We have no title – deeds to house or lands.
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.
-Unknown Author
My father was a mechanical engineer by profession and a gifted theologian, and through my youth my family followed the job market across America; from Michigan in the north, to Mississippi in the south. Dad was a dedicated sportsman and on about any weekend he and I were prowling cornfields and weed patches, or venturing out around, or onto, the Mississippi River. Boats, dogs, shotguns, and hunting were the essence of our life. The Mississippi River creates lasting impressions on all that it touches, and I was no exception. Like it had for Samuel Clemens and Aldo Leopold, the Mississippi created in me a permanent bond with, and a loyalty to, nature.
We had a scull boat built by my grandfather for sneaking ducks. It was about eight feet long and was as finely built as a piece of exquisite drawing room furniture. The ribs were close and tight and though olive drab in color, one could easily see the craftsmanship and care in all its fittings and appointments. It was designed for two people and had an arched deck and a stern deck where a single sculling oar was mounted. There was a thin six-inch strip of molding all around the passenger compartment, which kept water from coming into the hull when it was rough, or when we were moving particularly fast. My dad camouflaged the boat further by lashing brush and weeds onto the deck and sides. In late summer, when it was particularly hot and still, I would kneel in the bow with my .22 rifle and we would scull quietly down an irrigation or drainage ditch in pursuit of bullfrogs. Those were good times. I learned whatever shooting skills I have in the nose of that boat. Life was short for any frog found sitting within my killing zone. The river taught me many things, besides just shooting guns and catching fish.
One sultry July afternoon, Dad and I were paddling around in some of the backwaters on the Iowa side of the river. We were lazing along, Dad was at the sculling oar and I crouched in the bow, rifle in hand. It was very hot and I remember that the boat’s ribs were particularly uncomfortable on my knees that day. There was a sapling sticking out from the bank. As we drew near we could see a shiny green frog hanging like a gymnast, his arms extended to full length from one slender limb. The lower half of the frog’s body was in the wide-open mouth of a large water snake. The frog was hanging a solid 20 inches above the water, yet much of the snake’s body swayed rhythmically in the current. We pulled the boat in close to watch this living theater of life and death. The snake’s jaw contractions slowly, but surely, advanced the snake’s hold. What was in the mind of this tiny frog I wondered? What call, what affirmation, what testimony of life required such struggle for survival? For some reason that incident has remained firmly in my mind all these years.
In many ways the serpent is swallowing us today, right here in America. We struggle and the fight for our way of life is still unsure. When the window dressing is stripped away survival is at the core of us, driving all earthly creatures. Today, as much as ever before, we in America face these survival challenges, all of which seem so exacerbated by the harsh clarity of our economic crisis, our security needs and too often our lack of fundamental ethic. We have changed, our country has changed and the growing division between our people often goes unseen.
I believe that the strength of our country must flow from ideas, our creativity, our educational systems and most importantly the core values of our people. Positive values are learned values and historically were learned in rural life settings always in close contact with the natural creation. Nonetheless, whatever our demographics, we are measured by our determination to stand for certain positive core values in the face of lesser but easier paths to some end.
The Fausel Foundation supports actions that enhance all life including human life and we support freedom as a common thread within all life. We support people and results rather than programs or organizations. We so strongly support the IWP not only because of its unique and excellent academic program but also because of its people and thus its leadership. In the end we fight for those persons and principles that we love and the IWP will create a human factor, a wonderful crop of bright and correctly educated people who will fight for us all.
Within the above confines we have also been instrumental in developing and leading a partnership with the USDA – Forest Service in the creation of a 3200 mile trail across America which will allow both rural and urban Americans of all religious faiths and ethnic backgrounds to see and appreciate the splendor of our nation along the Continental Divide from Canada to Mexico. Such things support the core positive values of our people, the future voting record of individuals in the support of wild-life and wild-places and the basis for the ethical fiber of our nation.
On a different front we are striving to implement cutting edge wave technology that is more physics than chemistry and could lead to the treatment or cure of tuberculosis, thus reducing the suffering of some two billion humans.
And in our small way we continue to reach out to and work with organizations such as the IWP and other friends within the intelligence community to the end of a safer and a freer America. We pray for an America where we are simply unwilling to trade our most precious right of freedom for any short-term security because as a nation we are suddenly pressured by having failed to educate, to dedicate or to be measured by our stand for what is right. We desire a process within our nation where arrogance, greed and dishonesty are replaced with strength of character, statesmanship, and compassion and where uncompromised national security and military supremacy are a hallmark of our ability to offer such balanced restraint.
About Dr. Fausel
Dr. Stephen A. Fausel, a man of deep commitment to the environment and conservation causes, is the Director of The Fausel Foundation, and CEO of Fausel Companies. One of his companies, LaMont Limited, is the nation’s foremost manufacturer of wicker furniture for the home. Voice Assets, another of the Fausel Companies, has a stockholder interest in the Cohen Home Building process – a unique system of building high quality homes of nearly any size in a manufacturing plant without shipping components.
Dr. Fausel also heads the privately-held medical development company Anapole, Inc., which creates cutting edge science, and is currently merging physics and chemistry in the areas of TB, AIDS and other areas of interest. Buffalo Weaver, another of Dr. Fausel’s companies, is named for an African bird, and is located in Iowa. This plant manufactures woven papers and other fabrics with high speed specialized looms.
He is the Chairman of the Environmental Conservancy Group, which has two large conservancies in Namibia, and which aims at creating general economic sustainability for humans as well as territorial sustainability for other creatures. His interest in Africa has stimulated a desire to help its economy grow through other business ventures, as well. For instance, SeaArk International is in the business of producing, processing, marketing, and distributing seafood using advanced, “state-of-the-art” aquaculture and mari-culture technologies and production methodologies.
Previously, Dr. Fausel served as Founder and President of S.A.A.S. (formerly Lien Tai Hong) which specialized&nb
sp;in joint ventures with the People’s Republic of China, and, among other accomplishments, has partnered with China’s official airline, CAAC Air Cargo Division, on numerous projects – including the creation of wireless teaching systems for China in cooperation with Japanese partners.
When he was not hunting or fishing, Dr. Fausel attended Truman University in Missouri and Missouri Military Academy in Mexico, Missouri. He served in the military, and was an adjunct professor at West Virginia University. He has been given membership in Northwestern University’s John Evans Club, and has received an honorary doctorate from The American University of Rome.
Dr. Fausel currently serves on the Advisory Board of the American Foreign Policy Council, and has served on the Board of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, and as founding board member, Honorary Chairman and National Spokesperson for the Continental Divide Trail Alliance. He has served on the Board of the Intermountain West Joint Venture, of the Rocky Mountain Multiple Sclerosis Center and of the International Foundation for the Conservation of Natural Resources; as Honorary Chairman of the Colorado Division of Wildlife Centennial and of the North American Wildlife Enforcement Officers; as Chairman of Physically-challenged Access to the Woods; and as a Board Member and Vice Chairman of the National Forest Foundation. He has also been a Trustee of the Native American Fish & Wildlife Foundation.
In his spare time, Dr. Fausel enjoys snow skiing, long distance rifle shooting, and photography, is accomplished in one martial art, and has multiple aircraft type ratings.