By P.C. Zick – @pczick.bsky.social
“I’m just a little old lady in tennis shoes.” So said Margaret Hames when other more glowing titles followed her name.
Environmentalist, conservationist, defender of wetlands, scrubs, and hammocks, and savior of public places in Brevard County, Florida, are more accurate descriptions of this “force of nature,” her daughter, Pat Baxter, said recently.
Photo of Margaret Hames hanging in the nature center that bears her name
Her life took some unusual twists and turns despite following the traditional role of wife and mother for many years–it was the choice she made back in 1943 when she married her childhood sweetheart William Hames. She was born in 1921 in Georgia, where I would imagine young girls weren’t raised to be mavericks, but despite that, she graduated from Agnes Scott College in 1942 with degrees in chemistry and zoology. She was offered a fellowship to Emory University in biochemistry, which involved working on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where, in 1942, top-secret work with the most elite scientists of the time raced to create the atomic bomb used in 1945 to end the Pacific portion of World War II.
She turned down the offer. Instead, she married William in 1943 and soon thereafter began raising their family of three children. It wasn’t until 1966 that she pursued a career as a science teacher at Lyndon B. Johnson Junior High School in Eau Gallie, Florida. She taught for eleven years.
When she retired, she put her love of nature into overdrive and taught herself everything she could about the native plant species of Florida.
“It’s sad that everyone is so busy remaking Florida, they can’t enjoy it for its own identity,” Margaret said in one of the many articles written about her. “We should be proud and capitalize on what Florida is instead of trying to change it into something it isn’t.”
In 1985, she became the director of Florida’s Native Plant Society and worked tirelessly to keep out the nonnative invasives, particularly, the “terrible three”: Brazilian pepper, Australian pine, and melaleuca. She created mini-ecosystems in her backyard in Melbourne Village in Brevard County, which included pineland, hammock, and wetland areas.
She stood down bulldozers to protect pristine dune systems, battled developers and elected officials to protect and save the natural world of Brevard County. She also worked to protect the endangered scrub jay and its habitat. She loved plants and wildlife alike. In 1996, Florida Environments magazine named her Person of the Year.
Many of the natural areas in and around Brevard County exist today because of her tireless work, including the Enchanted Forest in Titusville.
Turkey Creek Sanctuary Preserve in Melbourne is the home to the Margaret Hames Nature Center, an interpretive center created in 1992 to honor the legend and savior of so many natural areas in one of the most overdeveloped in the country.
Her philosophy on the environment sums up her legacy better than I can in my little post.
“We are not the owners of the land, but the stewards. We owe it to future generations to use the land–plants, air, water, animals–properly.”
Her life work from scientist to wife to mother to teacher to environmental crusader shines as inspiration to me. It is never too late in life to make a difference in the world. Never forget a little “old lady in tennis shoes” can make a difference.
Check out the three books in my Florida Fiction Series. Each book stands alone but each of them shows how individuals work together to save Florida’s fragile environment.
All three are available on Kindle (free with Kindle Unlimited), paperback, and audio. Click below to see all the options.
P.C. ZICK 