In her July 23rd tribute to MMOC co-founder and guiding spirit Betsy Shure Gross, reporter Celeste Alcalay cites the “Olmsted renaissance” that Betsy inspired:
“She envisioned parks as ‘places where people of all walks of life could meet and enjoy nature and commune with one another,’ her husband, Gary Gross, said. A tour de force in community organizing, the longtime Brookline resident placed high value on what she referred to as ‘the capital investment of energy,’ from ‘a human perspective.’
Shure Gross was a linchpin in the fight to protect open space, historic sites and affordable housing, helping to pass the 2000 Community Preservation Act, a piece of state legislation over half of Massachusetts’ municipalities have since adopted. She co-founded the National Association for Olmsted Parks in 1980 to advocate for the protection of the country’s Olmsted parks. She was a driving force behind the $92 million federal and state-funded Muddy River Restoration Project , and pushed Brookline to restore the Carlton Street Footbridge.
“Shure Gross was ‘the engine behind everything,’ said Chuck Anastas, a longtime coworker and friend of Shure Gross who first worked with her at the EEA.
‘[Betsy] showed me how parks are politics, and politics are people,’ said Erin Chute, Brookline’s commissioner of public works. ‘She used every ounce of her energy to protect the places we now treasure.’
Shure Gross was ‘from that rare and revered school of doers. She didn’t just dream—she rolled up her sleeves. She went to the meetings, walked the sites, wrote the letters, built the coalitions,’ Chute said.
In Brookline, Shure Gross also chaired the Town Conservation Commission, was co-president of the Friends of Hall’s Pond and advisor to the Brookline GreenSpace Alliance. She was ‘instrumental’ in the preservation of Fairsted, Olmsted’s home and office in Brookline, Arlene Mattison of Brookline GreenSpace Alliance said.
Her legacy shows in the parks she preserved—and the buildings that weren’t erected.
‘I have some developer friends who say I cost them a fortune,’ she joked to the JWA in 2001.
Read the full tribute by Celeste Alcalay.
Read the Olmsted Network’s tribute to Betsy.
Image: Leverett Park, as proposed by F.L. Olmsted, 1889
