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Ogden Doremus, 85, environmentalist

By STACY SHELTON The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 04/06/07.
The last time Phyllis Bowen saw her friend Ogden Doremus, he was making faces at the television, which was tuned to the Fox News Channel.
Even at the end, the lifelong Democrat and old trial lawyer had a lot of fight left.
"I know he understood what was going on," said Ms. Bowen of her Monday visit to the nursing home. "I told him 'We are making progress. Nancy Pelosi's speaker of the House.' "
Mr. Doremus' biggest fights were over Georgia's environment. He battled polluters in courtrooms and fought for legal protections in the hallways at the Georgia Capitol, where he dictated arguments to legislators. In the late 1960s, he delayed the opening of Oglethorpe Mall near Savannah until the County Commission built a new sewage plant to properly treat the sewage discharged into the Savannah River.
But his crowning victory, the reason the Georgia House called him Georgia's "Mr. Environment" in a resolution honoring him in 1996, was his work on the 1970 Coastal Marshlands Protection Act. Many environmentalists say it remains the state's most important environmental law. Through it, the state laid claim to nearly 400,000 acres of salt marsh and began requiring developers to get permission before disrupting the marsh by building marinas, community docks or bridges.
Mr. Doremus, an Atlanta native who grew up in Inman Park, died Wednesday of congestive heart failure in Metter. He would have turned 86 on April 22 — Earth Day, fittingly. The funeral is Monday at 2 p.m. at Metter United Methodist Church.
In an interview in 2004 with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Mr. Doremus said the biggest environmental challenge facing the state was overpopulation. "Human beings are not noted for keeping a clean nest. The only thing that I can think of to help it is for everybody to leave. ... You can't say 'Stop having babies.' "
In 1973, Mr. Doremus helped found the Georgia Conservancy, one of the state's oldest and most respected environmental advocacy groups. In 1991, he co-founded the Georgia Center for Law in the Public Interest, a nonprofit legal arm of the states's environmental movement.
A World War II veteran who fought in Normandy on D-Day, Mr. Doremus began battling to protect the environment in the early 1950s as a member of the Atlanta Board of Aldermen, now the Atlanta City Council. He successfully lobbied for a state law to stop sawmills from dumping waste into Peachtree Creek.
His daughter Celia Doremus of Arlington, Mass., said she would go fishing with her father and brother, Frank Doremus of Westport, Mass., in the waters off the Savannah coast in the 1970s, at a time when the pelican population had plummeted from the widespread use of DDT — a now-banned pesticide.
"He had tears in his eyes," she said. "I remember him telling us if something wasn't done, those beautiful birds would be gone."
After graduating from Emory University School of Law in 1949, Mr. Doremus joined his father at the firm that became King & Spalding. He moved to Savannah to start his own practice in 1960. In 1975 he moved farther inland, to Metter, west of Savannah, where he continued to practice and was the elected State Court judge for Candler County from 1985 to 2005.
He made his money defending insurance companies against claims.
His former partner, Stanley Karsman of Savannah, said he had a photographic memory and loved to argue. When he was invited to lunch with a renowned entomologist, Mr. Doremus spent three days reading every book he could find on butterflies and other insects.
The host wound up embarrassed, because Mr. Doremus spent the entire meal arguing over facts with the expert. "He was prepared to take this guy on, which would be typical of him," Mr. Karsman said.
Mr. Doremus also battled personally with alcohol, the one fight he never won. "As brilliant as he was, he didn't understand why he couldn't drink and other [expletives] could," Mr. Karsman said.
Neill Herring of Jesup, a Sierra Club lobbyist, said Mr. Doremus' blueblood background, connections to legislators — including former Georgia House Speaker Tom Murphy — and legal acumen made him a stellar lobbyist for the environmental cause. "He brought a background of ruling-class power politics. He understood how it worked because he'd done it," Mr. Herring said.
Mr. Doremus often cajoled environmentalists to do more. Last year, when asked about coastal protections, he said, "I think we're going to have to either get off our behinds or let the damn developers take the coast."
Ms. Bowen of Jesup, executive director of the Sapelo Foundation, said Mr. Doremus taught her to have the courage to speak out.
"And that we're right, that people who are fighting now for protection of our environment are right, and we were the ones who are going to go down in history being right, fighting corporate greed and big bucks."
Survivors include another daughter, Dale Doremus of Espanola, N.M.; and a granddaughter.