Former Utah State University writer Cliff Cahoon described the late Theodore W. “Doc” Daniel as an “M&M of a man”; that is, hard shell on the outside, sweet on the inside. Former forestry students roll their eyes and sigh as they recall the Utah State silviculture professor, known as a taskmaster yet fair grader, who spent nearly 50 years teaching discipline and ethics as well as the nuances of trees.

“(Doc) taught what it meant to be a professional,” said F.E. “Fee” Busby, dean of Utah State’s College of Natural Resources and a former student of Daniel. “He was generous with his time for students and had far more influence than the mere contact he had with people in the classroom would indicate.”

College of Natural Resources faculty, staff, alumni and students will gather Saturday, Sept. 18, on the Utah State campus, to remember Doc Daniel, who died July 30 at age 96. The gathering, held in conjunction with the college’s Golden Aggies Reunion, will begin at 8:15 a.m. with a continental breakfast in the Eccles Conference Center auditorium, followed by a program at 9 a.m. featuring testimonials about Daniel from former students. The group is then invited to travel up Logan Canyon to the site of “Summer Camp,” where many a student endured the rigors of the college’s fieldwork orientation program under Doc’s exacting eye. From Summer Camp, participants will gather at Zanavoo restaurant for lunch.

Daniel’s influence on forestry extended far beyond the Utah State campus, said Jim Long, Utah State silviculture professor, also a student of Daniel, who calls Doc his mentor. Long noted that Daniel was one of the first scholars in the United States to earn a doctorate that focused on natural resources. He was nearly as old as American forestry itself, as the Society of American Foresters was formed just seven years before Daniel’s birth in 1907.

Daniel began his career at Utah State in 1944 and was the senior author of “Principles of Silviculture,” a widely used textbook published in 1979 and printed in three languages. Long said Daniel is well known among forestry professionals in Austria, where he studied on one of the first Fulbright fellowships in 1951 and from which he recruited many forestry students for Utah State.

In 1996, a four-square-mile section of the Cache National Forest, which the U.S. Forest Service allows Utah State to use for research, was designated the T.W. Daniel Experimental Forest. Daniel kept records on that patch of land for 50 years and established the T.W. Daniel Experimental Forest Operating Endowment to supplement state and university funds for the maintenance and enhancement of the forest.

The endowment was hardly the first gift Daniel made to the university. A longtime member of the Old Main Society, he endowed a scholarship in forestry and set up another scholarship endowment in memory of his friend and colleague, the late Raymond D. Moore. In addition, Daniel was a faithful supporter of Utah State’s Women’s Center, where he also endowed a scholarship. He contributed to a number of other memorial scholarships and readily shared his money with student organizations.

Daniel said he contributed to the university because he thought students were a good investment. “I feel you owe the university something if you have it,” he said in a 1999 interview.

For more information about the gathering to honor Doc Daniel on Sept. 18, contact Mary Ann Lowe in the College of Natural Resources at 435-797-2452; mlowe@cnr.usu.edu.