mindanao, where our sentries were still being cut up by the Moros, we met Captain Pershing, just before his promotion from Captain to Brigadier General. Pershing took us through the Moro fortifications which his men had recently captured and made the fight alive.<br />
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Following this tour of study and inspection, the General Alava carried us to Japan. During the trip to Nagasaki and on the way to Yokohoma, together we worked out my report. Later on it was given full effect.</p>
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There is too much to tell of George Ahern’s long and honorable service in the Army for the space in which to tell it. In 1906 he retired with the rank of Major; returned to active duty July 1, 1916; became Secretary of the War College in Washington in 1918-19; was on duty at the Veterans’ Bureau from 1920 to 1924; and retired as Lieutenant Colonel in 1930.</p>
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During the half century of our friendship, George Ahearn’s interest in forestry and service to its cause never faltered. After his retirement, in addition to his publications on the forests of the Philippine Islands, he wrote in 1920 an exceedingly valuable pamphlet on “<em>Deforested America</em>,” which has been distributed to several thousand libraries throughout the United States. This was followed in 1933 by “<em>Forest Bankruptcy In America</em>,” and other publications on military and forest questions. </p>
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George Ahern’s remarkable contribution to forestry in the East and in the West, was all the more notable for the reason that he was self-trained in this field. Because of his distinguished services to the cause of forestry in America, he was one of the very few men who have been elected a fellow of the Society of American Foresters.</p>
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Patsy Ahern, as he was known in the Army, was a man whose qualities of heart and mind made him innumerable friends. But nothing in his long career was more admirable than the courage and endurance of the last six years of his life, during which he was confined to his bed, barely able to speak, or unable to speak at all.</p>
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It is not often that an Army man is able to make so outstanding a record of public service in a civilian field like forestry. What George Ahern did for forestry in America and in the Philippines, on opposite sides of the world, deserves to be, and will be, long and gratefully remembered.</p>
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<em>—Gifford Pinchot</em></p>