Robert Winthrop

Robert Winthrop, an investment banker, philanthropist, sportsman, conservationist and man of many causes, died Saturday at his home in Upper Brookville, N.Y. He was 95.

The causes championed by Mr. Winthrop ranged from the Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, N.Y., to efforts to press the Federal Government to protect the nesting areas of waterfowl.

His efforts established a chair at the Harvard Medical School and the Robert Winthrop Scholarship Fund, which has provided financial aid for nearly 200 students at Harvard since its establishment in 1983.

In 1996, Mr. Winthrop was given an award for more than 60 years of service on the board of the Winthrop-University Hospital, which had changed its name from Nassau Hospital to honor him in 1985.

A lifetime trustee of the Wildlife Conservation Fund, he had been president of Ducks Unlimited, a national wildlife conservation group, in 1955 and 1956.

In 1965 he became involved in an unusual effort of public lobbying to combat the decline of the mallard along its migration route, the Mississippi flyway. The cause of the ducks' decline appeared to be the unrestricted draining of wetlands in several states along the route, so Mr. Winthrop believed that Federal action was necessary.

To get the attention of the Government, he and a former state duck-calling champion from Tennessee, J. C. Boals Jr., agreed to ask duck hunters to send President Lyndon B. Johnson postcards with only one word on them: Ducks.

Mr. Boals was to write a letter of explanation to President Johnson, a duck hunter himself, but instead gave his letter to a Congressman, who misunderstood his instructions and delivered it to the Interior Department.

The White House received 5,460 postcards but no explanation. The immediate result was confusion in the White House mail room, but the eventual discovery of the letter magnified the effect of the lobbying and turned it into a public relations success.

It has also contributed to a series of laws that has held the annual average loss of wetlands acreage to only a thi