Mike Fremont is 100 years old, and he knows the Little Miami River as well as anyone. He canoes a couple times a week, as he has for decades. Fremont has been a competitive canoe racer and conservationist almost all his life. He is a founding member of the Little Miami Conservancy and Rivers Unlimited. He’s also worked with countless groups across the country to preserve rivers. He spoke with Gary Victor of the Little Miami Watershed Network about his life on the river and how to best conserve our rivers.
Mike Freemont: I guess I should say that I became acquainted with the river before I was born because my parents courted along a the Little Miami River, where there was a dam and where they had refreshments. And they told me about that. And then when my father passed in 1954, I put his ashes into the river, whether that was legal or not, because he wanted it that way.
I became a long distance canoe racer in the early 1960s, and my racing partner was Scott Gallagher, who spent a year crossing the country with a canoe on top of his car after service in World War Two. And he thought we needed a vehicle to carry our canoes and our young children, who were very small at the time. He bought us a 1954 black Cadillac hearse.
"I won't bore you by going over statistics, but I will say I think we have two million miles of rivers, and only a tiny fraction are in the State and National River System. And that's not serving our country adequately."Mike Freemont, 100-year-old canoeist and conservationist
I think we came in fourth in that first race, and then next year, which was '64, we came in first and that sort of ruined our life from then on because we thought we were good.
One of my sons joined me in a Little Miami triathlon, where we won prizes. Perhaps that's why he lives in Milford and carries on our business.
Carl Ray, he was our hearse mechanic and an avid fisherman. He once wheeled out from under the hearse, and he said, “Do you know what they're doing to your river?” And I said, “What do you mean, my river?” He said, “Where you guys work out. If you got out of your canoe long enough to do something about it, you might do that.”
There are just countless heroes and heroines who have worked for and on behalf of the people who live along the river. In 1972, we in Ohio formed what was called Rivers Unlimited to protect the rivers and restore the rivers of Ohio.
I was away for the weekend when they had the big meeting, and they decided they wanted me to become president of this new group.
We decided that the form of our organization would be: Any group protecting any river in Ohio was welcome to join and send someone from their group representing their knowledge of how to take care of rivers and help other people do what they did. So, we got a very strong technical background. I recommend that.
As a result of becoming the first state-wide river protection group in the nation, we were able to be part of the formation of what is now called American Rivers and founded this national organization to bring rivers into the National Wild and Scenic River System.
I won't bore you by going over statistics, but I will say I think we have two million miles of rivers, and only a tiny fraction are in the State and National River System. And that's not serving our country adequately.
There's a long way to go, and it's profitable to go that way. It's environmentally highly desirable to go that way. It means clean water, clean drinking water, clean water for animals to live there. It's tremendous for the environment.