Mr. Train was the administration's spokesman in 1969 during Congressional hearings on the proposed National Environmental Policy Act, which called for establishing the White House policy council. In 1970, after signing the law, President Nixon appointed him the council's chairman. He also pursued international programs that put the United States at the forefront of a global effort to protect the planet. In 1972 he led the American delegation to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, the first large gathering of world leaders to consider environmental degradation. A year later, at the height of the Watergate scandal, Mr. Train became administrator of the three-year-old Environmental Protection Agency, replacing William Ruckelshaus, who had been named interim director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Under Mr. Train, the E.P.A. banned four particularly toxic farm chemicals and instituted auto emission limits. He recruited economists to forecast the costs of environmental rules. And he established the agency's scientific capacity to evaluate the health consequences of exposure to toxic compounds, the basis of the E.P.A.'s process for assessing the risks and benefits of its actions. In 1991, President George Bush gave Mr. Train the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award.
World Wildlife Fund Executive Director Russell Train in his office in Washington, D.C. on September 9, 1994.
A man of exquisite manners, he was trained in the ways of Washington from an early age. His father had an office at the White House, where he served as President Herbert Hoover's Naval aide. In 1932, Mrs. Hoover invited Mr. Train and his older brothers, Cuthbert and Middleton, to spend the night at the White House, where they slept in the Andrew Jackson bedroom and breakfasted with the president and Mrs. Hoover on the portico overlooking the Ellipse and the Washington Monument. "I think what made the greatest impression on me," he wrote years later, "were the tall glasses of fresh California orange juice. I had never seen anything like those large glassfuls before." Mr. Train is survived by his wife of 58 years, Aileen; three daughters, Nancy Smith, Emily Rowan and Errol Giordano; a son, Charles Bowdoin Train; and 12 grandchildren. Mr. Roberts, the World Wildlife Fund's president, said Mr. Train became chairman emeritus of the group 12 years ago. "He came into our headquarters every week," Mr. Roberts said in an e-mail. "He prowled the hallways in a pinstripe or a seersucker suit, always with a handkerchief jutting out of the pocket, and poking our staff to get more done quickly. You could always rely on Russ to be practical and unconventional at the same time. Even in the last five years, he was always a voice as an ex-E.P.A. administrator in defending the role of the E.P.A."