Larry Morris/The Washington Post - World Wildlife Fund Executive Director Russell Train in his office in Washington, D.C. on September 9, 1994.
Russell Errol Train was born June 4, 1920, in Jamestown, R.I., and grew up in Washington, where he attended the private St. Albans School. He was a 1941 graduate of Princeton University, which he followed with Army service during World War II.
He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1948 and became a specialist in tax law. He headed the Treasury Department’s tax legislative staff before his appointment to the Tax Court of the United States.
Survivors include his wife of 58 years, the former Aileen Bowdoin of Washington and Hobe Sound, Fla.; four children, Emily Rowan of Chevy Chase, Nancy Smith Gustin of South Dartmouth, Mass., Charles B. Train of Washington and Errol T. Giordano of Bedminster, N.J.; and 12 grandchildren.
Mr. Train backed President George H.W. Bush enthusiastically, serving as national chairman of Conservationists for Bush in 1988. He was a sharp critic of President George W. Bush, saying that the White House had repeatedly interfered with agency decision making and ignored scientific expertise in crafting environmental policy.
During the Obama administration, Mr. Train worked behind the scenes to shore up support for EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and her ongoing effort to regulate greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change. During a private dinner in 2009, Mr. Train told her she was well within her authority under the Clear Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
And he continued to come into the D.C. offices of WWF-U.S. every week up until just before his death, Roberts recalled. “He would prowl the hallways in a seersucker suit, poking the troops, and reminding people to do unconventional things to get things done,” he said.
Lovejoy recalled that Mr. Train, despite his establishment pedigree, was an iconoclast and had an uneasy relationship with Nixon. “My intent is to give the EPA a strong independent character,” Mr. Train declared in a news conference at the Council on Environmental Quality. “We will have a strong, vigorous enforcement policy.”
Mr. Train could be rebellious. He once sneaked in a reference to land use in one of Nixon’s State of the Union addresses, which the president failed to notice during an initial read-through. As soon as he had given the speech, Lovejoy recalled, Nixon asked one of aides in fury, “Who’s the son-of-a-[expletive] who put land use in that speech?”
