TE Support Ltr Perry

407 Robert Hunt Drive
Carrboro, NC 27510

23 May 2020

Dear Members of the North Carolina Awards Committee:

I am pleased to write in support of the nomination of Tom Earnhardt for the North Carolina Award in Public Service for 2020.

It has been my pleasure to know Mr. Earnhardt for the better part of two decades, since he first approached the University of North Carolina Press about the publication of his book Crossroads of the Natural World: Exploring North Carolina with Tom Earnhardt. I was fortunate to be the acquiring editor for the Press for that book, beginning a publishing relationship and friendship with Mr. Earnhardt that endure until today.

Published in 2013, that book cemented Mr. Earnhardt’s standing as one of the foremost chroniclers of the natural and human history of the state, a reputation that was already well established with his long-running and popular series Exploring North Carolina on UNC Television and his many formal and informal presentations to groups across the state.

I like to remind Tom that our informal association goes back much further, to the 1980s, when I was a budding flyfisherman attending one of my first meetings of the Triangle chapter of Trout Unlimited. Tom was on the national board of Trout Unlimited in its formative years. That evening, he was the program, presenting the story of his trip to Russia on behalf of Trout Unlimited to teach fly-tying and species management to local groups in remote sections of Siberia who were opening their rivers to sport fishing--and, really, opening them to the world for the first time.

I tell that story as an example of the breadth of Tom’s interests and the particular gift he has to give public voice and action to those interests. And North Carolina has benefited greatly whenever Tom has gotten interested in something. His passion for biodiversity and preserving native species has influenced policy at the state and local levels (most recently in the planning for Dix Park). His affection for the coast and especially the Outer Banks has left its mark on land use and the management of fisheries and recreation. With his keen eye for the natural world and his indefatigable urge to document it, he is creating a visual and aural record of North Carolina in the early twenty-first century that is little short of monumental.

I admire Mr. Earnhardt for his single-minded focus on our state and the unabashed pride he takes in it. In my view, his commitment to studying and understanding our state and always returning to us to put his insights in the service of its betterment exemplifies the sort of purposeful lifework that we should honor with a North Carolina Award.

Sincerely,

David Perry
Editor-in-chief, retired, University of North Carolina Press