Samuel G. Mygatt, 66, environmentalist and creative outdoorsman, of
Lincoln, MA, passed away on February 16, 2010, after an 11-year
struggle with a rare cancer. Sam was surrounded by his wife Susan, his
three daughters and his three siblings, as he slipped away during a
quiet and steady snowfall.
Sam was born with a belief in the importance of helping others, and he
thought that his efforts could make a difference. They often did. After
graduating from Princeton in 1965, Sam spent two years in the Peace
Corps in Nepal working as a village engineer in the district
surrounding the village of Putlikhet (field of the butterflies).
Together with a fellow Peace Corps volunteer and a young Nepali
overseer, Sam facilitated many small development projects, including
foot bridges, drinking water pipelines and tanks, irrigation canals,
and meeting houses. Sam was instrumental in instituting the building of
long suspension foot bridges with an upward camber - a feature that
prevented them from oscillating wildly when loaded with traffic and
sometimes dumping foot travelers into the rivers below. He also
initiated the use of plastic pipe imported from India to replace
galvanized pipe, an innovation that saved large sums of money in
purchasing and transport costs.
Besides his diligent work as a volunteer, Sam was enormously inventive
and creative in his spare time. Among other things, he became a
virtuoso in bamboo construction. His tour de force was a freestanding
outhouse constructed largely of bamboo replete with an aluminum roof
made from biscuit tins, gutters, and a downspout. The structure was so
elegant that the villagers called it the mundir (temple), and Sam's
next door neighbor was sometimes seen sneaking in to use it in the
pre-dawn hours.
Sam grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, with three siblings and a
strong-willed and independent mother. He graduated from the Choate
School in 1961 and Princeton University in 1965, with a degree in
English and a love of William Butler Yeats.
Following Princeton and then Nepal, Sam studied law at Yale. He clerked
at the Massachusetts Superior Court and then spent several years at the
Massachusetts executive Office of Transportation and Construction. From
there it was off to New York City where Sam practiced corporate law at
Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. There he met his wife Susan. They
married in 1977 and moved to Lincoln, MA.
In 1978, Sam left his law practice and became the director of the
Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act Office (MEPA). During his
eight-year tenure, Sam authored MEPA's governing regulations, built a
well-respected staff of analysts, led the MEPA reviews for several
thousand projects and earned a reputation for rigorous and even-handed
analysis.
Sam returned to the private sector in 1986, practicing environmental
and regulatory law with the Boston firm of DiCara, Selig, Sawyer &
Holt. In 1989, Sam turned back to his interests in environmental
analysis, consulting and project management and became director of
regulatory affairs at HMM Associates in Concord, MA.
In 1987, then Governor Dukakis appointed Sam to the Massachusetts Water
Resources Authority Board of Directors, where he served until 1997. In
a decade of sustained effort, Sam and his fellow directors wisely
guided the design, construction and startup of the badly needed and
widely acclaimed $3 billion Deer Island wastewater treatment plant,
which has had a transformative effect on Boston Harbor.
Together with six colleagues, Sam co-founded Epsilon Associates in
1997, an environmental consulting firm in Maynard, MA. Over the years,
to each of the projects on which he worked, Sam brought his regulatory
acumen, his persuasive writing and speaking skills, his intense desire
to improve each project and a keen sense of teamwork. One colleague
noted that "working with Sam invariably made you a more effective and
more informed consultant."
Sam was a man of the out-of-doors. An avid skier, he was fond of the
mountains of Vermont, particularly the ski trails and wooded glades of
Mad River Glen. For many years, his infectious grin was a common sight
in the single chair liftline.
A gardener, a carpenter and a craftsman, Sam created the physical world
around him to his liking. He loved working with rocks and with wood. He
built beautiful stone walls at his home in Lincoln. He built elegant
tables and sturdy bookshelves, working on his final project right up to
his last day. One weekend, he single-handedly jacked up one end of his
barn in order to replace a rotted-out foundation.
Sam took great delight in his wife of 32 years, Susan, and their three
daughters, Elizabeth, Jennifer and Catherine. Sam and Susan formed a
formidable parenting duo, teaching their daughters to be independent
and confident thinkers, creative problem-solvers and assertive team
players. He encouraged them to push themselves and to find and follow
their passions.
In 1999, Sam was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma. Six months of
treatment earned him seven years of remission. But the cancer returned
in 2006, and Sam spent the next three and a half years trying a chain
of treatments, some of them experimental, while continuing to work at
Epsilon and pursue adventure. He explored China, Tibet and Utah's Yampa
River, and he made countless visits to friends and family. He excelled
in finding goodness, joy and potential in each of his days, often
noting that a "day well lived is a day that's added to your life."
Sam is survived by Susan, his wife of 32 years; his daughters Liz, Jen
and Katie; his brothers Joseph Mygatt of Stamford, CT, and Peter Mygatt
of Ridgefield, CT; and his sister Elizabeth Nitschke of Madison, WI.
A memorial service was held at Emmanuel Church in Boston on February
20, 2010. Donations in Sam's memory may be made to the Emmanuel
Church/Lindsay Chapel Altarpiece Restoration Fund
(www.emmanuel-boston.org), the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund
(www.earthjustice.org), and Ashoka (www.ashoka.org).
Arrangements are under the care of Glenn D. Burlamachi, Concord Funeral
Home, Concord, MA. For online guestbook and tribute visit
www.concordfuneral.com.
