April 25-26, 2026: Earth Day Inheritors: Aidan and Kyle Railton

[Earth Day has been around for more than 50 years, but it’s more important than ever here in 2026. So for this year’s commemorations I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of the folks who helped create & popularize the holiday, leading up to this special weekend tribute to the work of two of our most impressive young environmental activists!]

First, I want to share just a few of the posts from recent years where I’ve paid tribute to the work and voices of the two amazing young men I’m proud to call my sons:

This one on Aidan’s developing work as a civil engineer;

This one on Kyle’s plans for his first year at Michigan;

And both this one and this one on their evolving work to combat our deepening climate crisis.

I hope you’ll check out those posts, which make plenty clear how and why I’d proudly frame the boys as inheritors of the Earth Day legacy. But I wanted to end this week’s series with one additional recent way that each of them is building on this work:

During his first year at Michigan, thanks both to a connection that my wife Vaughn Joy made at an accepted students event last summer and to his own impressiveness, Kyle has had the chance to work with the university’s Office of Campus Sustainability. That has included specific research projects (which are continuing into this first summer of his college career) that have helped him learn more about how these issues affect campuses, communities, and all of us in 2026. But what I love most, as my younger son starts his pre-law journey, is how much this opportunity has helped him continue building the interconnected vision of law, policy, and environmental activism that was so significant to his high school experiences.

Aidan is well into building his own interdisciplinary version of such interconnections, particularly through how the classes for his Environmental Studies minor have added layers to his Civil Engineering major. His research work for multiple professors and projects has given him the chance to explore scholarly applications of such ideas, as have his first paid civil engineering jobs at companies in both Nashville and Waltham (Massachusetts). But what I might love most about Aidan’s experiences with these issues at Vanderbilt is just how much he has become connected to—and a leader within—communities, including both his engineering fraternity and the school’s chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ACSE). For ACSE, for example, he has had the chance to serve as the representative for water infrastructure, an issue on which he hadn’t been previously focused but which is such a vital part of our collective human future.

Can’t wait to see what’s next for these awesome dudes, and of course to share it in this space!

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think?