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- The Telegraph (Nashua, NH)
December 21, 1999
Lawrence Nye Stevens, 84, of Arlington, Va., died Thursday, Dec. 16, 1999, at his home from lung cancer.
Mr. Stevens was born in Nashua, son of Isaac Stevens, who founded the Maine Manufacturing Co.
He was the husband of Linda Christensen Stevens and was the ex-husband of Stephanie Kinsley and Jane Payson.
Mr. Stevens held senior policy positions at the Department of the Interior in the 1960s. At the department, he argued effectively that more emphasis should be put on outdoor recreation opportunities that city dwellers could easily reach, suggesting that imagination might matter more than money in creating them.
Among Mr. Stevens' most successful initiatives was one to turn excess federal property -- often military bases -- into urban recreation areas. He also was successful with "From Rails to Trails," which converts unused railroad right-of-way into bike paths.
In 1969, Mr. Stevens personally dissuaded the Nixon Administration from selling federally owned Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay to an amusement park developer. He convinced President Nixon to instead support acquisition not just of Alcatraz but of all the land and seashore that became the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Then-Interior Secretary H. Stewart Udall, an appointee of President Kennedy, and Laurance Rockefeller, the leading Republican conservationist and the Commission's chairman, shared Mr. Stevens' view, and in 1963 Congress created a new parkland acquisition fund aimed at urban users.
As associate director of Interior's newly-created Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, Mr. Stevens helped acquire the Assateague Island National Seashore in Virginia, the Fire Island National Seashore in New York and the Whiskeytown-Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Area in northern California.
In 1968, he earned the Interior's Department's Distinguished Service Award and in 1969 he resigned to become executive director of the Citizens Advisory Committee on Environmental Quality, a public-private advocacy group that Rockefeller supported.
Commissioned a lieutenant in the Navy in World War II, Mr. Stevens was in charge of the study of military geography in the European Theatre, selecting targets for allied attacks.
After the war, Mr. Stevens served as an assistant to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Interior and occupied a succession of policy positions. In retirement, he served on the board of the Bicycle Federation of America, a Washington-based user group.
Mr. Stevens graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1932 and Harvard University in 1936. He earned his master's degree in geography from the University of Chicago in 1938.
He was predeceased by a son, Eric Stevens.
Besides his wife, survivors include a sister, Dorothy Stevens of Nashua; three children, Dr. Karen Devassy of East Windsor, Conn., Dr. Judith Stevens of Los Altos, Calif., and L. Nye Stevens of Washington, D.C.; and seven grandchildren.
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1915 - 1999 (84 years)
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