[A] banker who became one of the leaders in Vermont’s environmental community has died.
John Ewing, the former president of the Bank of Vermont who founded a group to combat suburban sprawl, died of cancer Saturday. He was 85 and lived in Burlington overlooking the Winooski River.
Colleagues recalled his commitment to the environment. He and land use planner Beth Humstone started the Vermont Forum on Sprawl in 1997. She called Ewing a “Vermont treasure.”
“I was sort of taken aback. It was such an ambitious effort to stop sprawl. Yet with John behind it, it seemed like it was possible,” Humstone said Tuesday. The group advocated for concentrating growth in downtowns and preserving the suburban landscape. She pointed to tax credits and other programs targeting downtown development today as products of their early efforts.
From 1972 to 1995, Ewing served as general counsel, vice president, secretary and then president of the downtown Burlington bank. Longtime planner Bruce Seifer, who worked in the Burlington Community and Economic Development Office, said Ewing worked to keep the bank downtown while competitors moved to the suburbs.
“He was a joy to work with, treating everyone fairly, with good will and joyfulness,” Seifer said.
In 2012, the Vermont Natural Resources Council, a leading environmental group, gave Ewing the Arthur Gibb Award for Individual Leadership. Ewing served as chair of the Vermont Environmental Board and was the longest-serving member of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, from 1998 to 2013.
“For more than 10 years, John Ewing has helped us all understand the vast social and environmental costs of scattered, low-density development and the need to develop better models for Vermont,” VNRC Executive Director Brian Shupe said in 2012. “He also has an unusual talent for working with a wide variety of people and developing consensus.”
Former Environmental Board Chair Elizabeth Courtney, who ran VNRC before Shupe, said Ewing articulated the need for a balance between the economy and the environment during the 1980s, when she said the two interests were pitted against one another. Ewing, she said, believed environmental regulations including Act 250 had kept the state from overbuilding, so it suffered less during national economic downturns.
“He made the point successfully and clearly that the economy was dependent on the environment and they need to work well together,” Courtney said Tuesday. “He was really respected for his thoughtful approach to the economy and the environment.”
“He was a thoughtful, kind, gentle person with a great deal of humility,” she added. “He was a good one.”
In 2012, Ewing said growing the economy and protecting the environment need not be at odds. “I don’t think it’s jobs against conservation,” he said. “You can grow, but in a way that respects the culture and the landscape of Vermont.”
Typical of his humility, Humstone said he always gave her co-credit for starting the Vermont Forum on Sprawl when he raised the seed money from philanthropist Lyman Orton and hired her afterward.
Ewing was an early supporter of the Vermont chapter of The Nature Conservancy, working with Hubert “Hub” Vogelmann, a founder of the Vermont chapter, and Robert Klein, its first executive director.
Ewing also helped found the Lake Champlain Land Trust to conserve environmentally sensitive islands in the lake. He wrote a section of Act 250 that banned development above 2,500 feet. He served on the Burlington Parks and Recreation Commission for 12 years and helped found the Winooski Valley Park District, near his home.
Klein called Ewing “a banker with a conscience.”
Gus Seelig, the executive director of the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, said Tuesday: “He will be remembered as a man of great integrity with a gentle touch but a firm touch about the things he believed in and cared about.”
As the head of the bank, Ewing believed it was important to finance community-based projects.
In recent years, he fought against industrial wind development and helped push for the formation of a group to address siting issues. A liberal, Ewing had friends in all political corners.
Among them, Tim Hayward, former chief of staff for Gov. Jim Douglas, who spoke of Ewing’s care and dedication to “protecting all that makes Vermont so special.”
“He may be gone now, but his legacy will live on in our communities, and in the beauty of our state,” Hayward said Tuesday. “He really did make a difference. We are all in his debt.”
Ewing was a graduate of Yale Law School and Amherst College.
Ewing and his wife, Jane, supported the preservation and upkeep of historic Lakeview Cemetery in Burlington, where Ewing’s remains will be placed. Ewing’s son, Jack Ewing, is a reporter for The New York Times and recently wrote a book about the Volkswagen scandal.
