Ralph Crawford was a great artist and a fantastic friend, and I will miss him. He will live on through his sculptures all over the world and through his loving family and friends.

I am tremendously proud that Ralph’s statues of me stand in front of my childhood home and in Columbus, Ohio, and we will continue to give the best bodybuilder in the world the trophy that Ralph sculpted at the Arnold Classic every year. My thoughts are with his family.

Dr. Ralph Crawford has been with the USDA Forest Service for over 39 years. Crawford currently serves as the acting deputy director of diversity, equity and inclusion in the Washington office.

In this role, he leads and directs a diversity, equity and inclusion R&D strategy that benefits employees, tribes, partners and the public.

The strategy will help R&D recruit and retain a representative, inclusive and successful workforce. In addition, Crawford helps direct the African American Oral History Project.

For this project, he helped interview former African-American Forest Service employees, documenting their contributions to the agency.

Previously, Crawford served as the Research Assistant Station Master at the Northern Research Station. Here, he led and supervised several research units.

He also served as Acting Deputy Head of Research and Development and Director of Category Management. Previously, he served as Deputy Director of Forest Health and Forest Economics for the Northeast Region in state, private and tribal forestry spanning twenty states and the District of Columbia.

Crawford has also worked on the Forest Service’s Experimental Forest and Rangeland Network, leading national teams that link belowground ecosystem dynamics to aboveground forest and grassland conditions.

He began his career in the forestry department as a scientist studying microbial communities in forests at Pacific Northwest research stations and fungi at northern research stations to indicate changes in forest health.