Abstract
Elaine Marsh is presently the Conservation Director for Friends of the Crooked River. She was a community activist who advocated for the creation of the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation area in the 1960s and 1970s. She worked to bring focus to the environmental restoration of the Cuyahoga River. In this oral history, Marsh discusses early activism and her professional relationships with Cuyahoga Valley Association Director Peg Bobel and Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area superintendent John Debo. She also discusses the environmental challenges and successes of the Cuyahoga River.
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Interviewee
Marsh, Elaine (interviewee)
Interviewer
Woodyard, Matthew (interviewer); Schnack, Erich (participant)
Project
Cuyahoga Valley National Park
Date
3-2-2022
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
54 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Elaine Marsh interview, 02 March 2022" (2022). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 343007.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1442
Transcript
Matthew Woodyard [00:00:00] I’m doing well. So I heard Erich already spoke to you, so we can get started here with the interview. Okay, so to make it official, it is March 2, 2022, about 1 o’clock. And I am here with Elaine Marsh, and my name is Matthew Woodyard, and I have Erich Schnack as the tech person in the background. And without further ado, let’s get started. So, Elaine, could you just tell me a little bit about your background, like where you grew up, and maybe give us an experience that might have led or led you to starting a career in the environmental field?
Elaine Marsh [00:00:48] Sure. So I have lived in Northeast Ohio all of my life, and I grew up through the most degraded time that our environment had to its eventual present day point in its restoration to health. And when I was a kid, the environment was really just a terrible place to live in. I mean, it was so bad that people really didn’t much spend time outside except in parks. But the river itself, the Cuyahoga River itself was covered with grease and suds and oil, and it smelled bad and it was full of pollution, and people just didn’t go near it. And I grew up thinking that’s just sort of the way it was. But one thing that really did impress me was Lake Erie. We lived not too far from Lake Erie when I was a kid, and we could walk down and actually see it, and it was equally as polluted as the Cuyahoga River. But it was this super vast, huge thing to me as a child. I looked at it the way most adults would look at the ocean, as this vast, wonderful, mystical place. And then when I got a little older, I started paddling as a teenager. And so it was the paddling and the experience of the polluted river that really led me to environmentalism. And in the early ’60s, I went to college at Kent State, and that’s when I learned about environment. It was the beginning of the environmental movement, and I had a lot of professors and knew a lot of people who were involved in advocating for the environment and advocating for cleanup of it. And so that’s sort of one way I got here. And the other way is I was a city kid and I thought that people planted trees. I didn’t know really-
Matthew Woodyard [00:03:31] No, no, I get it. Yeah.
Elaine Marsh [00:03:33] And I bet. I bet if you talk to a lot of kids and they were able to articulate this, they would say the same thing. I would think, how wonderful of people to plant these beautiful trees. I love trees. I love to climb them. I love to put my ear to them. I love to shove my fingers into the crags of their bark. And anyway, so I was grateful to people for the environment. And at some point I learned that the environment was responsible for people and not the other way around. And I just became enthralled with things like evolution, the great mysteries of nature. And so those were sort of the two things that kind of drove me to environment as a focus for my interests.
Matthew Woodyard [00:04:35] Gotcha. Thank you for that. And so you mentioned Kent State University. What program or what degree did you actually achieve?
Elaine Marsh [00:04:46] Literature and philosophy.
Matthew Woodyard [00:04:49] Okay.
Elaine Marsh [00:04:50] You know, you know, I mean, I also took sciences. I loved college. I loved the inquiry, I loved the people, and I loved just the discussion of ideas. But so I went with what I was in love with. I eventually got a minor in education because I ran out of money, and my brother said he would subsidize me only if I took something useful away with my degree.
Matthew Woodyard [00:05:19] Okay, well, you know, I know Erich, who is on the other line as doing our tech, would absolutely love that you did philosophy because he- he is a historian slash philosopher himself.
Elaine Marsh [00:05:31] Yeah.
Matthew Woodyard [00:05:32] So. Oh, go ahead.
Elaine Marsh [00:05:34] I mean, when you. When you look at it. So there’s- there’s two ways of gathering a view of the world. One is through mathematics, and one is through words. And to me, philosophy is mathematics in- in language, you know, so it’s- They’re very similar. I mean, that’s the great thing about being a human being. Our view of things is dependent upon the tools we use to explain ourselves. And so anyway, I don’t think there’s much difference between math and philosophy.
Matthew Woodyard [00:06:18] Yeah. And that’s very interesting. So early on, did anyone special influence your career path? I know you mentioned the lake and you meant, you know, your own lived experience, but was there anyone that influenced you?
Elaine Marsh [00:06:32] My older brother, who was five years older than me, he also loved the outdoors. And he used to take me and sometimes one of my other brothers or my younger sisters on outings. And when he got older, he moved and I would visit him out west. He lived all over the country, and I visited him. And there were a couple college professors I had that had the broad view of environment, not as a thing, but as sort of the basis of life on the planet. And that really influenced me. I’m trying to think of, oh, my uncle and aunt and their two daughters, my cousins were very good friends of mine as I was growing up, and my uncle and aunt loved to camp and often took me along. And so that was- That was really wonderful. And when I was in high school, they took me on a trip to Boundary Waters, that area between Minnesota and Canada that is just pockmarked with lakes and rivers. And that was a revelation to me. I mean, at that time, you didn’t have to carry water. You could just dump your cup over the side of the canoe and drink the water out of the lakes. It probably wasn’t a good idea even at the time, but it, it certainly was a statement of how clean things were. And when I came back home to look at Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River, I just said, my God, why is our water so dirty and the water up in Minnesota so clean? And so I would say those were people who strongly influenced my development and tell you one story about my brother. So this would have been in the heart of the industrial pollution of the lower Cuyahoga River. Sometime probably in the late ’50s, early ’60s, there was a bridge across the industrial lower river. It was called the Clark Avenue Bridge, and it was closed for some kind of repair. That bridge, by the way, is, is no longer there. I don’t believe there is a bridge that spans the whole industrial valley, maybe Harvard, but at any rate, so. So we were walking across this bridge and it was being very hard to breathe and there were, you know, it looked like Hades. There were flames and fires and smoke and we just walked across in silence, kind of just experiencing this hellish expanse. And my brother said to me, you know, if they could figure out a way to not make pollution, to make pollution invisible and to abolish the smell, you know, people wouldn’t even think about it. And that’s sort of climate change. Right?
Matthew Woodyard [00:10:08] Right, right. Yeah.
Elaine Marsh [00:10:10] So anyway, I had lots of thoughtful people in my life. My father was a person who was very demanding and asked questions of you all the time. And so I was, I was very privileged in having experience to people who were very broad minded and, you know, didn’t have the answers. They had the questions.
Matthew Woodyard [00:10:38] Right, right. Yeah. It sounds like you’ve had some great experiences, you know, in your early times and I’m sure further on. So moving on from your background a little bit, we’re going to move into your early leadership roles. And just how did you get started as an advocate for the Cuyahoga River? You’ve explained a lot of it, but is there anything else that could add to that and maybe when, about what time you really got into it?
Elaine Marsh [00:11:03] Well, you know, so I came along about the same time many environmentalists did in the late 60s and early ’70s, and that was the time at which, you know, a lot of national attention was brought to the environment. And the first Earth Day was in the ’70s while I was still in college. I belonged to a couple of organizations, the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth. And they were very active. And there was not an internet, but you got four or five mailings a month from both of the organizations on issues that were important and letters you should write. And so I started very young by writing letters and. And later I became more, later meaning in the ’70s, I became more involved in some of those organizations. The Sierra Club had two chapters in Northeast Ohio. One was the Northeast Ohio chapter, and the other was the Portage Trail Group. And I became active in both of those groups and then later gravitated toward the Portage Trail Group because that’s where I had moved to in the Akron area. So I was very much a spawn of the Sierra Club kind of activism, at least starting in the ’70s. So. And I became very active in the Portage Trail Group. I did a lot of the, their programs and was on the board and got to know a lot of the people and worked on a lot of the early projects in the valley related to conservation and trails. So I, you know, I became interested theoretically and very early on became involved in on the ground projects, too.
Matthew Woodyard [00:13:14] That’s really neat and so inspiring, like, to be on- You were on the front lines, like, cutting edge of the environmental revolution. You know, we studied that in school. It’s really cool to hear.
Elaine Marsh [00:13:27] [laughs] Well, listen here, sonny!
Matthew Woodyard [00:13:30] No, I just- It’s seriously.
Elaine Marsh [00:13:32] No, I know, I know, I know. And it’s- And it’s really true. And I mean, you know, while you’re going through it, you have no idea. You’re just- You’re just part of the parade carrying your flags and your swords. And what was- what was so good about that time is that things were so bad that activism was very confrontational at that time, because it had to be. No one was listening because there were these huge interests that were fighting the whole idea and arguing the economics of pollution. That was the hardest thing to overcome. And by the way, it still is.
Matthew Woodyard [00:14:24] Definitely.
Elaine Marsh [00:14:25] Yeah. So. But it was very confrontational at the beginning. And so what I have experienced over my lifetime is how the role of activists and the role of environmentalists have changed over time. And they’re not exclusively confrontational or shouldn’t be, you know, but there are way that activists and environmentalists have found ways to work within the existing system to move things forward. And so you learned a lot of tricks. I learned a lot of tricks. I have a lot of different kinds of tactics in my bag of tricks that- that I learned over time and, you know, can use them interchangeably as I believe are needed. But, yeah, the environmental movement, definitely, I would say, until the ’90s, was pretty exclusively confrontational, because it had to be, because people weren’t listening.
Matthew Woodyard [00:15:39] Right? Yeah. That’s just amazing to me. But anyway, so how did Friends of the Crooked River begin? Like, what year? And what was your role like in the early years?
Elaine Marsh [00:15:55] Well, I had paddled the Cuyahoga River, all parts of it, since the late mid to late ’70s. Myself and my husband, we- we were in a canoe together before we were married. And I think that was the thing that convinced us we ought to be married, because we were the perfect canoe pair. And that is not an easy thing to be.
Matthew Woodyard [00:16:29] Right.
Elaine Marsh [00:16:30] So. So anyway, I knew the Cuyahoga. I knew how polluted it was and had been involved in that sort of thing. And then John Debo, at some point in the ’80s, I don’t remember the year, but it was the late ’80s, he came to be the superintendent, and he made a comment in an article written by Bob Downing that said Bob asked him about the river. And John said that the river had no constituency. And I remember I called him up the next day, and I said, the river certainly does have a contingency and have a lot of people who love it. And he said, well, I’m not aware of it. And so then a group of us began meeting, and it was pulled together, this group. John told Peggy Bobel, who was the executive director of the Cuyahoga Valley Association, I think that was its name at that time. And so she called me, and we pulled together a group of people. And I believe this was in around ’88. And so we met for, like, over a year. And it was during that time as well that the Cuyahoga RAP, for the Areas of Concern, established itself as well. So there were these two things going on, and the Cuyahoga RAP was wanting public input from citizens who knew the river. And so in 1989, Friends of the Crooked River began meeting as an organization. And we were established as an organization in 1890, I mean, 1990. [laughs] Yeah. I’m sorry. I often get centuries mixed up.
Matthew Woodyard [00:18:47] That is totally. Okay. So what type of act? So you guys floated the river? It’s 1990. Is that kind of when the first River Day started? Or how and when did the first River Day start?
Elaine Marsh [00:19:01] Hmm. I’m gonna have to look here. I think I’ve got some books someplace. But it was either ’90 or ’91.
Matthew Woodyard [00:19:11] Okay.
Elaine Marsh [00:19:12] Here, see here? This here we go. Okay. I’m still looking.
Matthew Woodyard [00:19:21] No worries.
Elaine Marsh [00:19:23] I’m pretty sure it was ’91. I don’t know. I don’t seem to have it here. But where did it go? Where are the other- I’m not sure.
Matthew Woodyard [00:19:33] That’s okay.
Elaine Marsh [00:19:34] Can you imagine.
Matthew Woodyard [00:19:35] Can you recall- Can you recall the first River Day and kind of-
Elaine Marsh [00:19:39] Oh, yes. Yeah. [crosstalk]
Matthew Woodyard [00:19:40] How that went? And how Cuyahoga Valley participated? I’m sorry.
Elaine Marsh [00:19:46] Yeah. Well, so. So when this group of people who were the original- who were the original board of Friends of the Crooked River got together, what we said is that we did not. We did not want to be just another organization that sat around and talked and had meetings that. That we wanted to do things. And so we sat down and we wrote a list of 19 things we could do. And they ranged from very simple things to like, correcting the combined sewer overflow problems. So, you know, so we- we had specific things we wanted to focus on. The other thing is that we did not want to be an organization that simply harped on or against problems. We wanted people to understand the benefits of the river and what those. And to be able to see themselves in the future with a clean river. So that sort of is where River Day came from. We had people who were interested in the Native American history. We had people, people who were interested in cultural things. We had people who were interested in music. And so the first River Day came about as sort of a culmination of different ideas. And we thought, well, the only way you could do that is if you had a lot of different events. And so it was this multi event focus. And there were, you know, There were over 20 different events around the watershed that happened specifically on River Day. And it was in late April, and by the way, it was very cold. And so some of us were trying to figure out what the focus could be, the main focus of River Day. And somebody said, well, how about we get all those cars out of the river that are being used as erosion control down by park headquarters. And so a couple of us went to meet with John Debo to talk about what the park could do and to get those cars out of the river. And John immediately latched onto it as such a great idea. And so the park took over this massive cleanup of the 22 mile stretch of the river. And they- the park just ran with the idea. And that became sort of the biggest volunteer focus. And there were like 220 people who showed up to clean up that river on this very cold April, I think it was 27th. It was not only cold it was raining. But John brought in the park director, the national park director, and a number of other dignitaries who came and talked to this group of volunteers. Who stood outside the train because the train was involved in carrying people to the various cleanup sites and of loading up the trash and carrying it out that could easily be put on the train. But at any rate, so it became a big media coverage as well, the cleanup that the park and thereby, you know, and there were other areas. The Kent people, the Kent Environmental Council, they had huge projects. The city of Cuyahoga Falls got involved very early on. And by the way, those two entities are still involved in River Day today. And, you know, we just had cleanups all over. We had different kinds of events. And the end of the day was a music concert at Happy Days, and all the volunteers could get into the concert for free. And it featured the river. So it was some kind of folk group. I don’t remember which one, but I remember I did a. A bunch of pictures in the background to music and-
Matthew Woodyard [00:24:47] Oh, wow.
Elaine Marsh [00:24:48] Yeah, it was great. It was- It was really great. And Happy Days was packed to overflowing, mainly with volunteers who had froze their butts off all day. And so it was. And by the way, we also removed, I think on that day, we removed- which is another story about how the cars got removed. But we estimated through a number of visits to the site, there were 73 cars in that riverbank. And they removed like 113 cars that day with heavy equipment. They came back several months later and removed another 30. So there were a lot of cars there. And by the way, those cars is a very erodible, very erodible bank. And it is still a problem today, the erosion to that bank. But anyway, River Day was a great success. And it continued. We continued to do it for 27 years.
Matthew Woodyard [00:26:03] Wow.
Elaine Marsh [00:26:04] We coordinated it. And in the first 10 years, we had a River Day booklet that was the most expensive part about River Day and some of the most. Some of our- our biggest investment in time. But at any rate, I think we stopped doing that. I don’t know, ’98, maybe ’99 was the last year we did the river book. And, you know, there were some years, it was more. There were more events than others, but we always had in the neighborhood of 20 events and always had in the neighborhood of 2 to 4,000 people participating in these various events. And then we kind of got tired of it after 27 years. And the. The Cuyahoga RAP people took it over. Not the RAP people, but it was called Cuyahoga Restoration, and they took over it for a couple of years, and they kind of went out of business. And now it came back to us. So we’re going to be doing River Day again this year, trying to get it beefed up a little bit, but it’s been a long association and it’s taken quite a bit of our focus.
Matthew Woodyard [00:27:29] Definitely.
Elaine Marsh [00:27:30] But we will never forget that first one, and we will never forget that cleanup. Okay, so it started out, the cleanup started out. We all stood by the train, all the volunteers, the 220 volunteers stood by the railroad tracks. The train came in, and all these dignitaries came off the back of the train and gave speeches for about 20 to 40 minutes while it’s in the 30s and raining. And then we get on the unheated train and went to our sites on the river to clean up. And then we got back on the unheated train and went to the Canal Visitor Center, where there was a wrap up celebrating the cleanup. And we had- In the cold rain, we had cold hot dogs. And I mean, they were supposedly heated, but they quickly became cold. And nonetheless, even though people were shivering, it was a time of high excitement and pride and happiness. And then we went on to Happy Days for the concert. So it was- It was quite a day.
Matthew Woodyard [00:28:50] Yeah, it sounds like such a special day, truly. And you already mentioned, really, it sounds like there was a lot of support in response to this early. These early river advocacy and all the activities that you had going on. And you-
Elaine Marsh [00:29:05] Yes- Go ahead.
Matthew Woodyard [00:29:07] I was going to say, you mentioned some, you know, like your core group or the. Could you go and speak to those folks, maybe who they were a little bit, and what their impact was?
Elaine Marsh [00:29:18] So one of them was Mike Kaplan. He is an attorney in Akron, and he has been an advocate for many things and helped start several organizations, including Friends of the Crooked River and Friends of Metroparks as well. But at any rate, he kind of did the coordination of the events for River Day. He got a lot of the resources that we needed together. And then there was Jerry Welch, who was from the Tuscarawas River watershed. In addition, I mean, he loved both the Tusk and the Cuyahoga, and he was a paddler, and he very, very much was- was his focus very much was on paddling and pollution. And then we had Kathleen Pengill, who was also an attorney, and she’s one who did all of our documents in the beginning, but she also was very involved in what the Trails Council. And so she was interested in the Cuyahoga River from point of view of paddling and the water trail. And then we had some people who were interested in cultural things. These people are no longer here and in this in the area. And so they’re no longer involved in anything that I’m aware of, but in terms of where they moved to. But one of them was from Kent and very interested in Native American things and schoolchildren. She worked at Kent State as a professor in early childhood education. So she got very involved in. We actually developed a curriculum for preschool through high school in the early days. And she was very involved with that. And then we had people who were interested in music and got people involved from a musical point of view and from an art point of view. There have been photographic displays and art disparate- displays on River Day over the years from that point of view. And then there was myself, who by that time had gotten pretty interested, not just in on the ground projects, although that was my favorite thing and still is. But I got had by that time become involved in policy issues. So we were, I think, a very well balanced group. We spent a lot of time doing educational programs. I, from that time till this, have never done less than 20 presentations a year on water-related topics. And some of them policy, some on projects. But it was a really great balance of orientations and personalities. And we just work together really, really well.
Matthew Woodyard [00:32:53] That’s great. And I’m going to give you one more question on the more early times with the Friends of Crooked River. We’ve talked all this greatness and all these good things happening. Can you tell me one challenge that you all face, like a big one and how you might have resolved that or gotten around it?
Elaine Marsh [00:33:11] Well, the biggest challenge was that was the barricade of we don’t want to go there, you know. So, for example, even though the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, not a whole lot happened, for the first decade, things were getting organized. The EPA was being set up, rules and regulations were being set up. And then beginning in the ’80s is when we started doing research on the river itself. But by the ’90s, not a lot of cleanup had yet happened. I mean, there was some particularly industrial cleanup was beginning to happen in the mid to late ’80s down, especially in the Cleveland area. But we still had not made very much progress. You know, it was the promise of the Clean Water Act was still there, but there was a tremendous resistance because people didn’t understand. And one issue that we had was the navigation channel. The navigation channel is a six-mile section of the Cuyahoga River where it empties into Lake Erie after its 100-mile trek. And there the river was dredged from its average 8 feet to 27 feet to accommodate lake carriers. And so the question, one of the first questions that the Cuyahoga Remedial Action Plan dealt with was the navigation channel. And so the question was, how do we fit this in with the Clean Water Act? Because the Clean Water Act requires that there be five milliliters of dissolved oxygen per hundred milliliters of water and yes, five. And there was no way that the navigation channel could meet that standard. So one of the first issues that Friends of the Crooked River intervened in with the RAP was this issue. They wanted to set up a quote, special use, special use designation which identified, I think it was either 2.5 or 3 milliliters of dissolved oxygen as being the required base for the navigation channel. And so we had several meetings, the RAP had several meetings on this and they presented, you know, this anti clean water use designation. And so Friends of the Crooked River, we took up this issue, we talked about it, we did some research on it. We were fairly new organization at that point. I don’t know, maybe it was ’91, ’92, somewhere in that area. And so we were the only member of the 33-member advisory committee or community action committee, perhaps it was called, I don’t know, to the RAP. We were the only ones who opposed it and we wrote a letter. Now had we known more at that time, had I known more at that time, I believe we would have sued over the issue. And whether or not we would have won, I don’t know. But it seems to me now we would have. But. So that was an example of, you know, people trying to find a way to fit in, to fit us, you know, a square peg into a round hole by coming up with a compromise. And, however, I did learn through that whole issue how different points of view are important. I think many of us began to learn as early as then that one of the most important things you can do is listen and understand where people are coming from. Of that 33 members on the advisory committee, there wasn’t a bad guy the house, you know, there were people who just represented different points of view. There was nobody evil. And I did get to confront an evildoer at one time. It was the most fun I ever had. But at any rate. So I think that was a very pivotal issue for us to learn how we could be a positive force, even though we certainly did not win in that case. Certainly somebody, somebody in a group of 33 people has to say no. A unanimous vote is almost never a good outcome. And we learned. We learned also how to, you know, go behind the scenes, not just to write letters and stomp our feet, but, like I say, to go back and talk to people and listen to people. And I think we learned a lot quicker than the industrial people did. The importance of meeting, a compromise, of understanding that progress was incremental. And. And one of the things that is most important, that I really did not learn at that time, but have learned more since, is that the good is never the enemy of the perfect, but the perfect can be the enemy of the good. And so that is- That is something I have really tried to expand on. And Friends of the Crooked River as well. So when I say I, I don’t just mean me. I mean, we, you know, we understood a better and deeper role. Now, don’t get me wrong, when we worked on policy through much of the ’90s, we were very confrontational as well when we felt bad rules or laws were being introduced. So, again, you know, many different hats in many different circumstances.
Matthew Woodyard [00:40:16] Yeah. Wow. There’s so many. I could talk to you for hours about all of this. This is great.
Elaine Marsh [00:40:24] Well, I’m very old, and I’ve had lots and lots of experiences.
Matthew Woodyard [00:40:29] I’m learning so much about you. So we’re going to shift gears a little. It is Women’s History Month. We are also inspired by you and all the work you’ve done to help preserve and conserve, you know, the Cuyahoga Valley. Can you speak to any of the other women who might have been advocating alongside with you?
Elaine Marsh [00:40:51] Oh, so many. And-
Matthew Woodyard [00:40:56] And maybe what organizations they were with representatives.
Elaine Marsh [00:40:59] So. So the woman I learned most from was Edith Chase. She worked in the Kent Environmental Council, and that is, by the way, the oldest environmental organization in the state, I believe. And there were just a number of wonderful women who worked for that organization, and Ann Ward was one of them. Carolyn- Carolyn- Can’t think of her name. She’s now dead. She was- Oh, anyway, I’ll think of her name. But. So that group of women were very important. And then moving down the river into Cuyahoga Falls, we get to Becky McCleary, who worked with. She had different roles working with the city of Cuyahoga Falls. She was a very dedicated person who got the city of Cuyahoga Falls involved. And I learned from her how to involve different communities and talk to different mayors along the way. But she recently retired, and she was just a great, great hero of the river. And so again, Edith Chase.
Matthew Woodyard [00:42:35] Yes. And I have her underlined and highlighted here in my question. If you could just tell me kind of what she was like and what she did and maybe how your work and her work overlapped.
Elaine Marsh [00:42:46] Yes. So Edith was a chemical engineer, I believe, and she also had many civic roles in Kent. She was a zoning inspector. I believe she did something with their zoning, with the city zoning. I believe she was a zoning inspector, but also she worked with Kent Environmental Council on a number of things. But Edith was the policy woman, in my view. I was invited, and I’m not sure why I was invited in the late ’70s to come to this meeting in Cleveland. And Edith was there. And I had known Edith at that point because one of the things she did was volunteer at the Kent Recycle Center, which was the only recycle center in Northeast Ohio at that time. Oh, there’s so many wonderful stories about that I would love to tell you. But at any rate. At any rate. So I had gotten to know her there, but I was invited to this meeting. And at this meeting, some other people were. There was Ellen Knox, who was a physics professor at John Carroll University, and Emmaline Claussen, who was a social scientist, and she worked for some social service organization in Northeast Ohio. But these women were brilliant and they were attacking policy, environmental policy from point of view of scientists, you know, and I felt like the poor stepchild there. I had very. I really knew very little about what they were talking about, but it got me to understand the importance of the scientific detail. And these people were the people that needed to be listened to. They could not be discarded. Edith Chase could not be called an extremist, number one, because she was so articulate and reserved. You know, I was the impassioned speaker, but Edith was the controlled, logical presenter of the sciences and- and a person of great humor, you know, and it was universally accepted humor, kind of a dry, scientific humor, if you will. But, but anyway, Edith was one of the most respected women in the environmental movement I have ever known. And it was because of her consistency, because of her humanity, because of her background and expertise, and because she was always there. So, I could fill chapters and chapters of my observations about Edith. And there was one meeting I was at, and I was on an advisory committee for. I think it was wetland anti degradation in the state. And so the rule- Oh, no, you know what it was? It was the- The Great Lakes Initiative of the ’90s, wherein a lot of hopes for extinguishing chemicals from use. It was hoped for. We never got there. But it was a very important exercise in terms of getting the state involved in outreaching to the community, all of the community, not just the environmental community. But anyway, I was on that board, and there were two or three different public meetings. That’s in the days when we used to have public meetings, and we don’t anymore. I can’t remember when the last time I went to a public meeting. And it’s not because of COVID it’s because they were too much trouble for agencies. And there were some people in the audience that were problems sometimes, probably myself. But at any rate, there used to be great public meetings, and they were great opportunities for media and for people to get involved and who cares about whether or not it’s a fight, you know? Anyway, anyway, she came to this one public meeting, and it had been kind of contentious, and there had been kind of inappropriate presentations, comments made by some people, and Edith was kind of late on the agenda. And so when she came, you know, there had been a lot of discussion in the community, in the audience. There were, I don’t know, over 100 people there, and there had been a lot of sidebar conversations. And Edith got up there, and everybody shut up and listened. And, you know, that’s- that’s the kind of respect she commanded from all factions. And the. Whoever was facilitating the meeting who had, you know, not been felicitous at all of many of the environmentalists, said, Mrs. Chase, we’re always so happy to hear from you. So anyway, that’s who she was. And, you know, I forget what her saying always was, was something like, frustration or confrontation is the price of living in interesting times. And so she did not engage emotionally in the fight. You know, she just saw- she just thought as a panacea in which she had a role. And anyway, she was great, and she was great fun to be around. She was very funny. She was very funny.
Matthew Woodyard [00:50:07] So was she involved in Cuyahoga Valley issues like river cleanup?
Elaine Marsh [00:50:12] She asked me that, and I don’t think so. She was- she was involved in Kent. She organized and was part of the organizing team of activities in Kent, I would say, where she was involved. Arrye asked this question, and I thought about it, and what I now remember is if there was anything having to do with policy, you know, policy of the park, a public meeting about something going on in the park, she would make comments, but- And she was always very supportive of the park, and she talked about how important the park was to places like the city of Kent, you know, which was her that was her battleground. I mean, she was involved in state and federal policy, but her on the ground, boots in the mud, was the city of Kent. But she talked always about how important the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area in the beginning was to the city of Kent and the river. So in that way, she was very supportive. But I can’t remember anything specific. And it’s been sort of on my mind in the back. And if I think of something, I’ll send it to Arrye.
Matthew Woodyard [00:51:39] Okay.
Elaine Marsh [00:51:40] Well, now, other people. Other people in the area. Peggy Bobel. Peggy Bobel was very central to the Cuyahoga River and the Cuyahoga Valley and getting people involved. She was very important and very central. And I can’t imagine the what kind of community involvement there would have been without Peggy.
Matthew Woodyard [00:52:17] Right. Wow. I want to hear more about Peggy, but we are running out of time. I think Eric has to get off of here and get to class.
Elaine Marsh [00:52:25] Okay. Okay.
Matthew Woodyard [00:52:28] Oh, no. Actually, Erich just told me he spoke with Peggy last week.
Elaine Marsh [00:52:32] Oh, good.
Matthew Woodyard [00:52:33] So if it’s okay with you, if we could just schedule. I have probably maybe 20 more minutes worth of questions. We’ve been talking for about 40 minutes. Erich will be in touch with you to schedule that. If that’s okay.
Elaine Marsh [00:52:45] Okay, sure.
Matthew Woodyard [00:52:46] Hopefully I get to ask the questions again because it’s been nice hearing from you.
Elaine Marsh [00:52:50] Well, it’s always fun thinking about these things, you know, it really is. And. And it’s fun thinking about the other people and. And what a- a total collaborative.
Matthew Woodyard [00:53:05] Yeah, that’s what I picked up.
Elaine Marsh [00:53:06] Partnership.
Matthew Woodyard [00:53:08] Yeah. I really can appreciate that. People coming from all different fields and backgrounds coming together for the same purpose. And that’s just.
Elaine Marsh [00:53:17] Well. And one thing, Woody, that would be good is talking, you know, more about that partnership and how it evolved over time. But. Okay, you gotta go. All right. Erich can call me. And I hope you have a great day.
Matthew Woodyard [00:53:37] Hey, you too. Thank you for your time.
Elaine Marsh [00:53:38] Okay. All right.
Matthew Woodyard [00:53:40] Bye.
Elaine Marsh [00:53:40] Bye.
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