PORT ANGELES — A man who loved teaching and nature will be remembered through an arboretum that will be dedicated to his memory at Peninsula College on Friday.
The dedication ceremony and open house for the new Edward L. Tisch Memorial Arboretum will be at 2 p.m. on the college campus in Port Angeles, 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
The arboretum is located on the east side of the Port Angeles campus. Visitors may park in the college’s north parking lot and follow the sidewalks and signs to the arboretum.
Tisch, who died in September 2007 of sudden heart failure at the age of 70, taught biology and botany at Peninsula College for 41 years — the longest teaching career of any of the college’s teachers — starting in 1966, the year after classes began there.
“Ed was a man filled with love — love for God, love for his fellow man and love for nature,” said his widow, Joanne Tisch, who was married to him for 12 years.
“He loved Peninsula College with all of his heart. It is truly fitting that he should be honored for his heart-felt contributions to the students and the academic connection to nature he nurtured there.”
Tisch had developed an arboretum in the center of campus. That was cut down for new construction 10 years ago, she said.
“He was really heartbroken when the first one was cut down,” she said.
Her husband was given land to develop into a new arboretum on the northeastern corner of campus. He worked on it for about three years before his death, turning it into a setting for plants native to Western Washington, she said.
Speakers at the dedication ceremonies will include Peninsula College President Thomas Keegan; Tisch’s son, Ehrin Tisch; local poet and conservationist Tim McNulty — who will read some of Tisch’s poetry; and retired Olympic National Park botanist Ed Schreiner.
Barbara Blackie, a colleague of Tisch’s who teaches botany occasionally at the college, will speak at the ceremony, primarily to introduce the arboretum, she said.
She and her students have been labeling the plants that Tisch rooted in the soil.
“We’ve been finishing what he started out to do, labeling the native trees and shrubs,” she said Wednesday.
Students will provide enhanced natural history for anyone walking through the arboretum after the ceremony, she said.
“Ed was one in a million,” Blackie said.
“He was a kind man who shared a lot of knowledge and had a deep affection for the natural word and the beauty of the spoken word, too — he was a poet.
Tisch taught as many as 9,000 students, his widow said.
He also discovered and named two new species, Tisch’s Saxifrage and the Ozette Orchid, and collaborated on the listing of more than 100 new plants not previously known to the North Olympic Peninsula, she added.
He had served in the Peace Corps in Chile in the 1960s and spoke fluent Spanish.
“Ed continued to write to and visit scores of families in Chile for the rest of his life,” Joanne Tisch said.
Friday’s ceremony will include a “ribbon cutting” of a salal garland, music by Dennis Crabb, Fred Thompson and Karen Hart and an English tea, she said.
Her husband’s book of poetry, At the Open End of a Flower, will be available for sale, with contributions going to the Ed Tisch Scholarship Fund, she added.
The arboretum contains close to 100 representative species, Blackie said.
“It is a living, growing, organic continuation of Ed,” she said.
“He really loved the idea of the arboretum, and now he lives on.”
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Managing Editor/News Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3531 or leah.leach@peninsuladailynews.com.
