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| Educator May Watts was the first to envision today's Prairie Path | |
| Aug 28, 2007 | |
| Marni Pyke, mpyke@dailyherald.com | |
| Daily Herald | |
| Pertains to Illinois Prairie Path, Naperville, Highland Park, Midlothian | |
| DuPage County's Most Influential Environmentalist The world was May Theilgaard Watt's classroom. The tall, striking woman with the crown of braided hair inspired a love of nature in countless people she instructed at Morton Arboretum. And While Watts' teachings live on in her students and in her books, such as influential "reading the Landscape of America," she left a physical legacy to be enjoyed in perpetuity: the Illinois Prairie Path. "If it hadn't been for her, it wouldn't have been," longtime Illinois Prairie Path Corp. President Paul Mooring said. Even today, people still drop in to the arboretum and ask after Watts, who died in 1975. "The importance of her contribution was making science humane and understandable," said Craig Johnson, the arboretum's education and information services director. "She took a very studied and scientifically grounded approach to raise the awareness of adults to help them become citizen scientists." For her enduring footprint on the landscape of Illinois, May Watts is the most influential environmentalist in DuPage County's history. Environmental roots Watts was born on May Day, 1893, the opening day of the Columbia Exposition. She grew up on Chicago's North Side with her Danish immigrant parents, Hermann and Claudia Theigaard. Hermann was a landscape architect who taught his daughter the Latin names of all the plants. "For as long as I can remember, I have gardened," she once wrote. The young woman loved outdoors, camping on Lake Michigan sands in the summer where Edgewater Beach apartments now stand. She graduated from Lakeview High School and took a job as a one-room school teacher in Midlothian. Watts later took classes at the University of Chicago, earning a bachelor of science degree, and was greatly influenced by professor Henry Cowles, often referred to as the father of American ecology. "May Watts was trained in this tradition of understanding the natural world as a complex interaction of organic and inorganic elements," Johnson said. "Nature is a complex web. She understood that and was able to bring it alive for people." On a trip to the Indiana Dunes, she met her future husband, engineer Raymond Watts, whom she married in 1924. The young couple moved to the village of Ravinia, which later was annexed into Highland Park. In the Ravinia neighborhood, she joined friends of Our Native Landscape and became acquainted with another influential scholar, Jens Jensen, the noted landscape architect responsible for the designs of Columbus Park in Chicago and a pioneer of using prairie plants in gardens. Watts' desire to share her knowledge of nature grew into talks for local garden clubs, and she became a well-known lecturer. Her talents drew the attention of Jean Cudahy, the daughter of arboretum founder Joy Morton, who was so impressed she brought Watts to the Lisle institution to establish its formal education program. The Wattses and their children moved to Naperville to an 1800s house on Jefferson Avenue that May painted natural murals in. 'A master teacher' Craig Johnson still remembers a class he took as a child with "Mrs. Watts." "I remember collecting leaves and very much wanting to please her as one does a good teacher," he said. "I remember being completely absorbed by the activities. She was a master teacher." Instead of being content to stay in the classroom, Watts took her students on strolls on the arboretum's grounds. Former pupils recall her striding ahead of straggling novices, sparking them with her enthusiasm. "She founded the arboretum's education program beginning in 1940 and really gave it its shape and momentum," Johnson said. "There was a spirit of outreach, a spirit of connection. She really enjoyed people as a great teacher." That spirit also involved coming up with catchy ways to remember facts, such as Watts' "Know, Know, Know Your Oaks" to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." "What she was able to do was bring people together from a variety of walks of life," Johnson said. "Her adult classes might have Scout leaders, homemakers, corporate CEOs. teachers and just interested public." Charles Haffner, arboretum board member and former chairman of the board, took a class with Watts in the 1950s. "She made everything seem so simple," he said. "She'd get up there with different colored chalks and talk about the dunes. She's start at the lake edge, then show the plants as you get farther away from the lake. She had a wonderful, soft-spoken way of talking." Watts worked at the arboretum until retiring in 1961. Fred Berg, grounds crew member and shop manager at the arboretum from the 1950s to the 1990s, called Watts "a down-to-earth lady." Of course, everyone has a weak spot, and Watts' was driving in the snow. "She was a horrible driver," whenever it snowed, "she'd slide into the trees and get stuck," recalled Berg, who often was dispatched to tow Watts' car out. "She was tickled to get her car back," he said. Writer and artist Watts not only wrote a regular newspaper column, she also authored several books, including "Reading the Landscape of America," which became a teaching tool in classrooms nationwide. It takes the reader on a reflective, entertaining look at native landscapes from the prairie to a salt marsh on the East Coast. to the chaparral of California. She taught readers that nature has a story to tell for those willing to listen. "The land offers us good reading, outdoors, from a lively, unfinished manuscript," se wrote in the book's preface. Watts was often anecdotal and wry. At times you got a glimpse of her passion, as in the poem "Lament for our Central Park" published in 1974, where she wrote, "the costly design for your narrow grave came in the mail one day, to all who would pay for your cement casket. But the landscape lines and the green ink could not quite mask the death stink." Watts, who took classes at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1925, also was an accomplished artist. Her drawings accompanied many of her books and articles, including the much-loved "Tree Finder," a pocket manual. 'Revolutionary idea' "I think of her as an earth mother," said Jean Mooring, who, with husband, Paul, was a charter member of the not-for-profit Prairie Path Corporation. In the late 1950s, transit along the old Chicago, Aurora and Elgin Railway had dried up and its owners were planning to sell the land for development. But Watts knew of the varied plants that grew alongside the rails and its potential as a public trail. In a 1963 letter to the Chicago Tribune, she wrote, "We are human beings. We are able to walk upright on two feet. We need a footpath." It ended with the famous line, "Many bulldozers are drooling." Shortly after, calls of support poured into Watts, many from former students and garden club devotees. "Within three weeks, she had organized the first field trip on that potential trail. Eighty people turned out for that," Paul Mooring said. The Illinois Prairie Path was born. It took years pf effort, lobbying and fundraising, but now 62 miles of trails exist for the public to enjoy through DuPage, Kane, and Cook counties. "It was a revolutionary idea, to take an abandoned railroad right-of-way and covert it into a nature trail," Jean Mooring recalls. One mayor said 'Over my dead body will there be a trail.'" "She was a take-charge person," Paul Mooring said of Watts. But coupled with the determination was a change few could resist. "She always had a twinkle in her eyes," Jean Mooring said. "She made everything that she did seem like fun." Legacy The tributes to Watts are legion. Parks in her name. A letter of commendation from President Richard Nixon. Award from the U.S. Department of Interior, Illinois Parks and recreation, Illinois House of Representatives, Who's Who listing. But perhaps one she's appreciate the most is May Watts Elementary School in Naperville named in her honor. A mural depicting the beloved naturalist is prominently displayed, and teacher Ann Covert, who leads an environmental club, wrote a play about Watts' life that students perform. "She is my hero," Covert said. "She was determined to teach, and it was a time when people enjoyed the outdoors but they didn't have the knowledge." |
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