On April 27th John O. Bell was in Washington D.C. walking to the podium in the auditorium of the Ronald Reagan Building to accept the ASLA LaGasse Medal before 400 colleagues and guests for his work as co-founder and president of the Henry Shaw Ozark Corridor Foundation. This prestigious award honors a maximum of two recipients annually — one landscape architect and one non-landscape architect — for excellence in the management of public lands and natural resources in the public interest.

Mr. Bell received the 2001 ASLA LaGasse Medal in the landscape architect category along with The Honorable Bruce Babbitt for the non-landscape architect category. They were to receive the awards at the society’s 2001 Annual Meeting in Montreal, Quebec, Canada last September. Due to the terrorist attacks of September 11, the presentation was postponed until this spring.

2001 LaGasse recipients — Hon. Bruce Babbit and John O. Bell

The Honorable Bruce Babbitt was the keynote speaker at the Gala evening celebrating the culmination of National Landscape Architect Week. Leo Drey of Missouri received the LaGasse recognition in 1983 in the non-landscape architect category.

Hats off to John for this well-deserved honor. We applaud his efforts on behalf of the Henry Shaw Ozark Corridor for the past eight years and agree that this effort is worthy of national recognition.

For further information, visit the ASLA web site at: http://www.asla.org/Members/awards/lagassemedals.htm