Lawmakers calling to honor Rachel Carson

Bill, scholarship mark environmentalist’s 100th birthday

Carson, who lived in Quaint Acres neighborhood near downtown Silver Spring, died in 1964, two years after publishing ‘‘Silent Spring,” a landmark study of the dangers that pesticides posed to the environment.

Frosh, who chairs the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, is sponsoring a bill that would recognize May 27, Carson’s birthday, as ‘‘Rachel Carson Day.”

The committee held a hearing on the bill on Tuesday.

‘‘I hope that [the bill] will spark a resurgence in interest in Ms. Carson and her work and writings and her legacy and in the relevance of her work to today,” said Amy Marasco Newton, founder and president of the Newton Marasco Foundation, a Virginia nonprofit focused on the environment.

The nonprofit will award a $1,000, a $750 and a $500 scholarship to 11th- and 12th-grade students interested in environmental issues.

The Rachel Carson Scholarship awards will be based on academic performance, letters of recommendation, community service work on environmental projects and on an essay about how Carson’s work is relevant today. ‘‘Being a Rachel Carson scholar will be a significant accomplishment,” Newton said.

‘‘The environment shouldn’t be seen as an issue,” said Sen. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Dist. 20) of Takoma Park, a member of the judicial committee who represents the district where Carson lived. ‘‘The environment is the whole context in which we have to understand every other issue.”

It is ‘‘very fortuitous” that the celebration of what would have been Carson’s 100th birthday comes in the wake of a renewed push for environmental stewardship, Frosh said.

To learn more

Go to www.newtonmaras-cofoundation.org⁄programs⁄rc_sch.cfm or call 703-748-7575. Applications are due April 2.