"My
mother served as the curator for all our collections," Bemis
remembers. "I suppose I have that curatorial spirit in my
genes." Since collecting was the central activity for his
loving and close-knit family, it's no wonder the collector's
passion still burns so strongly in him: the love of pursuing
interesting objects, of learning everything about them, of
making each collection as complete as possible, and of immersing
oneself in the study of its context. Don't just see the fish
and be the fish. See the whole picture.
His
mother, Jane Bemis, born in Cleveland in 1920, was a rare
specimen herself. Her father was a successful engineer and
inventor. She used her Radcliffe and Michigan education in
classics and languages to work as a code-breaker during World
War II and later to live and work in Japan. Her curatorial
instincts for preserving her family's collections never wavered
during her long life. Just before she died last year, she
agreed to support her son's passion for biological collections
with a large endowment. In all, she left four seperate gifts
- totaling $700,000 and qualifying for state matching funds
- for research and maintenance of the collecions.
"I
looked at her fund as a very interesting way to multiply the
effects of her gift," says Willy Bemis. "And it
all goes to benefit something I care very deeply about. Besides
all the practical aspects of this fund, it's also a way to
memorialize all the wonderful values my mother represented."
What is now called the Jane H. Bemis Fund for Research in
Natural History also epitomizes the research, outreach, and
teaching that UMass stands for as a landgrant institution.
The
Bemis Fund supports the kind of systematic research that,
as Bemis says, "we have to do if we're going to make
a serious effort to conserve the earth." It also preserves
thousands of specimens so they can be studied by, displayed
for, and enjoyed by countless curious naturalists and UMass
visitors in the future. And it supports the acquisition and
maintenance of expensive teaching collections. "There
is an increasingly prevelant belief that everything on earth
can be learned via the Internet," says Bemis. "But
there is nothing to replace the hands-on learning that comes
from seeing and feeling and smelling and handling actual specimens."