Abstract
Richard Horton, longtime Director of the Shaker Lakes Nature Center, talks about the history of the Center and describes in detail many of the educational programs, public events and fund-raising campaigns, staff development programs, and conservation campaigns carried out by the Center during his tenure. Additionally, Horton offers his own insights on environmental education and parks management. Interview contains biographical information.
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Interviewee
Horton, Richard (interviewee)
Interviewer
Smith, Nancy King (interviewer)
Project
Shaker Lakes Nature Center
Date
10-4-2006
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
46 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Richard Horton interview, 4 October 2006" (2006). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 902013.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/216
Transcript
Richard Horton [00:00:00] Wonderful.
Nancy King Smith [00:00:02] This is Nancy King Smith. I’m going to be interviewing Rich Horton and Emma is our technical person. It’s October 4, 2006. Well, Rich, you’ve had such a wonderful opportunities in the out of doors. What was your first outdoor experience that sort of got you going on that track?
Richard Horton [00:00:29] Oh, that’s an easy one. I grew up in Geauga County and my father was an outdoorsman. I mean, he was a hunter, he was a fisherman. And I was never into hunting, except with a camera. But I loved the fishing. Except that we would usually, my brothers and I, you know, throw our poles in with dad on a riverbank somewhere. We were camping for the weekend, leave them with dad and go hiking. So any fish we caught was usually Dad’s doing rather than ours. And I think it was during that time that I just developed this incredible love for the outdoors. One of my fondest memories growing up, we had about 26 acres of land that we lived on in Munson Township. And I liked to walk in the woods at night and I would take a dog with me or two, and I would just go out exploring.
Nancy King Smith [00:01:22] How old were you at that point?
Richard Horton [00:01:24] I was probably 12. 12 years old, you know, and I just loved. We had a tree farm right next door to us, about 100 acres. And the woods were just so absolutely beautiful at night. And so I would. You never knew what you were going to scare up, from owls to, you know, creatures walking that you didn’t expect were there, like foxes and that kind of thing. But it was just a wonderful experience. I credit that my dad and his love for the outdoors kind of feeding that to me. And to this day, I think all three of us, my two brothers and myself, we still love the outdoors.
Nancy King Smith [00:02:00] What was your route then to your career in the outdoors in various ways?
Richard Horton [00:02:07] Well, I was always interested in science because of that and particularly the life sciences. And so I chose to go to a small liberal arts college, Hiram College, also in the middle of very rural area. And I think it was because of my love for the outdoors that I just wanted to be in that kind of a setting. I had a wonderful advisor, I’ll never forget Dr. James Barrow. He was the founder of the Hiram College Field Biology Station. I worked with him before that was ever established, you know, when we were tracing the routes of animals around the campus and that kind of thing. So it was just really falling into line as I did my work there in the sciences. So I ended up with a degree in general science and biology, minor in biology and a minor in Chemistry and started to teach, because I love teaching. And I wanted to kind of open other people’s eyes to the wonderful world out there. And so my first 10 years of my career were in the teaching field, primarily in life sciences. I was actually. I started off at the junior high level. I was supposed to teach in my very first teaching assignment at Warrensville Junior High School. Then I was supposed to teach three sections of life science and two sections of physical science. And I walked in the first day of school and I had two sections of life science in three sections of earth space science, for which I had absolutely no background whatsoever except liking outside at night. And I jumped right into graduate school that next summer and started working on geology and astronomy and fell in love with those subjects as well. So that was where I started my teaching career. And then I went to University School for Boys. And I was at the lower school developing their seventh grade curriculum around the life sciences again and teaching advanced place biology. The first, second year I was there, I think. And then when the campuses split, I stayed at the lower school as director of lower school science. So I worked with curriculum development kindergarten through grade eight and teaching primarily seventh and eighth and a little sixth and a little fourth.
Nancy King Smith [00:04:22] How long were you at University School?
Richard Horton [00:04:23] I was there for seven years.
Nancy King Smith [00:04:25] And then was the Nature Center the next-
Richard Horton [00:04:27] The Nature Center was the next stop, although it was actually- They kind of overlapped. The last three years that I was at University School, I spent my summers working at Shaker Lakes. And my first summer there, I’ll never forget, because Gary Nelson was the first full time director at the Center. And he had hired me to work with the summer program. And we just hit it off so well. And to this day, I have a lot of respect and admiration for Gary and what he left at the Center. We used to have so much fun at lunch. You never knew what he was going to pull out of his shirt. Usually a snake while we were eating lunch. And of course, he had the snake with him all during the morning program. So it was very comfortable being close to the warm bodies. But was also then that he one day at lunch said, Rich, I think you’d like this book. He literally tossed a book across the lunch table at me. And it was a wonderful book that I actually still have the original copy of. It’s called Acclimatization by Steve Van Meter. And it was the first my introduction to what then became known as Earth education. I went on from there to direct the summer program after Gary left. And it was my last summer directing it which would have been what, ’70, summer of- Well, it would have been summer of ’74 that I was directing. And Walter Kincaid was the acting director at that time after Gary had left. And it was at Christmas of ’74 that Walter said to me, rich, I am definitely retiring. He had tried to retire several times. And he said, I think you should apply for the directorship of the Nature Center. And that was my introduction to it. And I came on board in August. I ran the summer program the summer of ’75 and then came on board as a director in August of ’75.
Nancy King Smith [00:06:22] Well, tell us a little bit about this summer programs at that time. What were they like?
Richard Horton [00:06:27] And then we’ll get into your directorship summer programs. Gary was the person who kind of said, you know, develop it the way you want. We had themes or topics that we would have for kids, but then also I was involved in. We would do adult or family programs on weekends. And that was my introduction to that. And Gary basically said, do what you want. So we started doing stuff with the Shakers and the Shaker history and the use of the land and the lakes. We got into hikes down into the gorge, the Doan Brook Gorge in terms of the geology. And it was just a time to really explore and it was wonderful. A lot of hands on, a lot of developing awareness, a lot of watching kids eyes get real excited.
Nancy King Smith [00:07:19] Lynn, as you became director, describe some of the early program directions that you set and got started.
Richard Horton [00:07:29] Well, back in those days the center was very small. There was basically two full-time staff members, which was myself and my secretary who was Betsy Beckwith. And Betsy actually stayed there all 14 years that I was there. And she ended up being my director of development when I left. And then there was one regular part time person which was Ernie Otte, the custodian. Fabulous man, just a wonderful member of the staff. And then we had a number of part time people that worked with Saturday programs for kids. And then we had two full time teachers, naturalists who were stationed at the center. They were not center employees. One was an employee shared between the Cleveland Heights and the Shaker Heights city schools, Cleveland Heights teacher. And he basically did programming in the morning for one school system and in the afternoon for the other school system.
Nancy King Smith [00:08:28] And who was that?
Richard Horton [00:08:29] That was Jim Eicher. Yes, yes. All the kids referred to him as Mr. Hiker. And then the Cleveland City schools also had a full time teacher stationed at the center. That was back in the days when Cleveland had many out of school sites and oh my goodness, his name just went Right out of my head. Wonderful man. I can’t remember, but he was a great asset to the center and to the programming for the Cleveland Public Schools was really, really neat.
Nancy King Smith [00:09:03] So at that point in time, the schools didn’t pay to come to the center because their teaching was taken care of.
Richard Horton [00:09:10] Right. They were paying the salaries of these two teachers. And so that was not part of the budget of the center at all. In fact, the budget of the center was only about $42,000 a year, was very small. We did start to develop more programming at the center for other schools on a pay as you go basis. And then also we started to develop, which was one of my favorite things at the time, we started to get into preschool programming. And of course, that was the evolution of Nature Nursery. And just so much fun working with kids three and a half years and up. And wonderful volunteers. I had women who wanted to work in this program. They were docents at the center, and they just wanted to do it. They wouldn’t allow me to pay them for it. And I think of people like Lynn Frey and Carol McKelvey, who I’m still in touch with these days, and just wonderful, wonderful people. In terms of the development of that preschool program, which really took off. It became kind of a hallmark of the nature center. And then we started developing programming, more extensive programming on Saturdays for kids. And of course, one of my favorite things was the family programming. We really wanted to get families involved, and we had some incredible family programs from things like Shaker Festival, where we blended Shaker history with the use of the outdoors. And we had a choir and we were teaching Shaker dances in the middle of the meeting room with families and kids. It was absolutely delightful to. Probably two of my favorite things, which were the celebration of light.
Nancy King Smith [00:11:01] Still going.
Richard Horton [00:11:01] Is still going. Yes. Which was, of course, the program looking at all of the use of lights and candles and fires during the winter season. All different traditions, not just Christmas. And then the Halloween alternative to haunted houses. And we called it the Enchanted Forest. And that was just. I can remember the very first year we did it, we almost got closed down because we did not anticipate the crowds that would come. And between the Shaker Heights police and the Cleveland Heights police, we had traffic jams all around the Nature Center trying to get in. The next year, we started doing it by ticket, so we didn’t have that problem.
Nancy King Smith [00:11:50] And it continues to be very popular. And I think it was a model for many other nature centers.
Richard Horton [00:11:54] Yes.
Nancy King Smith [00:11:56] In developing that.
Richard Horton [00:11:57] Yes.
Nancy King Smith [00:11:58] Let’s go back to the School programs a bit. When did the arrangements with the schools end so that the Nature center became responsible for?
Richard Horton [00:12:09] I’m not sure I can give you an exact date in my memory, but I think it started when Cleveland Public Schools started having major financial problems and they felt it necessary to basically close all of their off sites programs. So programs of the Natural History Museum, at Holden Arboretum, at the Nature center all got closed. And so we lost that programming. We were very. Because one of the things that was so neat was bringing the inner city kids out to the center. So many of these children had never even been in the woods. Even as urban as the Nature center is, it still feels pretty wild when you’re in the middle of the park. And so that was the beginning of looking to add our own staff to start picking up schools. And I think the very first, I’m trying to think back, but I think the very first staff naturalist that we hired had come and done a summer internship from Ohio State with us and then came on full time as our staff naturalist was Dan Best, who now of course, is with the Geauga Park District. And then as things grew and Jim was getting ready to retire, Jim Eicher from the Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights schools, we decided that working with the school systems, we didn’t want to lose Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights. And so we worked out an arrangement where they would contract with the Nature center to provide the programming because Jim was retiring. And that way they wouldn’t have, they would have a different level of expense. And it seemed to be advantageous for the school systems and for us. And so we brought in another staff naturalist, which was Cindy Schwartz. And Cindy was again, a wonderful blessing to the center and a gift in terms of the expertise that she brought. So that was how we started getting into the business of actually contracting with schools. And it, it grew from there. Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights were probably two of the largest users in terms of school systems. And I believe when I left the center, we were seeing every first, third and fifth grader in the system once a year. And the programs were sequential and developmental. And so when the third graders came after having been there in the first grade, it built on their experiences that they had had in first grade and first grade. They were there for like an hour and a half or two hours. And then third grade, they were there for a day. And then by the time they came in fifth grade, they were there for three days with the Earthkeepers program.
Nancy King Smith [00:14:54] Let’s go ahead with Earthkeepers program. How that evolved?
Richard Horton [00:14:57] We had some more changes in staff. And also because I was getting more and more interested in. At that time it was called acclimatization. I had gone workshops with Steve Van Meter at that time he was at a university outside of Chicago and would do trainings at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, which was the University of Chicago’s lab camp. So I was getting very, very focused on this type of learning that was very sequential and very focused and very environmental education rather than nature interpretation. Of course, that was kind of the model that the Nature center was built on was environmental education. And so when Cindy’s husband, Cindy Schwartz’s husband took a job in Buffalo, so she departed and Dan had already left to become a staff naturalist at the Geograph District. We started bringing in some new staff. And I was very fortunate to bring in somebody that I had met working with the workshops with Steve Van Meter. And I brought in John Cassetta, and John became a staff naturalist. And then we brought in Marlon Smith and Bruce Johnson. We ended up having three full time staff naturalists in addition to other people who would come for part of the year. And so it became very, very busy with the development of Earth Education as our major focus and a unique focus here in Greater Cleveland. And I guess that was part of the direction I was going. It was a little hard to call yourself a nature center and do exactly the same kind of programming that was done at North Chagrin or Rocky River, because those Metro park nature centers did it for free and we had to charge. And so we took a different tact and we really focused on our mission as environmental education and really focused on developing environmental themes and concepts and understandings that change the way peoples live.
Nancy King Smith [00:16:57] Why don’t you describe the Earthkeepers program?
Richard Horton [00:17:00] Earthkeepers is a wonderful program. It is a program that catches the attention from the very beginning with a very special opening ceremony in a place called EMM’s Lab. And the meeting room at the center would be transformed into this like, almost like a study slash lab, because you never knew what you’re going to find in terms of leaf collections or parts of animal things there. But as the kids arrived, there was a rocking chair sitting in the middle of the room that was still rocking, but nobody was in it. And as the kids gathered on the floor and sat around, there was a screen on part of one of the bookcases that lit up. And we actually introduced them to the adventure they were about to begin. And then all during the three days they were trying to figure out what this EMM stood for. It was just a wonderful experience. Because they would go out and they learn about energy flow in nature and food chains or the cycling of materials. Really hands on activities outdoors. Very fun filled and yet very focused learning experiences. And then they would come back and have. Even the meal times were all connected to what they were doing in the field. And at the very end they learned the secrets of Earthkeepers, which is energy and materials and the importance of conserving. It was just a wonderful experience.
Nancy King Smith [00:18:35] I know students have come back from Cleveland Heights with their keys.
Richard Horton [00:18:38] With their keys? Yes. They earn keys. K-E-Y-S: Knowledge, Experience, Yourself, and Sharing. I still remember all those things. They would earn their keys that would unlock a box that would have a message from this kind of like fictional character named EMM. And it would be a secret to how they could live in a more earth friendly way on the earth.So the kids got real excited. I had parents who would come to me, they said, you know, I got a little upset with you because my kids came home and they kept on reminding us to turn the lights off when we left rooms. And we had a recycle and we couldn’t throw things away because there was no away. We had to take care of things. And then they would chuckle and they said, I’m so glad you did that with our kids. It’s changed our lives in our home. So we knew we were having an impact.
Nancy King Smith [00:19:31] You mentioned docents earlier on and I know that was an important program. Talk a little bit about what you did.
Richard Horton [00:19:37] Oh, I’m pleased to talk to you about docents since you used to be one of my docents. The secret is out. The secret is out. The docent program was one of the things that we started very early on. We had many people who were members of the center who wanted to volunteer their time and their talents and they loved working with kids. And so we set up a training program in the fall, the winter and the spring to train adults to lead kids on experiences. And as the program developed, I think at one point we had close to 50 docents on staff and their primary focus was working with preschool and kindergarten kids, even though we would work with older ones as well. We worked with Girl Scout troops and Boy Scout troops and we did not charge hardly anything for docent led programming, which was neat. So we could provide a whole other avenue of experience. But the docents would do all kinds of programming in the outdoors with the kids. And it was just a really great way for us to expand our abilities to reach out to other kids.
Nancy King Smith [00:20:46] And the training was wonderful. Tell us a little bit about how you approached that.
Richard Horton [00:20:50] I approach the training much in the same way as I approached our curriculum development in Earth Ed. So I would often share a lot of the techniques that we did in Earth Ed. We would develop themes and train the docents on basic content, but then also on how you would use that content in an experiential way. So we might go outside and we’re trying to get kids to focus on maybe the cloud patterns in the sky above them. And we would do this thing called Eye in the Sky. And they would carry these kind of like hard picture framing matting material that had a mirror on it. And they would carry it and they could see the clouds in the mirror and they could still walk without falling, but they could see the clouds. We call it Eye in the Sky. And we had all kinds of different things. We would use dental mirrors to look underneath things in the underworld, or roll back logs to find out who was in nature’s basement. And those kinds of things. Really trying to just awaken the senses to the wonders of the natural world around us.
Nancy King Smith [00:21:52] And I’ll never forget the trail lunch that I was surprised about. And you had fixed the chicken.
Richard Horton [00:22:02] It was kind of a way of saying thank you to the docents. Every year I would do what we called a ramble. And the ramble was just kind of exploration around the park, except that all of a sudden you’d come into a clearing by the lake or something, and there would be a red and white check table cloth and fruit and cheese and fried chicken.
Nancy King Smith [00:22:27] Any other programs that sort of stand out for you that you initiated or nurtured?
Richard Horton [00:22:36] I’m going to actually refer back to probably the Doan brook watershed. One of our biggest concerns, of course, being on this several hundred acre piece of property was the fact that it had been preserved along the Doan Brook. But the water quality was not good. So we didn’t have a lot of critters that should be living in and around the lakes. And the creeks weren’t there. And so wonderful people who had been involved with the founding of the nature center, like Mary Elizabeth Croxton and Betty Miller and Jean Eakin and all these wonderful people really said we needed to focus on how to preserve better. And I think that the formation of the Doan Brook Water Commission, working with the cities of Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights and Cleveland to try and really improve the water quality, was just a wonderful, wonderful opportunity. And led to the development of a land management plan for the parks that was adopted by the city councils, which I Was real excited about. So that was a fun thing to be working with.
Nancy King Smith [00:23:42] The building. You made some changes in that. Talk about what you started with and what you ended up with.
Richard Horton [00:23:51] Well, of course, the building was beautiful, very natural with the rough siding and the stone. But it was small and it was fine at the very beginning when there was only a couple staff members. And we had. We had the large meeting room that we could use for a variety of purposes. We had a classroom upstairs with a very tiny. Well, actually the tiny kitchen at that time was off the meeting room. We then broke the door through and made it available to the classroom. Especially with nature nursery, developing office space was very limited. We had one large office space that was basically for the staff naturalist, the secretary, and that was all one room. And then of course, the gift shop developed. And so that took one end, including the coat closet in the lobby. And then my office was an inside room with a small door that you had to climb up steps to get through to get into the crawl space. And then a separate door that was the access to the lift pumps for the sewage system. We had some interesting times when those pumps broke down and sewage flooded my office. Actually, twice that happened. But that was part of growing up with the center, I think, in many ways. And then we had another large room downstairs, Kind of a rough space that we used for a lot of the dirty stuff that we did with kids. It had concrete floor, so you could just tramp through and not have to worry about carpets and all that kind of stuff. But as the center grew, we were running out of space. I think because of the uniqueness of the program in Greater Cleveland, the demand for our programs became so large that, as I said, we had expanded from the two school naturalists to three full time staff naturalists, plus part time people. And so we were literally booked to capacity on school days. We just couldn’t handle any more kids. And so it was decided that we needed to do some kind of an expansion. And of course, this was also the time that we were implementing the land management plan and developed much more structured trails to try and preserve the area off the trail. Because what happened is if the trail got muddy, people would make new trails. And so we built the All Peoples Trail, which was one of my favorite things about being at the center.
Nancy King Smith [00:26:19] Describe it a little more.
Richard Horton [00:26:20] The All Peoples Trail was a gift of a wonderful, wonderful donor at the time. Anonymous. And it was designed to be a barrier free trail that anybody could use. If you’re in a wheelchair, if you were the walker, you could come out on the trail. And it went off the parking lot, same level as the parking lot. And it was an elevated boardwalk over the marsh and through the woods, over the creek, the Doan Brook and back. And just part of it was paved along the one branch of the Doan Brook and back up towards the parking lot. But most of it was an elevated boardwalk. And it was just an incredible tool, not only for the disabled, but also for preserving the marsh, which had begun to get a lot of extra trails through it. And just a very, very special. And I remember we had worked with a wonderful design firm, and in fact, I believe they also designed the latest addition to the building. Schmidt Copeland. Yeah, and working very closely with Greg Copeland. And I think one of the highlights for me was Ann Burton was chairman of the board. And she and I went to Washington, D.C. where Schmidt Copeland received a National Science Foundation. No, it was an award for architectural design, landscape design. And we got to be there present. And it was held right there in Washington, D.C. in the National Science foundation building. And so it was really an exciting time. We also then completely rebuilt the Stearns Memorial Trail. And while that did not use a lot of boardwalk, it had some boardwalk overload places. It put bridges in over the Doan Brook. And many people couldn’t figure out why we had the bridges so high up, except that we had had several floods that had washed everything out that was low. So we needed to do that kind of construction. So that was a really important part of preserving the land, was getting those two trails in place and then adding on to the building. We completely redid the office, the library. We added on more office space upstairs, redid what was then the nature nursery and classroom. So it was a major expansion to. To make the building much more usable and able to function as a nature center.
Nancy King Smith [00:28:54] There were also some plans to add some visitor space and so on. I want to describe that a bit.
Richard Horton [00:29:05] Because we were really trying to focus on continuing our whole focus on awareness and understanding of the natural world with people of all ages. During the time of planning for the building expansion, that initial building expansion, there was a plan to build a very special visitor center on the side facing the parking lot and the entry drive. It was a very unusual concept that unfortunately, we didn’t have the money to do anything with it. But I still think that it had the potential to be a really great way to introduce people to the outdoors because it was meant to entice people to explore this room that had all kinds of neat little features about it all drawing them to Go outdoors. So that was the hope. And I think some of that’s actually been fulfilled with the latest edition.
Nancy King Smith [00:30:04] Okay. Then program philosophy began to change. Can you describe that a little bit?
Richard Horton [00:30:13] Well, I think that, you know, as any organization grows and people change on the board, everybody comes with different ideas. And while we had very clearly articulated the philosophy of the center, there were. There were people on the board, I felt, who. And not saying it was right or wrong, but just that, felt that they wanted to see the center more like a traditional nature center. And so there was a real kind of, like, push in terms of our philosophy not to drop the environmental education work that we’re doing with Earth Education, but add more traditional nature study and nature interpretation to the programming. And the difficulty was that we didn’t have enough staff or space to do both. And so it meant that either we had to drop a lot of the environmental ed work and develop more along the nature interpretation lines. And we struggled with that concept for a couple years, about two years, I think. And finally, I really felt that for myself, I didn’t want to go in that direction. And I felt that that’s the direction the Nature Center board wanted the center to go. And so it was that time that I felt that they needed to find a director who was more in line with their philosophy. And so that was when I left in 1989.
Nancy King Smith [00:31:41] Did the schools help push that?
Unknown Voice [00:31:48] Thank you.
Nancy King Smith [00:31:51] Did the schools have anything to do.
Richard Horton [00:31:53] With the change in philosophy, encouraging that change? No, they did not. Actually. The schools were very, very eager with what we were doing. We were fitting very closely with what they wanted us to do. And our biggest problem with the schools was we didn’t have enough time in our days to meet the needs of other school systems that were requesting our programming. For example, the Beachwood City schools wanted to do much more with us, and we couldn’t slot them in only a little bit. And I think that was partly because we were so heavily booked with Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights. I mean, when you see every first, third, and fifth grader, that’s a lot of programming time. And those aren’t small school systems.
Nancy King Smith [00:32:43] Fundraising cover a couple of aspects of it, but I know there was a women’s committee that became the Friends. Can you talk about that group?
Richard Horton [00:32:52] Well, I think that goes back to all the volunteers. Again, we mentioned the docents and how these were women who volunteered originally, just women, although we had some men who started to join us also. And there was more interest in ways that people could help, not just as a docent. We had people who would want to help in the office or help with one of our program specialty things like taking tickets or the birdseed savings day, which we were raising money by selling birdseed. And so a wonderful group of people had developed, and they formed what was called the women’s committee of the nature Center. And they just were an incredible resource to help the center. And it was actually their work that developed the gift shop at the nature center. And when I think about that gift shop, and, you know, it was literally a coat closet off the main lobby, we just opened it up, removing the old doors and putting in shelving and cabinetry and even run by a volunteer. And Marge Drollinger, that was her baby, and she just took off with it. And it was a wonderful, wonderful resource for the center. And then they were also involved in. They wanted to do their own programming, bringing in their own speakers. And so we always had monthly programs with the women’s Committee and luncheons and very special things, but they were always very closely tied. And many of them also were very involved with the major fundraiser of the center, which when I started at the center, the major fundraiser was the party in the park, which was this incredible outdoor party at Horseshoe Lake picnic grounds, using gourmet cooks from around the area to share their hors d’oeuvres during the cocktail hour and then have a catered dinner afterwards and dance. But it was just an incredible event, just absolutely wonderful.
Nancy King Smith [00:35:00] And that ran for a number of years. And then why did it end up. [unintelligible]
Richard Horton [00:35:04] The Party in the Park? Well, first of all, when you’re putting on a party in a natural setting under tent, with having to bring in generators to produce more electricity because there isn’t enough from the little line coming in for the bathroom light, it was a very expensive party to put on. And I think that the amount of work that was required to put it on, as well as the high expenses, led to the fact that it was almost becoming prohibitive in terms of what we would have to charge to make a significant amount of money for the center. And so it was decided that we would end the party in the park.
Nancy King Smith [00:35:49] Was funding easy to come by?
Richard Horton [00:35:51] Funding was never easy to come by, but like most nonprofits, I think in many ways we were very fortunate that during the years that I was there, a lot of the funding hadn’t dried up or become as competitive as it is today. I know it’s a very competitive market today for foundation funding, and that we were very fortunate that the programming end of things really paid a significant portion of the budget in terms of staff salaries and that not enough, but that. And the gift shop was a major source. But then, of course, we needed to do constant fundraising and we started the annual fund. Letter appeal to friends and members, work on developing membership. A very key part, I think, for any nonprofit is developing your membership and just constantly working and working and working to make sure that the dollars were there. And then of course, when you go into capital campaigns, you have to go a whole other route along the way and get even more funds. And that’s when we worked in a number of areas. And Betsy Beckwith, who started off as my secretary and then became my administrative assistant, she had a gift for writing and sent her off to Chicago to the foundation center workshop on fundraising and grant writing. And we became very successful at raising money from foundations and from corporations as well as from individuals. So it was just. It was not an easy time, but it was a very fruitful time in terms of the growth of the center. My wife at the time used to laugh. She said, when you started at the nature center, you always wore either jeans or khakis and shoes to be out in the woods. And she said, after about four or five years, I was always wearing three piece suits as I was doing so much fundraising at the time. But that’s the nature of, I think, being the director of a center like that that’s growing.
Nancy King Smith [00:37:53] With the outdoors, with your boots and so on, or your three piece suit. What are changes you saw besides the trails in terms of the landscape? Landscape and the forest and so on?
Richard Horton [00:38:06] Well, I think that we were most concerned. Well, I think there was two things we were most concerned about. One was that we were concerned that so much of the land was being impacted by people who were creating their own trails. The park being so bound by residential areas was a wonderful escape for people. And it was one of the reasons that we decided we needed to really establish the trails very distinctly. Because research at that time showed that if you have a clear, bounded trail that is easy to walk on, people will stay on the trail. And so that’s what we wanted to have. And that’s why we rebuilt the Stearns Trail and built the All Peoples Trail. So that was one way of actually trying to preserve and allow the natural areas to regrow. And that certainly happened particularly in the marsh and the swampy area next to the marsh, which was all wooded to the point that we started seeing wildlife that we had not seen before. And that was really good to see when the deer are trotting up out of the marsh. The foxes are spotted along the trails and you’ve got nesting great horned owls and red tailed hawks everywhere. And it was just really, really rewarding to see that change. The other area of concern of course was the water quality. Here we have these beautiful lakes that in the summertime weren’t very beautiful. Late summer, the algae growth and the duckweed would form such mats across these lakes because they were being over fertilized by runoff. Nonpoint sources of pollution such as fertilizer and pesticides coming in from surrounding lakes, golf courses, individual homes just did a toll on the lake. So it was a concern. So we were always looking for ways to try and do that. And fortunately the partnerships with Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights, since they were the ones that basically had the jurisdiction over the land even though it was owned by the city of Cleveland, they were wonderful partners to work with. I mean I could pick up the phone and call either of the service directors in either city and say we’ve got a problem and they’d be right out to help us. And so that was a good thing. They were trying to work on sewer crossovers that weren’t supposed to be there and trying to correct all those things. And then we also looked into special ways to try and deal with the lake problems, like putting in these, I think they were called White Amurs, the fish that are a non-native species. But we brought them in as sterile, they could not reproduce and their favorite food is algae. We brought them in and stocked the lakes with these large fish to try and basically eat up the algae and try and keep the level of algae down. It worked very, very well until we had a major storm that flushed most of them out of the lakes and into the. Probably into Lake Erie eventually, if they survived the route down through the gorge. But it was an attempt. So those were a lot of things we were working on. We tried reintroducing frogs, but the siltation in the water was so bad that their eggs wouldn’t survive. But we had some, hopefully things are improving.
Nancy King Smith [00:41:40] In some ways. Floods. You were there during a couple significant floods?
Richard Horton [00:41:44] Yes, we had some significant floods. We had what were called hundred year storms. Two years apart and I have never seen so much water. It was just absolutely incredible. One was during the time that we were actually putting in the All Peoples Trail and the water level came up to the point that the nature center building was an island. The parking lot was underwater, the entrance to the driveway entry driveway was underwater. The only way you could get to the building was to walk in from the split of south park up above the building on that ridge of land that comes down to the building. And that was the only way. The road across from the where divides the marsh from the lower Shaker Lake. The water was flowing over the bridge and it was amazing. It had a real scouring effect on the woods because, of course, all the area in the woods was just underwater and it was flowing very fast, very dangerous in many ways. But fortunately we had no groups in. Well, it was late in the day, but that happened twice in two years. It was amazing. But it’s amazing what Mother Nature can do when all that water comes down at one time.
Nancy King Smith [00:43:16] Any other sort of remarkable things that we haven’t touched?
Richard Horton [00:43:21] I would say one of my fondest memories was the incredible people I got to work with, the staff and the volunteers at the point. When I left there, I think we had well over 100 volunteers working at the center in a variety of capacities and the most incredible staff that even to this day, I left in 1989. So 17 years later, we still stay in touch. And it’s just I don’t think I’ve ever worked with such an incredible group of people all moving to try and keep the center going in the direction that we saw it should be going. It was just a really rewarding time because of that.
Nancy King Smith [00:44:09] Emma, have some questions? Not really. I mean, sounds amazing.
Richard Horton [00:44:22] It was an amazing place. It still is an amazing place. I’m looking Forward to the 40th birthday celebration coming up. And it’s interesting also because now as I’m semi retired, because after I left the center, I went back into the schools as an elementary science resource teacher in the public schools, South Eagle Lyndhurst. But I retired in 2004, and now I work as an educational consultant with the Cuyahoga Valley National park association and the Environmental Ed center down in the National Park. And we have this wonderful working relationship with Shaker Lakes. And David Wright at the Nature center is a mentor for our urban fellow. And it’s just. And I’m constantly stopping in there, calling there and talking with them about ways that we can cooperate. And so it’s so nice to be back in that kind of relationship and very enjoyable, very enjoyable.
Nancy King Smith [00:45:20] Any particular wishes for the future for the nature center and the parklands?
Richard Horton [00:45:27] Oh, I think the continued use of preservation to make that island of green space as viable as possible. I think the work in terms of environmental ed is nowhere near completed. There’s just too many people that don’t understand how life functions on this planet and how we’re all tied to it. And so my wish for the center is that they just keep moving forward to help everyone build that relationship with the natural world and realize we’re all tied to it.
Nancy King Smith [00:45:57] Well, thank you very much.
Richard Horton [00:45:58] It’s a pleasure.
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