Les Campbell dedicated 75 years of life to the Quabbin Reservoir with a passion for nature, community, and photography. With help from his late wife, Terry, the duo worked tirelessly to support and spread awareness of the life of the Quabbin.
Now, the community is rallying to commemorate the couple’s many contributions with the renaming of the Quabbin Visitor Center to the Les and Terry Campbell Quabbin Visitors Center, which they pioneered decades ago.
“You can plant a tree, you can put up a plaque, you can put a bench in a beautiful place for people to sit on, but trees die and plaques get old … we wanted to do something that was going to last in perpetuity,” said Annie Tiberio, chairperson of the Les & Terry Campbell Memorial Committee. “They will forever be connected to the place that they dreamed of, imagined, and worked hard to create.”
A Ware native, Les Campbell died last September at age 95. He was a member of the committee that pushed to open the Quabbin Reservation to recreational activity without putting the water supply at risk. This was inspired by a love for his community and a passion to allow residents to appreciate and experience the beauty of the nature he had come to love.
Throughout his life, Les worked several jobs including as a laborer for the Metropolitan District Water Supply Commission in the 1940s, a junior civil engineering aid, a junior sanitary engineer, and an employee of the MDC Water Division, Quabbin Section. Following these positions, Campbell worked as a senior sanitary engineer and head of the Water Quality Laboratory where he tested water from the Quabbin Reservoir and Ware River for 44 years.
He and Terry were instrumental in helping create the Quabbin Visitor Center in 1984, an interpretive facility that features exhibits, books, brochures and videos about Quabbin management and history.
“He saw before anyone else the need for an educational center, a visitors center, to help others understand what was given up for the creation of Quabbin and what was gained by its creation,” a group of friends advocating for the renaming of the visitor center wrote in a tribute that has been shared with state lawmakers and state Department of Conservation and Recreation.
Terry Campbell, the other half of the dynamic duo, pioneered a discussion group composed of Quabbin residents called the Tuesday Tea group to further unify the community and bring life to the new visitor center that the couple had co-founded. She also worked to support community members whose towns were flooded in the creation of the Quabbin Reservoir.
“Terry was a bulldog,” Tiberio said. “Once she got an idea, she would just work and work and work until it happened. She had visions for how the visitor center would be a great resource for people and the people whose lives were upended by having their towns literally taken out from underneath them.”
In his free time, Les was a passionate and talented photographer who became the second person in history to hold all three of the highest awards given by the Photographic Society of America in 1981. His photography attracted attention from many renowned organizations and magazines including National Geographic.
“Les was a very unassuming fellow, you would never know all of the things he accomplished,” said Paul Godfrey, Friends of Quabbin board treasurer and newsletter editor. “His love of nature gave him an inner strength that drove him to do all of these things for people and for the environment.”
In order to share his passion, Les founded a collection of local groups centralized around a sense of nature and community including Pioneer Valley Photographic Artists, Friends of Quabbin, Quabbin Photo Group, and Massachusetts Camera Naturalists. In addition, Les co-founded the Quabbin Bird Club in 1946, and alongside Terry, created a newsletter for members of the Friends of Quabbin.
“He was always making sure that people felt that they had the tools that they needed to pursue their photography,” said Tiberio, who is also president of the Pioneer Valley Photographic Artists. “I think he felt that as he grew old, he had really reached some of his own goals and now he wanted to try and help people reach some of their own.”
Those advocating for the visitor center renaming project have called on the area’s legislative delegation, members of Congress, and state officials, including Jim Montgomery, commissioner of the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.
The state agency said that they do not have plans to rename the Quabbin Visitor Center at this time but that the Baker-Polito administration will review any bills that come across the governor’s desk.
“The work of the late Les and Terry Campbell serves as an excellent example of parkland stewardship and DCR recognizes the priceless contributions they, and the Friends of Quabbin, have made to the Reservation,” DCR said in a statement.