Marjory Stoneman Douglas

Marjory Stoneman Douglas (April 7, 1890 – May 14, 1998) was an American journalist, author, women's suffrage advocate, and conservationist known for her staunch defense of the Everglades against efforts to drain it and reclaim land for development. Moving to Miami as a young woman to work for The Miami Herald, she became a freelance writer, producing over one hundred short stories that were published in popular magazines. Her most influential work was the book The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), which redefined the popular conception of the Everglades as a treasured river instead of a worthless swamp. Its impact has been compared to that of Rachel Carson's influential book Silent Spring (1962). Her books, stories, and journalism career brought her influence in Miami, enabling her to advance her causes.

As a young woman, Douglas was outspoken and politically conscious of the women's suffrage and civil rights movements. She was called upon to take a central role in the protection of the Everglades when she was 79 years old. For the remaining 29 years of her life she was "a relentless reporter and fearless crusader" for the natural preservation and restoration of South Florida. Her tireless efforts earned her several variations of the nickname "Grande Dame of the Everglades" as well as the hostility of agricultural and business interests looking to benefit from land development in Florida. She received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was inducted into several halls of fame.

Douglas lived to 108, working until nearly the end of her life for Everglades restoration. Upon her death, an obituary in The Independent in London stated, "In the history of the American environmental movement, there have been few more remarkable figures than Marjory Stoneman Douglas."

Early life

Marjory Stoneman was born on April 7, 1890, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the only child of concert violinist Florence Lillian Trefethen and Frank Bryant Stoneman. One of her earliest memories was her father reading to her The Song of Hiawatha; she burst into sobs upon hearing that the tree had to give its life to provide Hiawatha the wood for a canoe. She was an early and voracious reader. Her first book was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which she kept well into adulthood until "some fiend in human form must have borrowed it and not brought it back". She visited Florida when she was four, and her most vivid memory of the trip was picking an orange from a tree at the Tampa Bay Hotel. From there she and her parents embarked on a cruise from Tampa to Havana.

Marjory's parents separated when she was six. Her father endured a series of failed entrepreneurial ventures and the instability caused her mother to move them abruptly to the Trefethen family house in Taunton, Massachusetts. She lived there with her mother, aunt, and grandparents, who did not get along well and consistently spoke ill of her father, to her dismay. Her mother, whom Marjory characterized as "high-strung", was committed to a mental sanitarium in Providence several times. Her parents' separation and the contentiousness of her mother's family caused her to suffer from night terrors. She credited her tenuous upbringing with making her "a skeptic and a dissenter" for the rest of her life.

As a youth, Marjory found solace in reading, and eventually, she began to write. At sixteen she contributed to the most popular children's publication of the day, St. Nicholas Magazine—also the first publisher of 20th-century writers F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rachel Carson, and William Faulkner—with a puzzle titled "Double Beheadings and Double Curtailings". In 1907, at seventeen years old, she was awarded a prize by the Boston Herald for "An Early Morning Paddle", a story about a boy who watches a sunrise from a canoe. As her mother's mental health deteriorated, Marjory took on more responsibilities, eventually managing some of the family finances and gaining a maturity imposed upon her by circumstance.

Education and marriage

Marjory left for college in 1908, despite grave misgivings about her mother's mental state. Her aunt and grandmother shared her concerns, but recognized that she needed to leave in order to begin her own life. She was a straight-A student at Wellesley College, graduating with a B.A. in English in 1912. She found particular success in a class on elocution, and joined the first suffrage club with six of her classmates. She was elected Class Orator but was unable to fulfill the office since she was already involved in other activities. During her senior year while visiting home, her mother showed her a lump on her breast. Marjory arranged the surgery to have it removed. After the graduation ceremony, her aunt informed her it had metastasized, and within months her mother was dead. The family left the funeral arrangements up to Marjory.

After drifting with college friends through a few jobs to which she did not feel well-suited, Marjory Stoneman met Kenneth Douglas in 1914. She was so impressed with his manners and surprised at the attention he showed her that she married him within three months. He portrayed himself as a newspaper editor, and was 30 years her senior, but the marriage quickly failed when it became apparent he was a con artist. The true extent of his duplicity Marjory did not entirely reveal, despite her honesty in other matters. Douglas was married to Marjory while already married to another woman. While he spent six months in jail for passing a bad check, she remained faithful. His scheme to scam her absent father out of money worked in Marjory's favor when it attracted Frank Stoneman's attention. Marjory's uncle persuaded her to move to Miami and end the marriage. In the fall of 1915, Marjory Stoneman Douglas left New England to reunite with her father, whom she had not seen since her parents' separation. Shortly before that, her father had married Lillius ("Lilla") Eleanor Shine, a great-great-granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson (her grandfather was Francis W. Eppes). Marjory later wrote that Shine "remained my first and best friend all my life in Florida." After moving to Florida in 1915, Marjory rarely returned to Massachusetts, but retained her affection for it; her 1987 memoir Voice of the River, is dedicated "To Massachusetts, with love."