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Growing up on a farm in Northern Oklahoma, Robert Ealy quickly learned the value of the land. He learned early to appreciate its life-giving soils, its ability to grow food, and its aesthetic qualities. As he grew older, he found through the Great Depression that man had the ability to dominate nature to such a degree that it could have disastrous results. He made an early commitment to conserve the land and become a faithful steward of natural resources.

Thousands of professional architects and landscape architects today own Professor Ealy a lot of credit for his influence in their lives. Because of his teachings, they have become better citizens, having adopted a very valuable ecological ethic. His influence has largely been a mixture of his knowledge, his values, and his ability to communicate the intricacies of the natural world to students who could not experience the depression, or could not experience life on an Oklahoma farm. After having Dr. Early as an instructor, his students invariably learned a greater appreciation for a sunset, for the prairie, for the forests. They were less likely to pollute the rivers or the skies. They were more likely to design structures that conformed to the slopes, that destroyed less vegetation, and that fit in with nature rather than to bring nature into submission.

Robert P. Ealy graduated from Oklahoma State University in 1941. After a brief stay with the United States Army during World War II, Ealy went to Kansas State University to study for a Master's degree in Horticulture. He accepted his first teaching post back at his alma mater, Oklahoma State University. He took some time off to continue his studies in Horticulture at Louisiana State University where he completed his Ph.D. in 1955. In 1958, Dr. Ealy had been promoted to full professor at Oklahoma State. He then returned to Kansas State University in 1961 where he accepted the post of Department Head of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture. In 1969, the two departments split with the formation of the College of Architecture and Design, and Ealy assumed the position of department head for the new Department of Landscape Architecture. He retired from that post after ten years, having served not only as Department Head of Landscape Architecture, but also Associate Dean and at one time Acting Dean of the College.

During that decade as Department Head, he was instrumental in building the department to one of the largest in the country. In assuming that post, he and two other faculty members began to build the program in 1969. By the time of his retirement ten years later, there were 12 full-time teaching faculty, a program with national reputation for excellence and an outstanding graduate program. The department today, which enjoys the reputation of one of the outstanding programs of landscape architecture in the nation, owes much to the leadership and time that Dr. Ealy gave to its development.