DUBOIS – Members of the Penn State DuBois community will hold a campus memorial service for Nathan McCandless at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 5 the Hiller Auditorium. The memorial is open to the public.
McCandless, 21, of Butler died in a work-related accident July 29 while working in Sullivan County as a summer wildlife technician for an independent company. He was a recent graduate of the Penn State DuBois wildlife technology program.
He planned to continue his education in wildlife and fisheries science this fall at University Park. He was a dean’s list student and won the College of Agricultural Sciences Alumni Society’s Outstanding Student in Wildlife Technologies Program Award in 2011.
McCandless graduated from Butler High School in 2009, where he participated in track and field and soccer.
Friends remember McCandless as a dedicated outdoorsman who loved hunting, fishing and trapping. He especially enjoyed viewing and photographing wildlife.
In 2010, McCandless had the honor of planting an American chestnut tree on campus. Made possible by the American Chestnut Foundation, the tree was the product of 26 years of research that was dedicated to developing a chestnut tree that is resistant to a disease that wiped the tree from the American forest in the early 20th century.
Thanks to generations of cross breeding with the disease resistant Chinese chestnut, the tree on campus is still growing strong today, and it could be one of the first American chestnut trees to thrive on this continent in the last century.
While planting the tree, McCandless said, “It’s an honor to be given the opportunity. It’s really something special, and something that no one else can say they had the chance to do.”