Lydia Sargent Macauley (July 5, 1932 - August 8, 2025)

Lydia Sargent Macauley (July 5, 1932 – August 8, 2025)

Lydia Sargent’s parents, Ralph and Louise, were avid supporters of the Highlands Biological Station (HBS), a tradition which they passed down to their two children, Lydia and Hugh while spending many summers in Highlands. The Sargent family property is contiguous to the Station, giving Lydia and Ralph a world of play and adventure in their childhood.

Lydia’s earliest known involvement with the Station is documented in her father’s book, Biology in the Blue Ridge. In 1945 Lydia volunteered at The Highlands Museum, now Nature Center, teaching a weekly class on bird study.

At that time The Highlands Museum was keeping observation cards on flora and fauna around the plateau. Notably on June 7, 1945, Lydia saw a Berwick’s Wren, recorded as “singing” on the card. This species of wren is now thought to be extirpated from the Eastern United States.

Lydia wrote of her botanical interest and career in a short biography for the Highlands Biological Foundation – HBF and HBS (Botanical) Forum in May of 2015. Her “main career was with the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission, where she was a Natural Area Preservation Specialist doing Landowner Contact as follow-up for the Illinois Natural Area Inventory. She was on the Board of the Natural Areas Association for 8 years. She served on the Board of Directors of the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee for 11 years (now known as Mainspring Conservation Trust).”

Lydia was on the Board of the Trustees of the Highlands Biological Foundation for 13 years from 2004 – 2017. She also served as Treasurer and as a key member of the Botanical Garden Committee, and she was a major donor during those years as well.

Lydia was always concerned about her father’s Botanical Survey of Highlands which was revised by Jeff Zahner in 1991-1992 and then by Lydia herself in 1996. In 2018 she was still writing the “Plant Inventory database needs much more than ‘Keep Updated’. It hasn’t been done since June 2008, so really really needs a new inventory. I feel a new inventory is vital – Glenda (Zahner) knows all the ropes on how to carry it out. It’s a one-day intensive study with lots of people involved.”

Between 2010 and 2012, Lydia collaborated with HBS Director James Costa and his wife Leslie Costa to produce The Highlands Botanical Garden: A Naturalist’s Guide, which was published to mark the 50th anniversary of the HBS Botanical Gardens in 2012. Jim served as lead author on the project, Lydia as copy editor, and Leslie designed the book’s layout and scanned and edited images from Ralph Sargent’s botanical slide collection which Lydia had compiled and researched. Lydia and Jim began a mutually respectful relationship not long after Jim’s arrival at the Station as noted on a postcard dated September 26, 2005 – “Such a pleasure meeting you last week.” Lydia was thrilled that Jim wanted to use “her father’s magnificent photos.”

Everyone who knew Lydia was well aware of her methodical record keeping. After reading the minutes of the many Botanical Garden meetings, forums, and retreats, Lydia wrote about herself in 2018, “I am a terribly slow reader and that’s why I catch so many typos.” Indeed, Lydia edited and corrected almost everything she read including the 2018 “Roadmap” for the Botanical Gardens Committee. In 2011 she even combed through Biology in the Blue Ridge listing all the “Ideas and Development of the Botanical Gardens” to verify the history of the gardens.

Lydia was devoted to her father and his support of the Station and the Botanical Gardens. A revealing letter of January 17, 2008 to Jeff Zahner talks of this respect and the life-long garden interest concerning Ralph Sargent and Bob Zahner.

“Lately I have been thinking about the special bond you and I have. We both had fathers who were incredibly devoted to conservation and in particular to the flora of their beloved Blue Ridge mountains. . . . Neither [man] took full credit for their achievements, but left immense lasting legacies. It’s impossible to fill the huge voids left by our fathers except by remembering their passions and doing what we can to continue their work by preserving and protecting this area that they loved. . . . We are both fortunate to have had such marvelous fathers.”

Indeed, Lydia continued her father’s work of protecting and leading the conservation of the Highlands Plateau and HBS Botanical Gardens. We thank her for this legacy.

-James Costa, Jason Love and Bryding Adams, Highland Biological Station