Points, Larry G. 1945-

(Larry Gene Points)

Personal

Born January 14, 1945, in Dodge City, KS; son of Gene Earl and Helen Louise Points; married Beverly Ann Watts (a school teacher and administrator) December 23, 1981; children: Kristy, Kara. Education: Southeast Missouri State University, B.S. (biology), 1966.

Addresses

Home and office—Delmar, MD. E-mail—larry@seacritters.com.

Career

Mt. Ranier National Park, Longmire, WA, park ranger, 1969-70; Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site, Elverson, PA, supervisory park ranger, 1970-74; Assateague Island National Seashore, Berlin, MD, chief of park interpretation, 1974-2001. Deputy mayor of Delman, MD. Speaker at schools. Military service: U.S. Army, 1967-69; served in Thailand.

Member

Assateague Costal Trust, Mid-Atlantic Marine Education Association, Maryland Reading Association.

Awards, Honors

Conservation Award, Isaac Walton League, 1973; several agency awards from National Park Service.

Writings

(With Andrea Jauck) Assateague: Island of the Wild Ponies, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1993, revised and updated edition, Sierra Press (Mariposa, CA), 1997.

(With Andrea Jauck) Ribbons of Sand: Exploring Atlantic Beaches, Panorama International Publications (Mariposa, CA), 1997.

(With Andrea Jauck) Barrier Islands Are for the Birds, Sierra Press (Mariposa, CA), 2000.

Sidelights

In addition to his career serving as a park ranger in several prominent U.S. national parks, Larry G. Points has also published children's nature books in collaboration with fellow naturalist Andrea Jauck. In Assateague: Island of the Wild Ponies Points introduces readers to the beaches, marshes, forests, and coastal regions of the barrier island located off the coast of Maryland and Virginia. Based on knowledge gained while Points served as chief of Park Interpretation on the National Park Service site, the book provides an intimate view of the remote region, and features photographs—many taken by Points himself—that capture the overwhelming beauty to be seen throughout the park.

Points told SATA: "I grew up in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, on the Mississippi River and at the edge of the Ozarks. This afforded me the opportunity to experience the outdoors and develop interests that would lead to a career in that realm. Following graduation from my hometown college in 1966, I joined the National Park Service and received training to be a park ranger at the Grand Canyon. Following a two-year interlude with the military, I rejoined the park service for a year of additional training at Mt. Rainier National Park in Washington state. Then I transferred east to Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in Pennsylvania, where I served as the park's chief of interpretation and resource management. In 1974 I transferred to Assateague Island National Seashore where I spent the next twenty-seven years of my career, retiring in early 2001.

"At Assateague Island I served as the chief of park interpretation and directed the development of a wide variety of educational services. These included ranger-guided programs, children's activities, visitor centers, nature trails, audio-visual resources, and exhibits of all kinds. My professional writing began with a variety of publications intended for visitors to help them achieve understanding of park resources. In the late 1980s I embarked with a fellow park naturalist, Andrea Jauck, on the creation of an extensive series of wayside (outdoor) exhibits for Assateague Island. This work involved researching images and graphics, and writing text.

"Andrea and I worked so well together on the exhibits that we decided to privately coauthor a series of nonfiction children's books on subjects of the Atlantic seashore. We knew what interested children and their families and attempted to answer the most common questions they had. We were particularly interested in presenting photographs to support the text and are pleased to say that, in the current era of digital images and computer manipulation, the images in our books are "the real stuff": i.e., un-retouched 35mm photos actually taken by a variety of nature photographers in the field."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 1993, Deborah Abbott, review of Assateague: Island of the Wild Ponies, p. 1353.

Childhood Education, fall, 2000, review of Barrier Islands Are for the Birds, p. 45.

School Library Journal, June, 1993, Charlene Strickland, review of Assateague, p. 98.

ONLINE

Larry Points Home Page,http://www.seacritters.com (February 18, 2007).