If you were a passionate hunter/fisherman, and money was of no consequence whatsoever, what might you put together for yourself to while away the hours when time and distance forbade a tri to the Yukon or Africa?

For me personally, I’d remain in the Wagner area, but I would enclose a 25 square mile area of Missouri River bottom and surrounding hills within an eight foot fence. My spacious, rustic lodge would include ample bedrooms for friends, and I would stock the premise with elk and manage my deer herds for trophy quality. There would also be some antelope. Pheasant and quail habitat would be a top priority as well as well-stocked lakes. These lakes would also attract geese and ducks. So where is today’s column heading?

Back in July, I had a phone call from an old friend during my Brookings days at SDSU. He wanted me to read Tuxedo Park by Jennet Conant, and his enthusiasm for the book prompted me to order it from our library. Conant gives us the names, dates, and places, but she primarily tells us about Alfred Lee Loomis, a man I would now place next to Abe Lincoln in shaping America.

Loomis was a fabulously wealthy force on Wall Street, but he was also a scientific genius with the personality and persuasive ability to assemble the team of physicists who developed the radar that shut down the German Nazi submarines that ravaged both our east coast and the North Atlantic. This radar also defeated the German blitzkrieg that pummeled Great Brittan. Most important was his success in beating the Germans in the development of the atom bomb. Loomis is also credited with inventing the Loran longrange navigation system as well as instrument aircraft navigation.

Loomis’s home was the Tower Mansion at Tuxedo Park – forty miles northwest of New York City. It included ample guest quarters, an extensive research laboratory, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, tennis courts, and a golf course. His team of physicists included Enrico Fermi, Robert Oppenheimer, and Ernest Lawrence, the most talented son South Dakota has ever produced. Loomis also worked closely with Albert Einstein as well as Presidents Roosevelt and Truman.

So what does Alfred Lee Loomis have to do with hunting and fishing? Loomis was passionate about hunting and fishing. In 1931 Loomis and his brother-in-law, Landon Thorne, bought South Carolina’s Hilton Head Island. A one-time union civil war fort, they developed the old Honey Horn plantation into a working farm adding stables, servant quarters, and a guest house. They imported an electric generator bringing the first power to the island. It ultimately became a hunting-fishing paradise where Loomis worked hard and played hard.

Over the winters for almost twenty years, Loomis and Thorne, along with their five sons, hunted with their beloved dogs, shot skeet, fished, sailed, and entertained guests from friends, politicians, and business executives to the king of Sweden. Loomis was also a prominent fixture in the America Cup sailboat races. The fishing included sea trout and striped bass in the rivers and creeks, and blue fish and red snapper in the ocean. Oysters, crab, and shrimp were also plentiful. They must have dined like kings on scrumptious sea foods.

The hunting included quail, waterfowl, snipe, dove, wild turkey, deer, and wild hogs. In 1936 they counted 293 quail coveys and killed an average of a thousand quail a year as they self-imposed a ten quail daily limit. The water fowl shooting included mallard, black duck, pintail, widgeon, gadwall, blue and green wing teal, wood duck, canvasback, redhead, greater and lesser scaup, ring neck, ruddy duck, bufflehead, and Canada goose.

Loomis and Thorne sold Honey Horn in 1950 to a group of lumber associates from Hinesville, GA. The property, which they had bought for six dollars an acre, sold for 1.2 million. Loomis would one day admit that they sold it too cheap. Two of the timber men, General Joseph B. Fraser and Frederick C. Hack Sr., went on to develop the island as a vacation resort.

Loomis would eventually divorce his wife and marry the wife of a friend. During the first fifty years of the 20th Century, divorce was not tolerated in America. Because of the divorce, Loomis was abandoned by his sons and ostracized by many of his friends. Setting these things aside, had there been no Alfred Lee Loomis, the allied powers would have probably lost World War Two. What would a world under Hitler have been like? Because of this book, I have two new bucket list destinations. I want to visit both Tuxedo Park and Hilton Head.

See you next week.