Voice of the River

Introducnon.

Notes from a Fan

by John Rothchild

The first time I saw Marjory Stoneman Douglas was in the gymnasium

of the Everglades City school. It was 1973, sometime in late summer,

known locally as the mosquito season. An incredible optimist in this

town of 100 stone crabbers and a handful of odd Yankees, lost in the fog

of mosquitoes at the edge of the Everglades National Park, had proposed

to build a suburb. The optimist needed a bridge permit, which was the

subject of this public hearing, sponsored by the U.S. Army Corps of

Engineers.

The suburb idea stirred up environmentalists from both sides of the

state, and they were fighting the bridge permit. We townspeople, most

of us opposed to the development ourselves, were delighted when Mrs.

Douglas appeared in her famous floppy hat. We d heard that this power-

ful woman, old enough to be prehistoric by Florida standards, would not

allow any suburbs in the Everglades. In fact, it was rumoured that she d

more or less created the Everglades and was as fiercely protective as a