Richard Charles Banks

Richard Charles “Dick” Banks, (April 19, 1931 – October 24, 2021), a major contributor to North American Ornithology, died peacefully at his home in Alexandria, Virginia, after several months in Hospice care.

Dick was born to Clinton S. and Elizabeth May Harter Banks in Steubenville, Ohio, where his amateur naturalist father encouraged his interest in the outdoors and birds in particular. In high school, Dick was an active birder and an Eagle Scout. He majored in Wildlife Conservation at Ohio State University where he was a member of the Army ROTC. Upon his graduation in 1953, he was commissioned into the Medical Service Corps and served in South Korea for a year.

In 1955, following his Army service, he began graduate work in Zoology at UC Berkeley, earning a Master’s Degree (1958) and PhD (1961). In 1962 he was appointed Curator of Birds, Mammals, and Exhibits at the San Diego Natural History Museum, where he met his future wife, Gladys Sparks, with whom he would eventually have two sons, Randy and David.

In 1966, Dick joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Bird and Mammal Labs located in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, where he worked until his official retirement in 2005 and for many years thereafter as an Emeritus Research Zoologist. The author or co-author of nearly 100 scientific papers on the systematics, distribution and nomenclature of North American birds, he was the founder of the Ornithological Council and served as President of the American Ornithologists’ Union, The Wilson Ornithological society, and the Washington Biologists’ Field Club.

Dick and his wife Gladys (known to most as “Chuck”) were married in 1967 and settled in Alexandria, VA, where they purchased the home they would both live in until her death in 2009 and his in 2021. Predeceased by a sister, Eleanor Ash of Bergholz, Ohio, he is survived by his sons, David Banks of Kansas City, MO, Randy Banks of Wyckoff, NJ, two granddaughters, Randy’s daughters Julia and Taline Banks, and a niece, Barbara Glover, of Kensington, Ohio.