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STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., THURSDAY, JANUARY, 23, 1930.
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[[image - black & white photograph of Stephen Mather]]
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Park Organizer Dies
STEPHEN TYNG MATHER
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STEPHEN MATHER DIES SUDDENLY
Had Served as Director of National Park Service Under Three Presidents.

Stephen Tyng Mather, Director of the National Park Service under three Presidents, organizer of the service, and the man credited with forcing public recognition of the national parks and raising them from the status of orphans of the Nation to the stature of national playgrounds, is dead at Brookline, Mass., where he had gone several weeks ago for treatment at the Corey Hill Hospital.

Mr. Mather's death last night was sudden and unexpected, as several of his friends in Washington had received letters from him as late as two days ago. A second stroke of paralysis, which came 15 months after he suffered a similar stroke in Chicago on election day, 1928, caused his death. 

Funeral services for Mr. Mather, who had received national and international recognition for his outstanding achievements in the field of national park development, probably will be held Saturday afternoon at St. Mark's Church, New Canaan, Conn. He will be interred at Darien, Conn., where he maintained a home. 

Health Forced Resignation

Mr. Mather's death came 13 years and 1 day after he took over the direction of the national parks, and only a little more than a year after his resignation from the post of director of the National park Service. After serving as an assistant to the Secretary of the Interior in charge of national parks for more than two years, he was appointed director of the service in May, 1917 after having been in charge of the parks since January 21, 1915. Failing health forced his resignation as director of the service on January 8, 1929. He was succeeded as director by Horace M. Albright, who had been acting director of the park service during Mr. Mather's illness.

At the time of his death his legion of friends throughout the United States, numbering many men and women high in the official and social life of the nation, were marshaling for a permanent testimonial of his work. This testimonial, known as the Stephen T. Mather Appreciation, now will probably take the form of a memorial, according to friends here. 

Headquarters of the organization is in Washington, and a meeting will be held in March to decide on the form of the testimonial, on the return from a trip to South America of John Hays Hammond, chairman of the national committee. Others on the committee are: Representative Louis W. Cramton of Michigan, Dr. Gilbert H. Grosvenor, president of the National Geographic Society; Dr. Vernon Kellogg, secretary of the National Research Council; Theodor W. Noyes, editor of The Star, and Mrs. Henry A. Strong, chairman of the board of the Hattie M. Strong Foundation. George W. White, president of the National Metropolitan Bank of Washington, is treasurer of the fund of $150,000 to be raised to create the testimonial. One of the suggestions made to perpetuate the work of Mr. Mather is purchase of a grove of sequoia trees and their inclusion in a park to be named after him. 

Worked for Civic Betterment.

Possessor of striking personality and having the faculty of quickly making friends and holding them in bonds of mutual work and companionship, Mr. Mather leaves a lasting imprint on national life. Unobtrusive, vigorous, a man of the outdoors, ever pressing for expansion of the national parks along educational and creative lines, he had seen the development of the National Park Service from little more than a vision and a few desks in a small office in the Interior Department Building to the vast organization it is today, stretching its network literally from Maine to Alaska. Always a leader in the cultural life of the community, Mr. Mather was instrumental in the formation of the National Capital Park and Planning Commission, was one of its members for several years and always stood for civic betterment along approved lines. He always had taken a deep interest in the development of the National Capital and his advice had been sought on many occasions by leaders and developers of thought along those lines. 

He virtually created the post of director of the National Park Service. When he took over the task under Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane, the parks were not in a prosperous condition. Congress had bought or set aside land for them, but their development stopped at that point. Nothing had been done to make them popular

^[[A very good friend of mine W.H.H.]]