MINNEAPOLIS –– Over 300 enthusiastic wilderness advocates jammed a ballroom overlooking the Mississippi River on Nov. 11 to help Friends of the Boundary Water Wilderness celebrate its 30th anniversary and to join in honoring visionaries Bill and Barbara Rom of Ely, MN, whose unwavering courage and tireless advocacy helped to secure and then to preserve a national treasure – the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

In presenting the award to the Roms, Carolyn Sampson, Friends Board Chair, said, “Every special place on our public lands ultimately owes its protection to a handful of dedicated people willing to fight for it. For the Boundary Waters, two such people are Bill and Barbara Rom. It is truly our privilege to honor them.”

The Roms married in 1944. After Bill's military service they returned to his hometown of Ely in 1946. They launched Canoe Country Outfitters with a few wood-and-canvas canoes and a love of canoe country, then taught thousands of others to love it, too. “They demonstrated how a very successful business can be built by working with wilderness instead of against it,” Sampson said. Over time, the Roms forged a lifelong friendship with Sigurd Olson and stood arm-in-arm with him and other advocates to achieve formal wilderness protection for the Boundary Waters.

“To this day, they remain ready to fight in its defense. Their courage and commitment inspires us all,” said Sampson. “Their legacy endures.”

Sampson said that the Friends owes its continued success to that legacy, as well as to the dedication of its members, partners, supporters, staff and board. “We have had 30 remarkably successful years of working to defend this exceptional place,” she said. “We are excited to meet the challenges ahead, to advance the Friends’ mission and to see what we can accomplish in the next 30 years.”

Also inspiring the crowd was Minnesota comedian and political activist, Al Franken, who donated his time for the event. Franken spoke of his own early trips into the Boundary Waters and the neighboring Quetico Provincial Park, many of them beset by novice's mistakes, all of them memorable. Through the humor emerged his theme that wilderness preservation, clean water and air, solitude, silence, and intact habitat are, at their heart, non-partisan and family values.

Before the dinner, the Friends held its annual business meeting. An overflow crowd heard presentations by Jim Sanders, Superior National Forest Supervisor; Robin Reilly, Quetico Provincial Park Superintendent; and Lee Frelich, Director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Hardwood Ecology. The three discussed the state of the Superior National Forest, the BWCAW and the Quetico, and the importance of building cross-boundary and other partnerships to find solutions to challenges such as non-native invasive species, increased visitor use, and global warming.

As it enters its fourth decade of service, the mission of the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness to protect, preserve and restore the wilderness character of the BWCAW and the Quetico-Superior ecosystem.

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