From an early age, Gil Grosvenor met, with interest, the explorers who were visiting his father and grandfather in Washington D.C., in their work at the National Geographic Society. Although he was meeting interesting people and respected what his family was up to at the Geographic, it was not his early intent to follow in their footsteps, as they had in those of his great-grandfather, Alexander Graham Bell, and great-great grandfather, and Society founder, Gardiner Greene Hubbard. What changed the mind of the man who eventually served as editor of National Geographic Magazine from 1970 to 1980, then as the National Geographic Society president from 1980 to 1996.