Talley Your Adventure – The Blog

I’m sure we’ve all heard the stories…oh wait, you haven’t? You haven’t heard about Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the women who saved the Everglades? Well, let’s discuss!

Marjory Stoneman Douglas was born in April 7, 1890 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. By 1915 she had moved to Miami, Florida and was filling in temporarily as the society editor for the Miami Herald, who was founded and edited by her father. When WW1 finally reached America, she was one of the first women to enlist – eventually becoming a yeoman first class in the Navy. She was discharged after a year but continued her service by joined the American Red Cross in Paris, France. After the war ended, she continued to assist by traveling around Europe, writing stories about the Red Cross clinics and how leadership was handed over to local authorities from the Americans.

All of this was initiated originally from a quest to hear and write the stoires of the women who enlisted in WW1. Her father understood her talents well enough that she was offered the assistant editor job for the Miami Herald after she returned in January 1920. Her column, “The Gallery”, was in the Miami Herald for three years – starting with poetry and usually including a discussion about Florida landscape and geography.

The demands and pressure of editing a newspaper caught up to Marjory by 1923 when she was diagnosed with nerve fatigue. She left the Miami Herald and began writing fiction – which she loved, because it allowed her the freedom she truly sought as a writer. She didn’t like regular working hours or working for other people – she wanted her independence as an individual rather than an employee. For many years, she wrote short stories for publications like the Saturday Evening Post and the Woman’s Home Companion, even coming in second place for the O. Henry Memorial Prize in short stories in 1928. She taught at the University of Miami from 1925-1929, where she also served on the editorial board of the University of Miami Press.

Marjory was particularly moved by the fight for women’s equality and civil rights – among them that arguments for racial justice, feminism, and conservation. Though it is important to note that she didn’t quite consider herself a feminist entirly, exclaiming “I’d like to hear less talk about men and women and more talk about citizens.” As her support of conservation blossomed, she began to serve on the committee arguing for the creating of Everglades National Park. She published her book, The Everglades: River of Grass, in 1947, after she recognized that the Everglades was dependent not just on the flow of water from Lake Okeechobee, but also the Kissimmee River that feeds into the lake. Continuing with her endeavor to protect the preserve the Everglades, she formed the Friends of the Everglades in 1970 and was active as the head of the organizations.

The book took five years to write and was published the same year Everglades National Park was dedicated and preserved with the National Park Service. When the construction programs under the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began a complex system of canals, levees, dams and pump stations to drain the Everglades, she was seen arguing about the destruction of the wetlands, how it would disturb the flow of water in the state of Florida, and the desolation of the ecosystem. She expanded the Friends of the Everglades into most of southern Florida. She spoke at public meetings across southern Florida, appearing with huge dark sunglasses and a large floppy hat – making such a statement with her sobering words and effective oratory skills that the request for the permit for the Corps of Engineers was eventually denied. At the age of 103, she would be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993 by President Clinton.

Her words still resonate with us today – and today, Earth Day, I ask that you take some time to visit a park, stroll along the trail, and enjoy the beauty of wherever you live and the natural setting that has been left for you to love and cherish. And then, continue to protect those same lands when threathened.

“There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth; remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them…”