Joseph Lyman Fisher (11 January 1914–19 February 1992), member of the House of Representatives, was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and was the son of Howard Colburn Fisher and Caroline Moore Nash Fisher. He graduated magna cum laude from Bowdoin College in 1935, majoring in economics. Fisher also studied at the London School of Economics and at Harvard University, from which he received an M.A. in 1938. He displayed prolific athletic talent in his younger years. He helped earn his way through college by boxing for $25 a match. He also played semiprofessional basketball and participated in European tennis tournaments after college.

Early Career
With his training in economics, Fisher worked as a planning technician for the National Resources Planning Board early in the 1940s. Living for a time in Juneau, Alaska, he studied the impact of the Alaska Highway on the environment, which spurred a lifelong interest in environmental protection. Fisher was an economist with the Department of State from 1942 to 1943, when he joined the United States Army. He served in the Pacific theater from 1943 to 1946, primarily as an editor for the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes.

Fisher returned to graduate school at Harvard after the war and received a Ph.D. in economics in 1947 with a dissertation entitled "Alaska, the Development of our Arctic Frontier: A Study of the Economic History, Present Problems, and Future Growth of America's 'last Northwest.'" In 1947 he became a senior economist for the Council of Economic Advisers and moved to Arlington County. Fisher also earned a master's degree in education from George Washington University in 1951. In 1953, he joined Resources for the Future, Inc., an environmental research foundation concerned with the conservation of natural resources, of which he was president from 1959 to 1974.

Civic Leadership
Living in postwar Arlington, Fisher was attracted to issues of urban development in the fast-growing suburbs of Washington, D.C. He became a leader of Arlingtonians for a Better County (ABC), a nonpartisan civic and political coalition that pursued better planning to protect single-family residences and preserve land for parks. Seeking greater authority to implement his environmental and planning interests and to obtain more funds for public education, he served for five years on the Arlington County Planning Commission, including a stint as chair. In 1963 he won election to the Arlington County Board of Supervisors, on which he served for a decade, twice as the chair. Affordable housing and public tennis courts were among his favorite projects. Fisher ran successfully for reelection as an independent in 1967, drawing support from both ABC and Democrats. As an advocate of regional cooperation on environmental and transit projects (he was nicknamed "Joe Future"), he chaired the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, and the National Academy of Public Administration. During his time as chair of the presidential Committee on Natural Resources Conservation and Development in the mid-1960s, Fisher helped spark the concept of a World Heritage Trust to promote international cooperation in preserving and maintaining the world's natural and cultural sites.

House of Representatives
In the Democratic Party landslide in 1974 following the Watergate scandal, Fisher easily upset eleven-term Republican congressman Joel Thomas Broyhill to win the Tenth Congressional District seat representing Arlington and Loudoun Counties, part of Fairfax County, and the cities of Fairfax and Falls Church. He was reelected twice and served for six years. Fisher was a member of the Committees on Ways and Means and on the Budget. Known for his work on taxation, energy, and economics, Fisher coordinated several task forces whose work contributed to important energy conservation policies. In 1980 he lost his congressional seat to Republican Frank Rudolph Wolf. Two years later he ran for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate, but lost at the party's convention.

Later Career
That same year Governor Charles Spittal Robb named Fisher secretary of human resources, the social service department that oversaw 20,000 employees in fifteen agencies with a $3.5 million budget. During his four-year term, at a time of economic retrenchment, Fisher worked to eliminate a multi-million dollar Medicaid deficit by cutting benefits and reimbursements to many recipients. He also helped create a bill of rights for handicapped persons in Virginia.

Over the years Fisher had taught economics at several institutions including Harvard University, the University of Mississippi, and the University of California, Berkeley, so it was no surprise that he returned to teaching after his years of public service. He taught political economy at George Mason University from 1985 until his death in 1992. He was also a special assistant to the president of the university and helped establish a public policy institute at the school.

Fisher married Margaret Saunders Winslow in her home town of Indianapolis on 27 June 1942. They had four sons and three daughters. Peggy Fisher was a painter, an art teacher, a poet, and an avid conservationist like her husband. They were active members of the Unitarian Church, and he served as the national moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association from 1965 to 1977.

Author
Cerebral and liberal but fiscally conservative, Fisher wrote several books and many articles, most about environmental issues and the need for responsible use of natural resources. Among them were a book with Hans H. Landsberg and Leonard L. Fischman, Resources in America's Future: Patterns of Requirements and Availabilities, 1960–2000 (1963), and an edited collection of articles with Richard T. Mayer entitled Virginia Alternatives for the 1990s: Selected Issues in Public Policy (1987). The book Living Religion that Fisher and his wife wrote was published in 1993, the year after his death.

Joseph Lyman Fisher was diagnosed with bone cancer in 1985 and died in his home in Arlington County on 19 February 1992. His ashes were buried at Arlington National Cemetery. In recognition of his dedication to conservation, Resources for the Future honored its former president by establishing a fellowship for doctoral dissertation research in the fields of economics or public policy in relation to the environment, energy, or natural resources. In 2001, Northern Virginia Community College opened the Margaret W. and Joseph L. Fisher Gallery on its Alexandria campus.

Sources Consulted:
Washington Post covered his political career fully, including. 27 Sept. 1963, 20 Dec. 1964, 2 Jan. 1965, 3 Mar. 1967, 5 Mar. 1975, and 12 Jan., 30 Dec. 1981; feature articles in Washington Post, 28 Aug. 1980 and 12 June 1983, and in Notable American Unitarians website, Harvard Square Library; Joseph L. Fisher Papers, Fenwick Library, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia; Margaret (Peggy) Fisher, "First Memories of Northern Virginia," Arlington Historical Magazine 11 (1997): 7–11; information provided by son H. Benjamin Fisher (5 Dec. 2007) and by political adviser James Hershman (2007); Fisher's articles include "Natural Riches Vital to Nation," Washington Post, 21 Jan. 1957 and "The Energy Issue," ibid., 30 May 1975; obituaries in Richmond News Leader, 19 Feb. 1992, Washington Post (with date of birth and portrait) and Richmond Times-Dispatch, both 20 Feb. 1992, and New York Times, 21 Feb. 1992; obituary and editorial tribute in Arlington Journal, 20 Feb. 1992; editorial tribute in Washington Post, 21 Feb. 1992.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Ronald L. Heinemann.

How to cite this page:
Ronald L. Heinemann,"Joseph Lyman Fisher (1914–1992)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2018 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Fisher_Joseph_Lyman, accessed [today's date]).

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