In Memoriam
We are saddened to announce the passing of John Frey, FASLA.
On Monday, June 13, 2022 at 11am, join the Town of Lexington in honoring longtime resident and community volunteer at a memorial dedication at Tower Hill Park. Click for details.
John Ward Frey
(1930 - 2020)
John Frey grew up in the small rural town of Cedarville, Ohio in an historic home with some 40 acres, where he took care of a big vegetable garden, a cow and a calf. As a child, he loved gardening and trees. His mother, Sarah Helen Dempwolf Frey, was an artist who taught at Wittenburg College, and his father, Philip Rockel Frey, was a musician and composer. Their three children comprised a trio: his older brother Demp on piano, his sister Margaretta on cello, and John on flute. After graduating in 1952 as a math major from The College of Wooster in Ohio, he attended Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD), where he earned a Master of Landscape Architecture degree in 1955. John traveled extensively in Europe in 1957-58 as the recipient of Harvard’s Charles Eliot Traveling Fellowship.
In 1956 he began professional work as an urban designer with The Architects Collaborative (TAC) in Cambridge, MA. From 1956 to 1957, he served in the U.S. Army in the Engineering and Plans Section, HQ 18th Engineer Brigade in Fort Leonard Wood, MO, where he took advantage of the local caves to go spelunking. He also served in the Santa Fe office of the National Park Service.
In 1961, he married Wilma Weggel, a landscape architecture student who received her MLA degree from the Harvard GSD in 1965 with two young daughters in tow. Immediately thereafter, the growing family settled in Lexington in an early 19th century house with a barn.
John became a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in 1962, and in 1992 was recognized as a Fellow, FASLA, for his contributions to the profession in “Built Work.”
John practiced as a Registered Landscape Architect in Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut. He was an original Associate for five years with Sasaki Associates in Watertown, MA. In 1963, John and his Harvard classmate Max M. Mason, Jr. founded Mason & Frey, Landscape Architects, a partnership that continued for more than 30 years. After Max retired in 1996, John continued the practice until 2006.
One of the firm’s largest projects, which continued through the decade ending in 1989, had John as Partner-in- Charge of the southern two miles of the MBTA’s linear Southwest Corridor Parkland in Jamaica Plain, MA. The project included the landscape of the Forest Hills, Green Street and Stony Brook MBTA Orange Line transit stations plus the MBTA Red Line’s Alewife station in Cambridge and Arlington, MA, and the Orange Line Massachusetts Avenue station in Boston.
John was also Partner-in-Charge for the design of the Lexington Center Mall, Lexington, MA; the Bicentennial Park in Arlington, MA; master planner and site designer for the State University of New York at Geneseo and S.U.N.Y. at Farmingdale; and for Fulton Montgomery Community College in Johnstown, NY. Mason & Frey worked with all the prominent Boston architects of the time across New England, New York, Long Island and places in the Midwest.
Mason and Frey’s Professional Design Awards included:
1964 Progressive Architecture Design Award (with TAC) - IBM Gaithersburg, MD
1967 Industrial Plant Beautification Award - Governor’s Conference on Natural Beauty - Polaroid Corporation, Waltham, MA
1968 Mass. Audubon Society Citation – Lincoln Road Bicycle Path, Lincoln, MA
1973 American Society of Landscape Architects Merit Award for Murray Hill, Manchester, VT
1973 Boston Society of Architects Award, St. Joseph’s Cooperative Homes, Boston, MA
1988 National Endowment for the Arts Presidential Design Award, Federal Design Achievement Award, for the Alewife Station and Garage, Cambridge, MA.
John was passionate about urban design and trees, and his concerns informed his volunteer civic activities. In 1987 he became a founding member of the Town of Lexington’s Design Advisory Committee, and served as its appointed Chair for 11 years. He was a founding member and appointed Chair of the municipality’s Tree Committee for 18 years, from 2001-2019. He served on the town’s Bicycle Advisory Committee.
He was active in Citizens for Lexington Conservation, Friends of the Arlington Great Meadows, and Friends of the Bikeway. He was a founding member, president and vice-president of the East Village Community Association (Arlington and Lexington), established in 1992. He participated in the Lexington Field and Garden Club, Civic Improvement Committee, Lexington Conservation Stewards and was a founding member of Lexington Friends of Trees.
In 2005, John received the “Outstanding Citizen Forester” award from the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. In 2015, he was the recipient of Lexington’s Minuteman Cane Award, which is awarded to “someone who is at least 80 years of age, a 15-year resident of the Town, actively involved in the community and an inspiration to others (while exhibiting a creative approach to life through a choice of either a second career, a hobby or volunteerism).”
John supported statewide, regional and national conservation organizations, including the Appalachian Mountain Club, Appalachian Trail Conservancy, Charles River Watershed Association, Massachusetts Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy, Rails to Trails Conservancy, the Sierra Club and its local Chapters, the Trustees of Reservations, The Wilderness Society, the Union of Concerned Scientists, as well as organizations supporting health, environmental protection and economic opportunity, especially for women, in countries across the globe.
He led his family on hiking, backpacking and canoe trips, especially in New England’s White Mountains and its lakes and streams, as well as backpacks into the Grand Canyon and in southeast Utah, the Cascade Range in Washington, the Trinity Alps in northern California, and the mid-Atlantic Appalachians, to name a few.
He was undaunted by challenges, confident of being able to solve problems, adventurous but not foolhardy, practical, persistent, focused, hard-working, innovative and optimistic.
John’s death left his wife of 59 years, Wilma E. (Weggel) Frey of Tewksbury Township, NJ, where she has worked as an environmental policy advocate since 1990 with the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, a statewide nonprofit land trust and land use policy organization. He also leaves his four daughters and their spouses: Landscape Architect Holly Frey (Peter Cullen) of Verona, NJ; Allison Frey (William Harbert, PhD) of Canonsburg, PA; Frederika “Fritzi” Frey (Leo Tracey) of Wakefield, RI; and Dr. Marietta Frey (Michael Migliore) of Palo Alto, CA. In addition, seven grandchildren: Sarah Harbert, PhD, Melissa Harbert, Anika Tracey, Jackson Tracey, Courtney Cullen, Kevin Migliore and Colten Migliore. He also leaves his older brother Dempwolf Frey, his twin Brothers-in-Law Bob Weggel (Diane Avery) and Carl Weggel, and nieces Jane Frey and Mary Frey and their adult children, and nephew John Frey. His sister Margaretta Frey is recently deceased.
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Includes excerpts from The Cultural Landscape Foundation.
We are saddened to announce the passing of Julius Fabos, FASLA.
Julius Gyula Fábos
(1932 - 2022)
Julius Gyula Fábos was born April 15, 1932 in Marcali Hungary. He grew up in an extended family of proud farmers who instilled in him a strong agrarian work ethic, values of land stewardship and prudent resource use, and loyalty to family, colleagues and friends. These values served him well as a young man enjoying a “demanding but beautiful way of life”. After 1949, successful farming families as his were labeled “Kuláks” and treated as enemies of society. Julius and his family lost their farm, were arrested, tortured and jailed. At age 24, soon after the Hungarian revolution in 1956, Julius boldly escaped from Hungary to begin a new life in America (Fábos 2010).
Julius settled in New Jersey, learned English, met his wife Edith, and earned a bachelors degree from Rutgers in Agronomy in 1961. He continued his education at Harvard where he earned his Masters of Landscape Architecture degree in 1964, under the tutelage of Hideo Sasaki. He learned of ecological planning and was introduced to a regional view of landscape architecture by Phil Lewis, visiting instructor at Harvard, and through the work of Ian McHarg. He credits both as formative influences on his career. A chance meeting with Sidney Shurcliff at Harvard, inspired Fábos and classmates to organize an exhibition of the works of America’s first landscape architect to mark the centennial of Olmsted’s coining of the name “landscape architect” in 1863. The exhibition documented and illustrated, for the first time, Olmsted’s major contributions to the profession in the areas of: park design, regional design, community planning, campus planning, urban design, and conservation. The exhibition toured major cities of the U.S. and was subsequently published as Fábos’ first book Frederick Law Olmsted. Sr.: Founder of Landscape Architecture in America (Fabos, Milde and Weinmayr 1968). Fábos also credits the exhibition as a significant factor in his appointment as an Assistant Professor of landscape architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Landscape Planning Scholar
Early in his tenure at UMass, Fábos found his scholarly niche in articulating theory and developing parametric methods for landscape planning - building on the pioneering work of Ian McHarg. Through his highly collaborative research program with physical and social scientists and economists at UMass, he learned the importance of research for advancing landscape architecture from a professional field to a respected academic discipline. At UMass, in collaboration with Ervin H. Zube, Fábos integrated his Ph.D. research with landscape planning and seminal landscape assessment research (Zube, Brush and Fabos 1975). The visual assessment of the island of Nantucket mapped scenic landscape resources using Zube and Fábos’ method and has influenced land planning and protection for nearly four decades. He started the Metropolitan Land Use Planning Research Group (METLAND) with numerous faculty colleagues and students and published a suite of research reports that are considered seminal in the field of landscape planning (Fabos 1973; Fabos and Caswell 1977; Fabos et al 1978). The METLAND research established a science-based, parametric approach to landscape assessment and planning. METLAND was applied to the then-rapidly expanding Boston metropolitan region to assure that natural, physical and cultural resources were duly considered in landscape and land use planning decisions. The METLAND group also pioneered the computerization of landscape planning in the 1980’s.
Fábos was influential in advising the Portuguese government on establishing a national geographic information system during a Fulbright Fellowship in Portugal in1986. As a maturing scholar, he organized his contributions in landscape planning theory with national and international examples and references into two important books on landscape planning (Fabos 1979; Fabos 1985). Through his many publications and conference participations he was recognized internationally as an academic leader. In 1985, he was inducted as a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in recognition of his contributions to the knowledge base of the field. In 1997 he received the ASLA medal, the highest honor given by the Society.
Greenways Research
In the 1980’s Julius Fábos refocused his research on the theory and practice of Greenways. With faculty colleagues at UMass he co-edited three special issues of Landscape and Urban Planning Journal on the emerging practice of greenway planning and design (Fabos and Ryan 2006; Fabos and Ryan 2004; Fabos and Ahern 1995). His individual contributions in these greenways special issues defined greenways as a flexible strategy for integrating natural, recreational and cultural preservation appropriate for international application. Collectively these special issues defined theory from emerging international practice and established a future research agenda for greenways. For the 1999 Centennial of the ASLA, Fábos and UMass colleagues Robert Ryan and Mark Lindhult organized hundreds of professionals and officials to create a comprehensive Greenway Plan for the New England region – thinking and planning regionally in the spirit of Fábos’ idols Ian McHarg and Phil Lewis. The New England Greenway Plan put into practice the theory and methods that Fábos developed with colleagues at UMass and internationally over the preceding decade.
After his retirement from UMass in 1997, Fábos continued to promote landscape planning and greenways. Julius and Edith Fábos established an endowment at UMass to sponsor a triennial international conference on Greenways and Landscape Planning. The Fábos Conferences started in 2004 and will continue this July in Budapest, Hungary. The Fábos Conferences have attracted international academic and professional participation and have resulted in substantial published proceedings.
Julius Fábos will always be known as an inspirational and demanding professor. Students he taught and advised have become noted academic, governmental and professional leaders internationally. He served as advisor and mentor to many. He is a tireless and effective advocate for the profession – urging landscape architects to “make big plans; aim high in hope and work…” in the spirit of Daniel Burnham, another of his idols.
Julius will be missed tremendously and remembered fondly by his family, friends and many colleagues, around the world.
—written by Jack Ahern, FASLA
former student, colleague, mentee and close friend
posted 4 March 2022
Read Professor Fabos’ obituary at the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
We are saddened to announce the passing of Roger Erickson, ASLA.
Roger Curtis Erickson died December 9, 2021. He was a member of First Parish of Watertown. Roger is survived by his beloved wife of over 50 years, Johanna and his children Sandra and Miguel.
Born in San Diego, July 20, 1939, to Veona and Phillip Erickson. He graduated with a BA in Architecture from North Dakota State at Fargo, where he was awarded MVP in football, basketball and baseball. He earned his Masters in Architecture in Sweden, at The Royal Academy at Stockholm. He earned his Masters in Landscape Architecture, at Harvard Graduate School of Design. '
Roger served on the Watertown Planning Board. President on the Historic Commission. He worked for Boston Redevelopment Authority, Hudson Valley River Commission, and for the National Trust of Historic Preservation. He was involved in The Big Dig and known for the planting of trees and the design of parks throughout Boston. Roger was known for his love of gardening. It gave him great joy to share his vegetables and flowers with friends and neighbors. He was most comfortable in his bib overalls, LL Bean boots and cap. He remained youthful throughout his life, serving in the Army, running marathons and coaching Watertown soccer. He was humble and had an insatiable appetite to learn. He was funny, a great listener, honest, calm, thoughtful, shy and compassionate. His passing leaves a huge void. He will forever be missed.
A special note
In Memoriam is a new page at bslanow.org, and will grow over time. If there is someone in our landscape architecture community who should be remembered here, please email gretchen@bslanow.org with text and image, and we will post. Thank you.
