Malcolm Forbes Baldwin, 78, husband of alumna Pamela Baldwin, passed away on Monday, Nov. 12 at his home in Lovettsville, Virginia after a decade-long battle with prostate cancer.
Born April 5, 1940 in Rochester, NY, Malcolm was the son of Schuyler Forbes Baldwin and Doris Hawkins Baldwin and brother of Gordon Brewster Baldwin and Beryl Baldwin Punt, all now deceased. He is survived by his loving wife Pamela Lane Baldwin and his children Peter Lane Baldwin of Dummerston, VT, Rebecca Baldwin Fuller of Waterford, VA and Alice Baldwin O`Keefe of Bend, OR, as well as grandchildren Malcolm, Aidan and Kyleigh Fuller and Penelope O`Keefe.
From the ages of 2-18, Malcolm attended Harley School in Rochester, an independent school where his mother taught. He followed his father and brother in attending Haverford College, where he nurtured his lifelong interest in history. He was also a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, choosing afterwards to apply his legal knowledge to the then-nascent field of environmental law and policy.
While working under Russell Train at the Conservation Foundation, he convened the first national conference on environmental law, and co-wrote and edited Law and the Environment, a book that helped guide the then-emerging field of environmental law. He and his wife Pamela co-authored Onshore Planning for Offshore Oil, based on the Scottish experience with North Sea oil development. He served as senior environmental law and policy specialist at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) during the Carter Administration, and as Acting Chair of CEQ in the opening months of the Reagan Administration while attempting to preserve the Council`s work in the face of new leadership less enthusiastic about environmental protection. He also chaired the board of Defenders of Wildlife in the 1980s.
In tandem with Pamela, a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), he lived in Sri Lanka from 1988 to 1993. There he led a team fielded by the International Resources Group (IRG) in helping local officials establish national environmental laws, policies and procedures that remain in force today. His later IRG assignments included leading development of a USAID-funded Environmental Partnership Program and establishing an Environmental Business Program.
Upon retirement in 2002, he dedicated his abundant energies and the rest of his life to growing wine grapes and raising sheep at WeatherLea Farm, and to preserving rural land and businesses in Loudoun County. He served on the Loudoun County Rural Economic Development Council and on the boards of the Piedmont Environmental Council, the Land Trust of Virginia and Save Rural Loudoun. He was also an active member of the Loudoun County Democratic Party and he ran unsuccessfully for County Supervisor in 2011 as a Democrat in a heavily Republican district.
Above all, Malcolm Baldwin will be remembered by family and friends the world over for his kindness, generosity of spirit and twinkle in the eye, as well as by the many people whose lives, careers and interests he touched and nurtured.
A celebration of Malcolm’s life will be held at The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Frederick, MD on Dec. 1, 2018 at 1 p.m. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to a conservation fund for the preservation of family farms being established in his memory by the Land Trust of Virginia at www.landtrustva.org.
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