The Lizard King

Geckos, skinks, iguanas—when we look at lizards, we may not see more than scales and legs and a tail, but when 2007 Distinguished Alumnus Laurie Vitt, ’67, B.A., and ’71, M.S., biology, studies lizards, he sees the keys to evolutionary process, the complex adaptations and strategies lizards use to survive, and insights into glo­­bal climate change. 

He received a Ph.D. from Arizona State University and has now retired from teaching and research at the University of Oklahoma. He has also served as a research associate at the Museum of Zoology in São Paolo, Brazil, and is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. 

Born in Bremerton, Vitt grew up in Montana and California and returned to Washington when his mother, Goldie Vitt, was hired as a Campus School teacher at WWU. She suffered from multiple sclerosis and was in and out of hospitals most of Vitt’s young adult life. 

There wasn’t a lot of family money for college, so he made his way by forming a rock band and touring. The Unusuals had quite a following and toured all over the West Coast. And they had a boa constrictor. On stage. With them.

Vitt had collected snakes from the time he was 9, and he took “Herky, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Boa,” and whatever critters he was collecting at the time – rattle snakes, geckos, tarantulas – along on tour with The Unusuals. 

But one day at Western, one of his snakes almost got the better of him: 

“On the first floor of the old biology building, there was a set of large display cases with glass fronts. I took one over to exhibit a nine-foot Anaconda that I had been keeping at home. I would open the case to clean it, which involved removing the snake. I would sneak up, grab it behind the head (they bite, but non-venomous), and drop it into a large cloth bag. This particular time, I grabbed the snake and it immediately coiled around my neck. 

“So, there I am standing in the hall with a large snake around my neck and if I let go of the head, it would bite me—they have large teeth. The snake was so strong that it cut off my breathing. As I started turning purple, I walked into an open classroom where Dr. Irwin Slesnick was teaching. He took one look, smiled, and unwrapped the snake.”

As a former student challenged by finding enough money for school, and as a professor well aware of the difficulties acquiring funding for field research, Vitt has created two scholarships. One is an endowment he funded in collaboration with his wife and fellow herpetologist, the Laurie J. Vitt and Janalee P. Caldwell Fund for Field Research in Biology, a fund that Vitt and Caldwell plan to grow with a seven-figure estate gift. 

Vitt’s second scholarship is the Laurie Vitt Fund for Field Research to support students at Western. Through their generosity, more students will benefit from the kind of hands-on research required to be successful in biology.

Field research stipend recipient Miles Berkey may not be touring with a rock band or wrestling anacondas in the biology building, but he is doing groundbreaking field research in the North Cascades. In the process of studying geological ice sheet similarities between the North Cascades and Alaska, he has discovered four mosses in Washington previously unknown in the area. 

“Certain mosses are well-regarded as Ice Age relics,” Berkey says. “They possess certain biological traits that make them good indicators of Ice Age refugia,” places where life endured amid the harsh climate.

Currently, Berkey is working with the Department of Natural Resources to add to the state’s checklist of documentation of rare moss species. His work has implications of not just climate change, but climate similarities between the Ice Age in the North Cascades and Alaska. 

“The stipend helped me pay for transportation and important research time in the field for collection,” Berkey says. “It was a huge help to me in supporting my research.”

Biology graduate student Cara Gutenberg is researching nitrogen retention in riparian buffers—essentially the way plants around waterways and riverbanks hold nitrogen in their leaves and roots. Her work demonstrates how climate, pollution, and other factors affect the way plants filter toxins from waterways. 

“The support I received from the Vitt-Caldwells allowed me to focus on my field work and supplemented my fellowship and research grant, so I didn’t have to get a job and work and try to perform field research and analysis on top of that,” Gutenberg says. “I was able to focus, and I am so grateful for that.”

Though he has traveled around the world, played in several rock bands, and pursued his dream of being a herpetologist, Western remains very important to Vitt.

“The campus has the same charisma that it had back in the sixties. Major controversies existed (e.g., the Vietnam War) but a sense of community made it a wonderful place to be. For me, the support of faculty in the Biology Department was like belonging to a highly educated family.”