Hubert J. Byrd and Family Memorial Scholarship

Hubert Byrd, a prominent member of the society, passed away on September 26, 2000 at his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. Mr. Byrd was born and raised on a farm near Valdosta, Georgia, and served in the U.S. Navy as a flight crew radioman during World War II. He received a B.S. in Agriculture from the University of Georgia in 1950, attended the Soil Science Institute at Cornell University in 1960, and earned an M.S. in Soil Science from the University of Georgia in 1966.

Mr. Byrd began his career as a soil scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation Service (USDA-SCS) in 1950. For ten years, he mapped soils throughout Georgia. From 1960 to 1967, he supervised soil mapping, soil investigations, and the correlation and classification of soils for the state of Georgia.

Under the auspices of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Mr. Byrd spent the year 1967 in Saigon as Soils Advisor to the South Vietnamese government. Upon his return to the states, he resumed work with the USDA-SCS, this time in Hyattsville, Maryland. In 1969, he transferred to North Carolina where he served as State Soil Scientist until his retirement in1983.

From 1983 until his death, Mr. Byrd engaged in private consulting and was co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Soil and Environmental Consultants, Inc. His notable achievements include establishing and serving as the first Chairman of the North Carolina Board for Licensing of Soil Scientists and writing the standard definition of wetlands currently used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Mr. Byrd received the Soil Science Society of North Carolina’s annual achievement award in 1977.