Frederick VonHofe Grady

Fred was born in 1948 in West Orange, New Jersey to Charles B. Grady Jr. and Eleanor Ruth VonHofe Grady. He died peacefully on August 25, 2023, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was diagnosed with leukemia in April, 2023. He underwent chemotherapy and went into remission, but it came back in early August and he declined quickly. He is survived by brother Michael (Carolyn), sister Sharon (Michael Marks), and numerous nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews.

As a child, Fred loved animals and studied their anatomy, so that he could assemble found bones into animal skeletons. Fred eventually developed an encyclopedic knowledge of bones, both ancient and modern, especially ice age mammals. Fred Grady began his life's work in Pleistocene vertebrate paleontology with excavations in Durham Cave, Pennsylvania in 1968. There he learned excavation techniques, specimen sorting, labeling, and identification, with the mentoring from John E. Guilday, Curator of vertebrate paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Fred graduated in 1970, with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology, from Lafayette College, in Easton, Pennsylvania. He completed two years of graduate work at the University of Minnesota.

Fred was much more than a good scientist. He was very knowledgeable in many subjects. He was a good friend to many and very generous with his time and knowledge and a teacher to young and old alike. Over the years he has helped people and causes financially and with his time. He was a ravenous reader and loved mystery, historical novels and world history. His recall of what he read and facts was amazing. He had an eidetic memory in many subjects. Very rarely did Fred say "I don't remember" something. He spoke his mind and opinion and always told the truth. His knowledge was amazing. You always learned something. His intent was to share knowledge. Those who knew Fred realize that he was generally fairly quiet, but he came alive underground. . Though he epitomized the image of the weird caver above ground, he definitely came into his own below ground. Fred was always an excellent traveling companion, and almost never had any complaint, or 'discouraging word', as the song says. You could always count on Fred to help out. No task was too small or too dirty. I remember his going through trash cans at OTR with his bare hands taking out the aluminum cans to recycle.

Fred began caving with the Monongahela Grotto and moved to the DC-area around 1978. He joined the Potomac Speleological Club in 1978 and was assigned PSC #402 in 1980. He joined the DC Grotto in 1978 or 1979. He joined the NSS in 1978 and was a Life Member. He became a Fellow of the NSS in 1983 and received a Certificate of Merit from the NSS in 1983 for his efforts in acquiring the Trout Rock property (now the John Guilday Caves Nature Preserve) for the NSS. He received the American Spelean Association's Peter Hauer Spelean History Award in 1995 for his contributions to research and publication of spelean history. In 1999, he was honored by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology with the Morris F. Skinner Award for his outstanding and sustained contributions to scientific knowledge through the making of important collections of fossil vertebrates.

He purchased Haynes Cave in 1992 and after extensive research concluded that the bones of the Jefferson Ground Sloth (Megalonyx jeffersonii) were actually from Haynes Cave and not Organ Cave. Fred's research was presented at the 1995 NSS convention, but unfortunately only the presentation's abstract survives because no article was written to document his research. In 2002, he received the Outstanding Member Award from the Virginia Region of the National Speleological Society.

In 2012, new species of extinct owl, Aegolius gradyi, the Bermuda Saw-whet Owl was named in honor of Fred by Dr. Storres Olson a biologist and ornithologist at the Smithsonian and one of the world's foremost avian paleontologists. Olson had this to say about Fred in his dedication: "To Frederick V. Grady, my companion in the field on many trips to Bermuda, Hawaii, and the West Indies. A diligent and indefatigable collector of vertebrate fossils, Grady's extraordinary ability and perseverance in identifying and sorting small fossils from vast amounts of washed and screened matrix have added immeasurably to the knowledge of paleoenvironments everywhere he has worked."

He received the NSS Science Award in 2016 for his many contributions and publications on cave paleontology. For nine years, he spent summers searching for fossils on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska. Here he was part of a team which found some of the oldest human remains in the Western Hemisphere. Fred authored and co-authored over 150 published papers and articles on his paleo research. His primary research includes over 75 caves in several states and nine countries. Many dozens of cavers helped Fred dig and haul tons of bone bearing matrix out of caves for processing, identification, study and publication. The vast majority of his discoveries were donated to the Smithsonian.

Fred joined the staff of the U.S. National Museum (Smithsonian) Section of Vertebrate Paleobiology in 1975 as a vertebrate fossil preparator, where he worked for 28 years. He was the lab supervisor for 14 of those years. Upon his retirement, Fred returned to the Smithsonian as a volunteer in the same department and lab and had been there an additional ten years. During his tenure at the Smithsonian, he worked on preparation and presentation of Oligocene mammals and reptiles as well as dinosaurs.

When Fred was not working at the museum, he was spending his weekends discovering, digging, processing, cataloging, and identifying Pleistocene fossils from dozens of cave sites in West Virginia and Virginia, as well as several other states. He also spent many weekends as a volunteer working at the New Paris field station of Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Fred's work has taken him to many states and counties, including, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Hawaii, Alaska, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pakistan, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, Madagascar, Tobago, Bermuda, Jamaica, and the Bahamas. As if that were not enough travel, he has made visits to New Zealand, Italy, Spain, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Botswana, Zambia, Tanzania, and Kenya.

A fortuitous meeting with Ray and Mary Ellen Garton in the early 1970's at Carnegie Museums Field Station in New Paris, Pennsylvania led to a 50-plus-year collaboration of finding, collecting, processing, studying, and publishing findings and descriptions of Pleistocene vertebrate fossils from Appalachian caves. Fred also became an avid caver during this time. While his contributions are numerous, a few that stand out are his excavations at bone sites in New Trout Cave, Trout Cave, and Hamilton Cave, located in Pendleton County, West Virginia.

Fred's first big discovery and project was the Pleistocene bone deposit in New Trout Cave, found in February, 1979. This led to dozens of trips into the cave and the subsequent removal of over seven tons of bone bearing matrix for processing and study. He identified nearly 100 taxa of vertebrates including mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, and amphibians.

In addition to discoveries in New Trout Cave, Fred discovered and identified three large Pleistocene (Irvingtonian) cats from Hamilton Cave. The cats included the saber-tooth cat Smilodon grecilis, the cheetah-like cat Miracinonyx inexpectatus and the jaguar Panthera onca augusta. Major papers on these cats and associated fauna are being written.

During the years of the New Trout Cave bone digs, New Trout, Trout, and Hamilton Caves and surrounding land became available for sale. All three of the caves had significant Pleistocene bone deposits, in addition to over 10 miles of surveyed passage and 43 acres of land. Fred spearheaded the effort to obtain donations in order to purchase the caves and the land. The caves were purchased in March 1983 and designated as The John Guilday Caves Nature Preserve of the National Speleological Society.

Fred also did extensive research on the question of which cave contained the bones described by Thomas Jefferson. The bones from the cave were identified in 1799 by Casper Wistar as the remains as those of a giant ground sloth. In 1799 Wistar proposed that the ground sloth remains be named Megalonyx jeffersoni in honor of Jefferson. Fred's exhaustive research brought him to the conclusion that the sloth bones were found in Haynes Cave in Monroe County, West Virginia. On one of his many trips into the cave he discovered the scapula of Megalonyx jeffersoni, the Jefferson ground sloth, and was able to obtain a carbon date of 35,960 years BP.

His historical document research and the additional discovery of more bones convinced Fred to purchase Haynes Cave when it came up for sale. After additional research and collecting he turned over management of the cave to the West Virginia Cave Conservancy (WVCC) and subsequently donated the title to the cave to WVCC for further protection. Written by: E. Ray Garton. Friend and Colleague