Oaks form a living memorial for Buffalo Bayou’s best friend
Five magnificent Bur oaks planted along Buffalo Bayou west of downtown in Eleanor Tinsley Park will be dedicated on Tuesday in memory of Terese Tarlton “Terry” Hershey.
Hershey died in January at 94, leaving behind a legacy of conservation and activism as towering as this beautiful stand of Bur oaks. The trees will grow to shade the souls and inspire the spirits of bayou lovers for decades, if not centuries to come.
She would likely be pleased. The oaks are well-placed, just above a wide swath of the bayou she fought so hard to preserve in a natural state — or as natural a state as decades of some wellintentioned, but misguided flood-control efforts would allow.
That was one of the critical missions of her storied life, to see Buffalo Bayou preserved as a shimmering ribbon of life and hope.
Hershey believed in the bayou. She believed that if left bare of concrete and properly planted and maintained, its success in controlling floodwaters, providing wildlife habitat and giving pleasure would be increased.
The goal was to preserve the bayou’s meandering path through prairies, neighborhoods and city parks. Though its banks would swell beyond capacity, it would be without the turbidity of faster-flowing cement channels.
When Hershey believed in something that she knew to be correct in its science and in its history, she fought to the finish. She spearheaded smaller local projects as well as Texas-wide and national conservation projects.
She collected powerful allies in governors and countless other elected officials including a president. As President George H.W. Bush dubbed her, Terry Hershey was a “force of nature for nature.” She joined a Texan First Lady to found the internationally celebrated Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
We have to appreciate the irony that the species of oak planted in her name is a Bur oak, as Hershey was often a burr in the saddle of those who did not share her mission or who sought shortcuts to more stable, long-term ways to protect a wetland, a naturally occurring native grass species or the winding course of a bayou.
There were battles large and small, victories as they came her way, but there was never any diminishment of her determination. She could be as demure and disarming as the debutante of her hometown of Fort Worth that she was as a young woman, or as curt-tongued and deliberate as a sergeant.
She could sit patiently watching bayou wildlife at her home on the banks of Buffalo Bayou or be jumping to attention to make a point during the battle of the moment. When it came to her beloved bayou, it was full-steam-ahead, take-noprisoners.
So it was fortunate that Terry lived long enough to hear many say that the revitalization of Buffalo Bayou and its banks from downtown west to Shepherd Drive was beyond expectations.
Now, every day, the banks of the bayou host longtimers and newcomers savoring this gift, especially in the hugely popular Terry Hershey Park in west Houston.
There is still work to be done. We wish the water would turn less brown. We want the trash to stay where it belongs. We hope for more Bur oak groves to shade us from the heat.
But as these oaks are planted and tended, we can say our thanks to Hershey and those she has inspired.
One of America’s most popular naturalist writers, Donald Culross Peattie, once commented, “No child who ever played beneath a Bur oak will forget it.”
The newly planted Bur oaks and a small monument nearby will help us remember who, how and why a bayou is allowed to be among us just as it was intended to be: Sometimes gentle, sometimes forceful, just as Hershey was, the bayou champion we honor on Tuesday.
Andrew Sansom is the former executive director of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and Texas Nature Conservancy and is currently Research Professor of Geography and Executive Director of The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University.