William Gould Vinal was a naturalist, nature educator, and conservationist who was a faculty at Massachusetts State College. He wrote numerous books and papers on nature and outdoors education. He has been called the Father of Nature Recreation. He also served as an American football coach while teaching in Marshall University in 1908.
Biography
Vinal was born in South Scituate to William Raymond and Mary Ellen Farrar who worked a farm. His ancestors included William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth Colony and Captain Peter Sears. Growing on a farm he took an interest in farm birds and animals. He went to Bridgewater Normal School and then to Lawrence Scientific School graduating S.B. in 1906. He obtained an A.M. from Harvard University in 1907. During vacations he worked on a variety of jobs including selling ice-cream, transporting vegetables and milking cows. After graduating from Harvard he joined Marshall CollegeState Normal School where he worked for three years teaching geology, geography and biology. Here he also served as the head football coach at for one season, in 1908, compiling a record of 0–6. In 1910 he moved to State Normal School, Salem and in 1911 to the Rhode Island College of Education, Providence. He obtained a PhD from Brown University in 1922. He served as a biologist for the Massachusetts Fish and Game Commission for many summers and also ran Camp Chequasset for nautical training for girls in Cape Cod from 1914 to 1926 and became more familiarly known as "Cap'n Bill", a name he used in many of his educational pamphlets. He also worked as a ranger naturalist in Yosemite and trained "nature counselors" at the Nature Lore School. He became the founding Professor of Nature Education in the Nature Guide School at Massachusetts State College in 1937 and retired in 1951 to Norwell, continuing to lecture and write on nature education. An active correspondent of contemporary educators and a prolific writer, he was the member of many societies. He served as a president of the Providence Franklin Society, the R.I. Field Naturalists' Society, the American Nature-Study Society and the Norwell Historical Society. He married Lillie Hale Downing, a schoolmate from Bridgewater, in 1908 and they had two children. Vinal died on July 9, 1976, at South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Massachusetts. A public school in Norwell is named after him as the William Gould Vinal Elementary School.
