Grinnell's distant cousin keeps his memory alive

George Bird Grinnell, the “Father of Glacier National Park,” left a legacy across much of the American West. For the last several years, that legacy has lived on through George’s distant cousin, Hugh Grinnell.

Hugh has been impersonating George Bird Grinnell since 2010.

In 2005, Hugh became President of the Grinnell Family Association of America, a genealogy association. It was during that five-year stint, he said, when his interest in his distant cousin piqued.

“I found a bunch of books on eBay, and I was just fascinated by them,” Hugh said in a recent interview. “I thought, ‘this is something that’s got to be disseminated’.”

Hugh’s performance, based off of journal entries, correspondences, and editorial articles written by George, includes not only information from Grinnell’s exploration of Glacier, but also of his upbringing, education, and early trips West.

“I don’t know how I came up with the idea of impersonating,” Hugh said.

He first did it at a family gathering.

“At the 2010 family reunion [of the Grinnell Familiy Association], I decided to entertain the group this way, and it was well received,” he said.

Since that initial performance, Hugh has performed at least 50 times, he said. Hugh works with Arizona Humanities and Humanities Montana to organize his appearances as a guest speaker. He is currently touring Montana, with 12 performances under his belt and eight more to go before returning home.

Hugh graduated with both his bachelors and master’s degrees from University of Arizona. His undergraduate degree was in electrical engineering, while in grad school he pursued business, graduating with an MBA.

By contrast, George Bird Grinnell, whose friends simply called him “Bird,” pursued paleontology and ornithology while in Yale.

“He’s made me a better person,” Hugh said of studying his cousin.

“One of the things I don’t say in the presentation, is that when he was at Yale, he wrote a letter to his parents saying ‘I want to go west and shoot some buffalo and some Indians. He changed more than 180 degrees,” Grinnell said.

George was well known for championing conservation efforts for many animals in the West, particularly bison. He was an editor of Field and Stream.

He also spent quite some time with the Cheyenne people, studying their practices and even becoming a member of the tribe.

“He was a great man of the 19th century. He truly was. He has affected me,” Hugh said. “I sometimes ask myself, ‘What would Bird do? What would Bird say?’”