Remembering Harlan D. WalleyHarlan Walely exhibited an energy for life and love of natural history that began during his childhood in rural Sandwich, Illinois and continued throughout adulthood. He was a fixture in NIU's Department of Biological Sciences, supervising the department's animal care facility from the 1960's (then in Davis Hall) until his retirement in 1999 and curating its natural history museum until his death. Harlan's academic interests centered on herpetology, mammalogy, and Illinois natural history and he was a valuable, respected, and generous source of information to faculty, students, the community, and the state. His formal training in biology was cut short by the Korean war, during which he served as a Navy medic, and health problems associated with psoriasis which began at this time. Harlan suffered with this disease and a range of ineffective and sometimes harmful treatments for more than a decade until he found hydrocortisone ointments that allowed him to manage his symptoms. Time-consuming treatments, often at facilities far from home, interrupted his course work so frequently that he abandoned further education.
A true curator, Harlan became obsessed with natural history books and papers at an early age and went on to build a personal collection of more than 60,000 reprints and 3,000 bound volumes. He developed his museum skills through time spent in the Department of Entomology at the Smithsonian Institution and at the Illinois Natural History Survey. It was at the INHS that Harlan established a lifelong relationship with two eminent figures in North American herpetology, Philip W. Smith, who in 1961 authored The Amphibians and Reptiles of Illinois, and Hobart M. Smith, who has continued to contribute to the scientific literature into his 90s. It was with Phil Smith that Harlan published his first scientific paper - a note documenting the occurrence of the marbled salamander, Ambystoma opacum, in Michigan. Harlan was 18 at the time! Harlan went on to publish well over 100 manuscripts, many focused on amphibian, reptile, and mammal natural history and distribution. He also put his reprint collection to good use, regularly contributing entries to the Catalogue of American Amphibians and Reptiles. The literature cited sections of his entries are encyclopedic - a soon to be published entry on the Northern watersnake includes over 1,000 references! Harlan was an avid reader and supported this habit and his penchant for book collecting by authoring frequent book reviews.
Perhaps one of Harlan's greatest, if sometimes unrecognized, contributions was the informal mentorship he provided to NIU Biology graduate students. Harlan was a resource, lunch companion, and field-trip guide to students with interests in any aspect of biology. He was generous with his reprint collection and often helped start students' publishing careers by urging submission of a life history or distributional observation or including them as coauthors on papers he initiated. He enriched all our lives in unfathomable ways and will be missed!