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Submitted by Dave Wilson,
Jr.
ow rare it is that human beings can garner the strength and
kindness to devote their lives to protecting something that
will never have the opportunity to give back to them. Human
goodness, in all its purity and freedom, exists outside the
bounds of reciprocity.
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whole life, and in particular the past two years, Carolyn
has worked tirelessly to protect the living legacy in the
coastal bays. In her ceaseless march, she has asked for nothing
in return but the hope that nature will be okay, with or without
her.
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the past six years, the Maryland Coastal Bays Program has
been working with farmers, developers, fisherman and others in the community
to devise common sense ways of protecting Maryland's coastal
bays.
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her efforts to see this estuary through the eyes of its users,
Carolyn has become a farmer, a developer, and a fisherman.
As 4-year chairwoman of our Citizens' Advisory Committee,
the selfless wonder slaved every day, every week, for the
past three years to protect this special place in Maryland
for all of those who live and work here.
member of the Worcester County Planning Commission, Carolyn
knows that environmentalism on the Eastern Shore is a difficult ethic
to advance. Still, she pushes on. Although she owns a business
in West Ocean City, she manages to find about 40 hours a week
to devote to protecting the coastal bays.
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five years, four subcommittees have been meeting twice monthly
to create a management plan for the coastal bays. Armed with
information, Carolyn has attended all but a handful of the
160 meetings. She comes to the office daily to answer phone
calls so staff can do other things. She has helped form a
fisheries management group to discuss such management in the
coastal bays. She has rallied a workgroup to lobby the Worcester
County Commissioners for the protection of bay grasses. She
has been taking her time to give presentations to local schools
on the importance of preserving wildlife. She created her
own series of hats that celebrate the coastal bays. She has
amassed developers into a design standards committee. She
has written scores of letters to local newspapers about resource
issues on the Eastern Shore. She has been at the forefront
in planning every public and program meeting since the program's
inception in 1996. For every meeting she
donates food and drink from her country store.
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significantly, she does these things with such diplomacy that
even the staunchest cynics of environmentalism are wooed into
a sense that the natural world is something worth fighting
for.
 arolyn's
well-deserved recognition, too, is worth such a fight.
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