Gardner Mallard Brown Jr. died surrounded by family and friends in Seattle on August 9 from complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heart failure. He was 85.

He was born Dec. 15, 1935. A lifelong lover of Martha’s Vineyard, Gardner spent much of his early years on the Island, living with his mother and grandmother in a series of small cottages and camps in Menemsha and Gay Head as well as at the Chilmark parsonage. At age five he had a little boat and was allowed to row out in the Menemsha harbor to eat his peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich at lunchtime. Sometimes fishermen would give him a fish to take home.

Gardner’s first two school years were in Chilmark but his family moved many times in his youth, including to Boston, New Hampshire and North Carolina. He and his mother settled in Walpole for his high school education. Almost every year of his life, he returned to the Vineyard for short or long periods. His deep love of nature was first awakened there.

While growing up, he always had jobs; among them were delivering two newspapers morning and night in Walpole, building fences for the Walpole Woodworkers, and picking up chickens in Maine. He played just as hard and especially loved any sort of outdoor activity. His mother, Elizabeth Chapin Howe, was a fine swimmer and taught him to ride the waves at Island beaches. Body surfing, like skiing, remained a perennial source of joy.

A year at Northeastern University taught Gardner that an urban college and the study of engineering were not for him. He took a year off, riding a bicycle from Boston to Florida with two friends. In Florida he worked several jobs and saved his earnings. His ambition at this time was to be a chicken farmer or some sort of entrepreneur but he decided he wanted to go back to school, paying his own way.

In 1954, with the help of money she had saved for Gardner’s college, his mother was able to put up one of the Island’s first pre-fab houses, manufactured by the Woodworkers, in East Pasture, Gay Head.

Antioch College, with its work/study program, student involvement in the running of the school and bucolic setting, was an ideal fit for Gardner. He went on to the University of California at Berkeley for graduate school and became a highly-respected pioneer in the field of natural resource/environmental economics.

From 1965 until his so-called retirement, he taught at the University of Washington in Seattle. He spent much of every summer and eventually into the fall on Martha’s Vineyard, inculcating his family with a deep love of the Island, where they built a second, winterized house in 2007. Although he traveled for work and pleasure throughout his life to Europe, Africa, Asia and the Antipodes, the Island was Gardner’s real home.

He is survived by a close and loving family: his wife of 56 years, Victoria Farr Brown; sons Devon Brown and Tim Brown; nephews Dan Bowler and Andrew Shanbrom; niece Maegan Best; and their nine children.