Robert Moses (1888-1981) received th Pugsley Gold Medal for his services in extending and developing the parks and parkways in Greater New York. He was the single most powerful individual in the city and state of New York in the twentienth century. Moses was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He graduated cum Laude from Yale in 1990 where he was a runner and a varsity swimmer. At Yale he championed the use of athletic money for tennis, hockey, swimming and basketball as opposed to its almost exclusive use for football. he earned both BA and MA degrees in four years at Oxford University in 1911 and 1913. At Oxford he was elected president of the Oxford Union, the only American to achieve this recognition. In 1919, he was hired by Governor Alfred Smith to help reform state goverment, but when Smith was defeated the following year, his idea were discarded.
When Smith was re-elected in 1922, he took Moses to Albany with him as a speechwriter and lobbyist for reform in government. In 1922, there wasnt a single state park in New York anywhere east of the Hudson River. In 1923, Moses, mapped out a system of state parks on Long Island that would be linked together and to New York City by broad parkways. In 1952, Moses became chairman of the Power Authority of the State of New York. At the end of Moses, 'leadership of the New York State parks system, the total acreage of the state parks in all 50 states was 5.8 million acres. He is memorialized by the Robert Moses State Park in Long Island, at Massena, at Causeway, at Niagara and the dams at Niagara and at Massena also are named after him.