One of the highlights of the September 25th Third Anniversary Celebration of Mass Parks for All was Kathy Abbott’s remembrance of her colleague and dear friend Betsy Shure Gross. The first Commissioner of the Department of Conservation and Recreation, Kathy currently serves as the President and CEO of Boston Harbor Now. She has graciously shared her remarks with the MMOC.
How do I fit over 4 decades of knowing and loving a woman who is larger than life — into just a few minutes?
I have the honor of calling Betsy Shure Gross a friend and a mentor, a major force in my life, as I know she has been in many of yours. I met Betsy in the early 80s when she was just beginning the Massachusetts Association for Olmsted Parks and was helping to lead the launch of the National Association, now the Olmsted Network. Years later, she would help to launch the City Parks Alliance, today one of the country’s best park advocacy organizations. And most recently, she helped found Mass Parks for All, that we are here to support and celebrate tonight.
You didn’t have to know Betsy long to feel her passion and her power. Betsy was a force to be reckoned with. And you wanted to be on the right side of that force.
Before I met Betsy, after her move to Brookline with Gary, she was elected Chair of her new Neighborhood Association and was reunited with the power of Olmsted parks that she had known as a child growing up in New Haven. Her son Andrew remembers her taking him down to Leverett Pond at the bottom of Pill Hill and finding it desperately in need of restoration and she took that on.
When Betsy saw a problem, she went to work to fix it. She was excellent at figuring out who could help and getting them on board.
Betsy was passionate about parks, community preservation and in particular Frederick Law Olmsted’s genius. The relationship between people and the landscape and his belief, so important today, that public parks are “democracy in dirt,” have been driving forces for Betsy. More recently Eric Klinenberg’s book, Palaces for the People, makes this case for shared spaces as well as shared values as critical underpinnings of democratic societies. How do we stand on Betsy’s shoulders today to protect our democracy in dirt?
Her husband Gary describes Betsy as “an ardent feminist devoted to the election and appointment of women to key positions in government.” Not long after meeting her and being recruited to join the board of the Mass Association for Olmsted Parks to help create the Boston Park Ranger Program, she recruited me to work on Evelyn Murphy’s first and second campaigns for Lt. Governor. Evelyn would be the first woman elected to statewide office. Betsy liked to tell the story of having to share a hotel room with this young nobby kneed former park ranger at my first convention.
Valuing parks and politics, feminism and Virginia Woolf, family and friends were the foundations of our early friendship and the pillars of Betsy’s life. She loved fiercely and was fiercely loyal.
Betsy led wherever she went and supported others to lead. She taught us all to see the problems and to step up to fix them. She moved from chairing her neighborhood association to chairing the Brookline Conservation Commission for 20 years. She went into state government in support of her friend Bob Durand to be part of an incredible team. She helped to create the Community Preservation Act, save the Parkways, and later in the Romney Administration through her continued leadership of the Office of Public Private Partnerships, she created a program to teach disabled veterans to sail at Community Boating and who can forget the development of Teddy Ebersol Field.
She worked hard to engage all of us and many others to help maintain the parks she had been advocating to restore for years. The $92 million Muddy River restoration is another great example of her vision and tenacity.
Betsy believed that if you were going to create, build, preserve and restore parks, you also have to maintain them and we know that there is never enough money and resources to do that. It takes all of us and every sector. Mass Parks for All, one of her last acts, is part of the solution. It is why we are here tonight.
Another one of Betsy’s hero’s was Eleanor Roosevelt. Betsy worked hard to help restore Valkill, the summer home of her hero on the Hudson. One of Betsy’s favorite Eleanor quotes that she would remind me of whenever I was making a major personal or professional life decision was, “Do one thing every day that scares you.” We all know how some of those turned out but don’t let that deter you! For you, it might be as simple as asking your friends and family to support Mass Parks for All and bringing them to the next event.
While no one asked me to try to raise any money up here tonight, I know that Betsy would have.
First, thank you to those who have already generously given! We can’t collect funds in the club but we welcome online donations tonight and every night in Betsy’s memory.
DCR needs Mass Parks for All to help raise the public and private funds necessary to support our state park system. We want to support our new Commissioner, Nicole LaChapelle and the hundreds and thousands of dedicated hardworking staff and volunteers at parks across the Commonwealth.
Betsy will be watching over us always, giving us hell when we don’t ask or help. And in her absence, she would also ask us to give each other the fierce love and loyalty that we need to carry on.
Thank you, Kathy.
Top image: Olmsted Network
