REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK
By John Tredrea
Very few individuals have a major impact on the landscape thousands of people see every day for decades on end.
To put it mildly, Ted Stiles was one of those people. By any perspective, he is a major figure in the history of this Valley and this part of our state. A place in Hopewell Valley that has been preserved as open space should be named after him soon.
Dr. Edmund Stiles he went by "Ted" died March 7. A professor of botany at Rutgers University, he also was the longtime leader of the Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space. Through the work of the Friends, thousands of acres of land in our area have been preserved as open space. Without them and without Mr. Stiles, this Valley undoubtedly would look a lot different than it does now. For an area to be in the heart of the megalopolis, as we are, and look like this Valley looks in 2007 is really remarkable.
During the past 20-plus years, I saw and heard Mr. Stiles confer countless times with government agencies on various open space proposals. To say he was well prepared for those talks is a great understatement. Mr. Stiles must have been a great teacher, because his ability to explain complex situations succinctly in just a few minutes was impressive to say the least. With his maps, charts and schematic diagrams on hand, it was always obvious he had spent much time and thought in getting ready. Ted Stiles not being ready was inconceivable. He had his act together and then some that included answering all kinds of questions from all kinds of people and it made a great difference.
Spring is just around the corner. Soon, we will again have the great pleasure of riding by all the beautiful green fields and woodlands he did so much to help keep green. (They’re worth walking, too; and in most cases you can do just that.) But I mention riding by them because Mr. Stiles also did a great job of helping to keep our roadsides clean.
You may have had the thought while driving around the Valley that many of our roadsides are remarkably free of litter. And so they are. The Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space have had a lot to do with that. Their Cleanup Days, held for years, have brought thousands of hours of volunteer labor out to clean up our roadsides. A clean road just naturally tends to stay clean, I think. It’s one thing to drop a piece of litter on a road that’s pretty messy. It’s another to drop a piece on a road that’s pretty as a picture. Your arm just doesn’t want to do it!
Mr. Stiles was a man of many talents. His grasp of finance was amazing. Complex financing has been a part of many open space preservation projects. Mr. Stiles was always on top of that, to say the least. Dressed in his trademark jeans, flannel shirts and CPO jacket, his explanations of contracts, appraisals, bonds and myriad other monetary aspects of major land purchases was really something to witness. It left you shaking your head with amazement. This guy was a botanist, after all! Without a doubt, he had the talent to be a big shot on Wall Street, though you couldn’t picture him doing that.
Nobody would have been happier than Mr. Stiles to know that the funds from the private sector needed to help preserve the St. Michael’s tract as open space have been raised. The deadline was today. This preservation effort has been led by people from the D&R Greenway, which collaborated with the Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space many times over the years.
Mr. Stiles, invariably calm and friendly, always reminded me of Sherwood Forest. Everything about him the way he looked, his expression, the way he dressed, his manner of speaking, his powerful, level bass voice, even his skin tone and color and the quality of the light in his eye would perfectly have fit a woodsman striding through medieval England. I literally have had the thought, many times, that he was such a fellow reincarnated, maybe a friend of Robin Hood himself. Truly, Mr. Stile’s persona and what he did fit perfectly together. Isn’t it just that to which so many of us aspire?

