Ted was the namesake and grandson of Theodore Wirth (1863-1949) and the son of Conrad Wirth, FASLA (1899-1993), the landscape architect who was the longest serving director of the National Park Service.

Ted was born in New Orleans, on the eve of the Great Depression and spent childhood summers in Minnesota with his horticulturist grandfather Olson and his parks grandfather Wirth. In the summer of 1944, 16-year old Ted worked in Yellowstone and decided to follow in the footsteps of Connie and Theodore.

Two years of engineering training and surveying experience on the Washington Monument, preceded Ted’s decision to enter the School of Landscape Architecture at Iowa State College. He graduated with honors in 1950.

Ted began his career by working on a TVA project for Kentucky State Parks. In 1951, he was recruited as a landscape architect in the National Park Service Omaha office. His first NPS project was planning public access to Rocky Mountain National Park. Ted then became the landscape architect at Grand Teton National Park for two years.

In 1955, Ted was sent to the Western Division office in San Francisco as the planning director and landscape architect, overseeing Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park.

Ted established Wirth Design Associates in Billings, Montana, and his father became a consultant to the firm in 1964. Wirth Design grew to include seven field offices, working a broad range of projects in nearly every state in the country and abroad for more than 40 years, producing more than 300 municipal, state and national park projects.

Ted Wirth senior had been superintendent of Minneapolis Parks. In the early 1980s, the grandson returned to his grandfather’s roots, taking a job with Minneapolis Parks to develop the conceptual designs for the Cedar Lake Trails, which became over 60 miles of bicycle trails throughout the city. Ted’s work continued the legacy of his grandfather and his mantra, “Parks are for the people,” balancing public use and recreational development with environmental protection.

Ted is survived by his children, T. Jay and Cherie, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

A memorial was held Sept. 14 in Minneapolis at the historic Theodore Wirth Home and Administration Building in Lyndale Farmstead Park.

Editor’s note: Most of the information on Ted (and the photos) are from a March LASN feature by Joan Berthiaume, co-founder of the Minneapolis Parks Legacy Society for the Wirth family legacy. See “Please Walk on the Grass: The Wirth-While Legacy of Common Ground” www.landscapearchitect.com/research/article/8533.