Alice Higinbotham Patterson and her husband, Joseph Medill Patterson, the onetime publisher of the Chicago Tribune who went on to found the New York Daily News, shared, among other things, a deep love for the land. In the early 1900s the pair bought a working farm along the Des Plaines River in Illinois, where they raised corn and pigs- -- and their daughters. Joseph moved to New York after he founded the Daily News in 1919, and the pair split in 1928. Though many cited distance as their trouble, their granddaughter, Alice Arlen, a trustee of the Cissy Patterson Foundation and longtime supporter of NRDC, tells a different story: "The separation was caused by the organic fertilizer pile." As Arlen recalls, Alice Patterson raided it to beautify their property; Joseph insisted that it be saved for the production of things of societal value (crops). The Cissy Patterson Foundation has honored the couple's memory with a $100,000 donation to NRDC, given to preserve both the beauty and the sustainability of our planet.