Harold B. Pough, 100; owned camera shops

On a Sunday afternoon in 1932, Harold and Richard Pough and two friends went to a mountain in Berks County and changed the history of conservation.

After the brothers saw hawk after hawk being shot while migrating, Harold returned to photograph the results of the slaughter and helped alert a benefactor.

"His significance was that . . . his photographs ultimately led to the creation of the first refuge for birds of prey, in the world" - what is now Hawk Mountain Sanctuary - sanctuary spokeswoman Mary Linkevich said last week.

At its 50th anniversary in 1984, Hawk Mountain was cited as a model private initiative for conservation by the President's Council on Environmental Quality.

On Oct. 9, Harold B. Pough, 100, of Wynnewood, died of congestive heart failure at Bryn Mawr Hospital.

While his brother went on to become a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, Mr. Pough remained in Philadelphia to run the family business.

"For years," Linkevich said, "his brother received credit for the photographs," mistakenly.

"Harold's pictures would later be used by his brother to inspire a conservationist named Rosalie Edge," Linkevich said. "She leased the mountaintop. . . .

"In essence, it was Harold Pough's grisly photographs that helped inspire" the sanctuary.

Mr. Pough's daughter, Annette Atwood, said that, as far as she knew, he had never returned to Hawk Mountain.

"The word today would have been traumatized," Atwood said. "It may have been a memory that he didn't want to revisit."

Mr. Pough studied chemical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis but dropped out in 1932 to join his brother in running photo shops under the name MacCallum's.

His daughter said Mr. Pough was a partner with his brother and later sole owner of the shops, which at various times were in Ardmore, Berwyn, Media, Philadelphia, Wayne, and Wynnewood. He sold the last shop, in Suburban Square in Ardmore, in 1975.

After his retirement, Mr. Pough was interviewed by the financial editor of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. Mr. Pough was proud to tell him that the Lower Merion Township Recycling Committee, of which he was the volunteer chairman, helped save taxpayers there $18,500 a year, about a dollar a person.

Mr. Pough was an elections judge in Lower Merion, president and treasurer of the North Ardmore Civic Association, and president of the Suburban Square Merchants Association.

He was a volunteer for the Meals on Wheels operation at Bryn Mawr Hospital from 1975 to 1997 and a member of the town watch in Lower Merion.

A member of the Merion Cricket Club, he was librarian for the St. Andrew's Society of Philadelphia, a judge of community gardens for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and a member of the Men's Garden Club of Berwyn.

Besides his daughter, Mr. Pough is survived by a son, Francis; and a granddaughter.

A memorial was set for 10 a.m. tomorrow at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, 625 Montgomery Ave., Bryn Mawr.