Bob Lopp was a teenager attending a weekend camp at Rogers Lake when camp leader Ernie Birnell introduced him to the world of birding. He’s been scouring the skies and forests for birds ever since.

“I’ve always been interested in what’s going on around me,” Lopp said, noting “I’m not an expert birder.”

His tireless work with Flathead Audubon recently drew recognition from Montana Audubon, which presented him the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award. The annual award recognizes the achievements of Montanans in protecting birds, other wildlife and the ecosystem.

Lopp’s interest in birding continued through his college years in the early 1960s, then took flight in a big way in the mid-1970s when Jean Robacker and Louise Kehoe, fellow members of the Flathead Valley Community College Board of Trustees, invited him to tag along to a “bird meeting.”

Lopp, 72, became one of the founders of Flathead Audubon, which had its beginnings in the Bigfork Bird Club formed in 1975. He’s held every office in the chapter — even the position of bird seed sales chairman — and currently is vice president.

For many years Lopp and his wife Jane, and their business, Jane Lopp and Associates, have written grants that have provided thousands of dollars through the Prudential Global Volunteer Day program for improvements at the Owen Sowerwine Natural Area east of Kalispell. Lopp also rounded up donations for a land survey and boundary marking at Owen Sowerwine.

Owen Sowerwine has been Lopp’s pet project. He mows, pulls weeds and clears trails and is proud that Volunteer Day now assembles 30 to 40 people who work on trail improvements, fencing and signs.

In June Flathead Audubon dedicated a new handicap-accessible trail in the Owen Sowerwine Natural Area. It was a classic community project, with many local businesses donating money and materials.

During Lopp’s term as president, the Bigfork Bird Festival took wing in 2005 and the Rod Ash Raptor Day began in 2007.

Lopp credits the Audubon board for its consistent leadership in growing the organization.

“I’m not taking credit for much of anything except leading and supporting,” he said.

Lopp served on the Montana Audubon board from 2004 to 2008, during which time the national organization wanted to absorb the state group while Montana Audubon pushed to retain its independence.

“We negotiated and I was part of the process,” he recalled. “We had to put some backbone into it. Our stand was, ‘Let’s be friends, not married.’”

Lopp is especially proud of Flathead Audubon’s educational programs for children because, he said, it’s those upcoming generations who will learn the importance of bird conservation and preserving local bird habitat.

Lopp grew up on Flathead Lake in the idyllic 1950s, the only son of Leonard and Margaret Lopp, who adopted him when he was a young boy. Since both of his parents were artists, it opened the door to a number of cultural opportunities for him, along with lots of hiking and local exploring. Many of his father’s paintings of local landscapes hang in the Lopps’ office building.

Lopp doesn’t remember himself as a particularly social person as a young boy, but he was a voracious reader. His favorite spot was curled up with a book on the school bus, in the seat over the wheel well that offered a comfortable built-in footrest.

“I had outstanding teachers,” the 1958 Flathead County High School graduate stressed. “That’s why I went into teaching.”

At Walla Walla College in Washington, he started studying chemistry, then dabbled in music since he had played piano all through high school. He bounced back to studying the sciences, but all the while he’d been taking German classes because he intended to go to graduate school and knew he needed a second language. He wound up getting a Bachelor of Arts degree in German.

Early in his career, Lopp taught some math and earth science classes during his first two years at Stevensville, but it was teaching the German language that would become his legacy. A job teaching German full time lured him to Livingston for three years. Then he settled into a 25-year career teaching German at Flathead, retiring in 1993.

“I was blessed with top students in all of those schools,” he said. “I still miss my classroom.”

Lopp set up an exchange program with German schools in 1982, taking a group of Flathead students every other year to spend a month in Braunschweig, Germany. On the alternate years German students visited the Flathead.

While Flathead has discontinued the German exchange program, the Lopps’ daughter, Cheryl Finley, an International Baccalaureate teacher in northern Virginia, picked up where her father left off and has continued the exchange.

“She’s taking a group in June, and her twins (now high-school sophomores) are going,” he said.

The Lopps have been prominent civic leaders in Kalispell for decades.

He chaired the FVCC board, spent 10 years with the 4-H Foundation, served on the Planning Board and completed 10 years on the Flathead County Library Board. The Lopps were awarded the Kalispell Chamber’s Great Chief award in the mid-1990s.

He earned a master’s degree in education in 1988 from the University of Montana, but when he retired from teaching there were more graduate-level classes ahead, this time in data analysis and financial planning. An accredited estate planner, Lopp works full time at Jane Lopp and Associates, a financial consulting and insurance business in Kalispell.

“Jane is my boss,” he said with a smile.

The Lopps met when her parents brought her to an art show at the home of Lopp’s father. But it was a little later, when he delivered a painting to Jane’s parents’ home, that they began making music together, literally. He had brought along some duet piano music and the two began playing and continued playing duets for decades.

They married at the end of her freshman year at UM; she later finished her English degree in summer school when they returned to Kalispell in 1968, two children later.

Their son, Bob Lopp Jr., lives here and works in business development with Eide-Bailey of Fargo, N.D. Between their son and daughter, the Lopps have six granddaughters.

Lopp has scaled back some of his civic work and now focuses primarily on Flathead Audubon, where chapter members say he serves as a voice of reason and thoughtful participant on the board.

“Bob’s advice, always offered gently, keeps us realistic but always inspired to do more,” one fellow Audubon member said.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.