Walter L. Wirth
- Cornelius Amory Pugsley Local Medal Award, 1958
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- Walter L. Wirth (1902-1958) received the Pugsley Bronze Medal posthumously soon after his death in 1958, "for distinguished service in the professional advancement of park and recreation administrators, especially for leadership in the reorganization, refinancing and reinstituting an educational program of the American Institute of Park Executives (AIPE) during the critical depression and war years while serving as a director from 1936 through 1939 and two terms as president in 1940 and 1944; and for his accomplishments as superintendent of parks in Salem, Oregon."
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- He was the son of noted Minneapolis park director Theodore Wirth, and brother of National Park Service Director Conrad Wirth. He attended public schools in Minneapolis and in 1923 he followed in the footsteps of his two brothers when he graduated from St. John Military Academy in Delafield, Wisconsin in 1923. This was a boarding school which his parents favored because they traveled extensively. He entered the University of Minneapolis, but after some time there he quit school and decided to follow in his father's footsteps. After starting with a part-time job in New Orleans working with his brother Conrad, Wirth engaged in contracted landscape design work with park systems in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
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- From 1926-1927 he was assistant superintendent of parks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, serving as deputy to "Willo" Doolittle who also served as executive secretary of the American Instituteof Park Executives. In March 1927 he was appointed assistant superintendent of parks in New Haven, Connecticut. When the director died in 1929, he was appointed superintendent and remained in that position until 1946. During the last 14 years of his tenure at New Haven, his responsibilities also included administration of municipal recreation programs. At New Haven, he was especially noted for the youth and nature programs that he developed. He then accepted the position of director of Babler State Park at Centaur in Missouri in 1947-48 where he was hired to design and engineer the future development and construction of park facilities. He followed this by becoming director of state parks in Pennsylvania responsible for the administration of 35 state parks.
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- In 1954, Wirth moved to his final administrative post as superintendent of parks in Salem, Oregon, where he was instrumental in developing an award winning park system. He was hired to design and engineer the future development and construction of park facilities, and during his relatively short stay in Salem he spearheaded what the local Salem newspaper described as "a huge extension of recreational areas in the city." At the time of his death, the system contained 20 park areas and playgrounds. Wallace Marine Park and Bush Pasture Park were major projects developed under his leadership. Following Walter Wirth's death, the Salem City Council named a 20-acre lake in Cascades Gateway Park after him, the Walter L. Wirth Lake. The Salem Capital Journal said:
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Salem is fortunate to have had for a period of five years the services of Walter L. Wirth as its director of parks. The development of parks and recreation facilities was more than a profession with him. It was a passion. It was the essence of his life, for in it he saw, not alone the cultural upbuilding of a city, but a movement essential to childhood and youth of all social levels, a means toward happy and orderly living in an age of uncertainty and confusion.
- Wirth was a regular participant in AIPE conferences attending his first in Minneapolis in 1922 as a young student acting as an aide to his father, Theodore, who was a charter member and was again elected president of the Institute in that year. In 1958 Walter Wirth received the highest honor, AIPE bestowed - honorary fellowship. Wirth gave many years of intensive service to AIPE serving AIPE president in 1940/41. He refused re-election in 1941, but became president again in 1943/44.
- Sources:
- Planning and Civic Comment (1958), 24(4), p. 56.