Alan Messer, past president of the Society, passed away at home on December 26, 2022, after a lengthy battle with cancer. Alan was born in Albany, Oregon, and attended the San Francisco Art Institute. After moving to New York he began spending time in Central Park, deepening his love for nature and birding. Alan was an accomplished artist, especially of the landscapes of New York City and the Oregon coast. He was also a published illustrator of birding journals and guidebooks, and his line drawings graced the pages of both the Linnaean Society’s Proceedings and our annual schedule of events for many years.
Alan joined the Linnaean Society of New York in 1991. He led walks and served on the council (now called the board of directors) for several years, as recording secretary from 1999-2001 and 2003-2005 and as president, from 2005-2007. Below is the eulogy that I prepared for the memorial service that was held on Friday, December 30. A recording of the service is available.
—Rochelle Thomas, President
I know the exact date I met Alan for the first time. It was Saturday, June 2, 2012. The Wild Bird Fund’s center had just opened, and it was packed shoulder to shoulder with people from all over, anxious to see the inside of New York City’s brand-new wildlife hospital.
On that day, I was the unofficial tour organizer, shouting at people to sign in, form lines, and make donations. In the midst of all this chaos, a tall, bespectacled man walked up to the front desk and said, “I’m here to lead the Central Park walk.”
“What walk!?” I barked, “No one told me about a walk! It’s not on the tour list!!” And because the center was teeming with bodies, I sent him immediately to the Columbus Avenue curb, where he waited patiently until I rounded up four people who would go on to enjoy the extraordinary experience of an Alan Messer-led bird walk.
Within a few short months, Alan’s walks were a regular feature at the center, and he and I formed a pretty solid partnership. I organized and promoted the walks and checked folks in at the desk, and then Alan took over, pointing out the subtle beauty of a grackle while implanting an ever-so-important conservation message (along with a requisite number of jokes). On those walks, Alan taught me nearly everything I now know about birds. (I mean—I knew a few birds before I met Alan, but didn’t really consider myself to be a birder.) And for this I feel extremely lucky, because to learn to see birds or to observe any kind of nature with Alan was a special gift. In Alan’s world, every bird or plant had a distinctive shape and color that when described by him, made them seem even more beautiful than they actually were. I joked that Alan had some kind of supernatural color vision, or, at least, could see more shades of green than humanly possible; but I really thought it was true. And it’s because of Alan that I’ll never NOT see the “citrine” breast of the Great Crested Flycatcher or think of a Prothonotary Warbler as anything but “cadmium” yellow.
The Wild Bird Fund walks were also great fun. They were filled with jokes, inappropriate political rants, discussions about art, culture, and New York City, old and new. Often there was more talking than walking, and when Alan got stuck on the splendor of a bird’s scapulars, I’d be right there behind him, physically pushing his body forward so we could move faster than 50 feet an hour.
Alan was the best kind of best friend. The kind who always had my back no matter what. The kind who did not take it personally when I was too stressed out to even meet up in the park. He was also an inspiration to most of us in this room, never giving up on his causes, social and environmental, despite being so sick for so long. Alan’s will to go on, to endure treatment after treatment, hoping to see the return of migrants in the spring, or refine a painting that was already perfect, or, most importantly, to spend just a little more time with his beloved Janet, are sentiments I will carry with me forever.
It’s winter now, but soon it will be spring and I’ll think of Alan when the warblers return. In summer, I’ll remember sitting with him on a park bench while he sketched a robin on its nest, somehow capturing the look of sweet love the mother robin gave to the young she was protecting. When autumn comes, I’ll channel his keen eye and patience whenever I try to differentiate between blackpoll and bay-breasted in fall plumage. And when the leaves fall, and winter comes again, I’ll think about one of my first park memories with Alan, a day in late November when we tallied three different Barred Owls, or as we liked to refer to it later, “the three-owl tour.” I feel so lucky for everything that Alan has given me and although I’ll miss him so very much, I also know that he will always and forever be a part of all of the wild and wonderful things that are outside waiting to greet me.