Pete Quasius

President

As a youth in Wisconsin I was active in the Boy Scouts (in college a scout master) and camping, hunting and fishing. In my teens I worked in the family construction business and learned most trades,  made  a 32Ford Model B roadster into a hot-rod , and was on the debate team and sppent spring break in 1958 on Daytona Beach and fell in love with Florida.  I bought a sports car ( 1953MG-TD which i still have have) and went off to college, first in my family, married my high school sweetheart, had two wonderful kids,  and ate lots of wild game with the help of a great German Shorthaired Pointer.  Deciding that construction in the Wisconsin cold was not for me (lakes and rivers froze, I went south to grad school at Duke planning to become a  political science professor (they got summers off to go fishing) , but took the Foreign Service exam before a PhD, passed, it and spent the next 25 years, mostly  in south and southeast Asia, as a US diplomat ( sailing, diving, hunting and fishing) all over the world.)   In Washington DC  in 1968 I became a member of  the Izaak Walton League.

In 1992 I retired from the Foreign Service and sailed my catamaran from the Chesapeake to a family home on Bonita Beach. While still very involved in local politics, I also became a Master Gardener; commercial orchid and butterfly grower; instructor in the Master Naturalist Program;  an ORVIS  fly fishing guide chasing tarpon, snook, muskies and salmon  ( using info from Sir Izaak Walton’s Compleat Angler;   an active member of the Florida Guides Association and Snook Foundation; and in shooting sports.  Involvement in fishing clubs resulted in a good catch, my wife, Maria.

I became president of the Citizen’s’ Association for the Caloosahatchee River and Audubon of Southwest Florida,; then  a registered lobbyist; was appointed to the SFWMD WRAC; was hired  by Audubon of the Western Everglades where, with lots and lots help, helped bring  billions of dollars of  state and federal funding to habitat preservation and restoration projects (WRDAs ,C43reservoir, ASR storage,) and  helped in creation  of FGCU’s Water School and Babcock Ranch town and Preserve where we reside on the shores of Lake Babcock. In 2019 I was elected president of the Cypress Chapter of the Izaak Walton League  and re-elected in 2024. 

And, as they say, the rest is history.