Jay Norwood “Ding” Darling – 1876-1962

“Ding” Darling was born in Norwood, Michigan, and raised in Sioux City, Iowa. He earned early national fame as a Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist, who worked principally for the Des Moines (Iowa) Register, but his most enduring legacy was as a founder of the Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit at Iowa State College (later Iowa State University), which set the pattern for similar research units all over the nation. He created the first federal duck stamp in 1934, sales of which enabled the purchase of two million acres of national waterfowl habitat.