How to Give Away an Island

Thirty years ago G.R. "Randy" Klinefelter '34 bought a 250-acre island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, next to the bigger and better known Tangier Island. Last year he gave it away—to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. As one report put it, he chose mosquitoes over pleasure boaters and condo builders. But his motivation was a good deal more serious than preserving the island's legendary mosquitoes.

During the years he owned it (naming it Port Isobel after his wife), Klinefelter used it mainly for hunting and fishing. That wasn't all he did, though. With a view to the future he planted 30,000 trees, replacing the forest which, legend has it, the British had cut down during the War of 1812.

The beneficiary of Klinefelter's munificence, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, is a 23-year-old organization with 4,000 acres on which it runs "the largest regional environmental education program in the nation." Now Port Isobel is also available for this purpose, hosting some of the 30,000 students and teachers who annually take part in three- and five-day field trips that examine the bay environment. The foundation says Port Isobel is "a perfect outdoor classroom ... a living laboratory." We say Randy Klinefelter deserves thanks for his significant gift to an endangered environment.