Environmental defender had Southwest Florida roots

Cruising along Interstate 75 south of Ocala, I'd spot what looked like a giant planter overhead.

Thanks to a sign and a Google search, I learned it's the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway Bridge, a paved link on a hiking and cycling trail stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the St. Johns River.

I learned or re-learned through further web browsing that Carr:

• Led the fight for nearly a decade to stop an Army Corps of Engineers project already underway: an unprecedented feat.

• Called herself a "housewife from Micanopy" even though she held a graduate degree in zoology and worked in scientific settings.

• Died in 1997 in Gainesville at the age of 82.

What I did not know until I read a book published this year was that Carr also once was a Southwest Floridian, who:

• At age 3 moved here from Boston with her family, who'd purchased a 10-acre orange grove in Bonita Springs.

• Swam with her little horse, Chiquita, off Bonita Beach

• Graduated Fort Myers High School in 1932

• Returned to the City of Palms from college for a couple of summers under a New Deal program that helped her earn tuition at Florida State College for Women, today's FSU.

Those juicy tidbits came via "Marjorie Harris Carr: Defender of Florida's Environment," written by Peggy Macdonald and published in March by University Press of Florida.

I've lived in Southwest Florida 35 years, and have worked at The News-Press almost all of it. I found nothing in the newspaper archives about Marjorie Harris Carr's youth here.

Even local folks who rubbed elbows with Carr when she was an adult seem to know little about her youth spent here.

"We called her Margie. By the 1970s, she was an environmental legend," said Lee County Commissioner Frank Mann, who served in the state Legislature for many years.

Mann helped lead the charge in that body to seal the doom of the Cross Florida Barge Canal, a project he dubbed the "wicked ditch" for its serious threat to the Ocklawaha River and to Central Florida's water aquifer and overall habitat.

And, although he remembers Carr, he doesn't recall her ever mentioning that she grew up in Lee County.

"I am astounded. I didn't know," Mann said when I called to pump him for more information.

Longtime environmental educator Bill Hammond recalled interviewing Carr and Everglades advocate Marjory Stoneman Douglas at a Fort Myers High School event, possibly in the early 1970s, the details of which appear to have been lost.

That only made me crave more knowledge.

I attempted to contact people who went to school here with her. Local arts supporter Berne Davis, who celebrated her 100th birthday this year, was junior Bernese Barfield when Harris graduated Fort Myers.

The high school then sat where today's county tax collector headquarters are, west of Fowler Street.

Davis recalls one teen pastime in particular. After school or at lunch, "we used to promenade from Second Street to Fowler," Davis said. "We would just sit on the fences and talk."

But the two young women didn't run in the same crowd. Davis recalls only that Harris "was a strong personality and a good student."

I leafed through Davis' 1932 Caloosahatchian yearbook and concluded that Harris kept a pretty low profile, but was no shrinking violet.

Under her senior picture, the activities listed for various years included an honor society, drama, math, Spanish, applied arts and stamp club.

Curiously, she was not a member of the Nature Club, which judging from the group picture, was huge.

Marjorie Harris and University of Florida herpetologist Archibald "Archie" Carr eloped and married near the Everglades on New Year's Day 1937. They had five children.

Mimi Carr, the oldest and the only daughter, is 71. She still lives in the Gainesville area, where her late parents made their home.

There weren't many Carr family trips to Southwest Florida. Grandfather Charles Harris died while Marjorie was in high school. Grandmother Clara Harris, who'd taught at Lee County schools, ultimately moved to the Gainesville area to be closer to the Carrs.

But "we did go down when I was 7 or 8. Grandma Harris was living in a tiny house, I think it was on Bonita Beach.

"That was my introduction to the mosquitoes of South Florida," Mimi Carr said, "but I also discovered swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. It was exquisite."

Mimi Carr offered a mixed picture of whether her mother had mostly happy memories from here. She was an only child, and "maybe kind of lonely."

To be sure, the death of her beloved father of pneumonia when she was 15, left its mark. Money was tight. Not only were Marjorie's teen years during the Great Depression, father Charles Harris died one month before he'd be eligible for a Boston teacher's pension.

The Harrises also were northern transplants and "slightly better educated" than many in the farming and fishing community that was then Bonita Springs.

But Mimi Carr is adamant the natural Southwest Florida left a good impression: "My mother ... just fell in love with the outdoors, observing it and being a part of it."

Macdonald reworked her UF doctoral dissertation to craft a biography of Carr that chronicles not only how she stopped completion of the barge canal, but also helped transform conservationism into a more science-based environmental movement, while pursuing a career in science at a time when women were expected to retire after marrying.

In the book's first chapter, Macdonald wrote: "Marjorie Harris explored the creeks, rivers and beaches near Fort Myers ... with her mare Chiquita. Chiquita was a wild Florida Cracker horse of Spanish descent, and caught on the Kissimmee Prairie. She was Harris' main transportation for several years in grade school."

In an email conversation with me, Macdonald further connected the dots between Carr's Southwest Florida girlhood and the woman she became.

When postwar development began to transform the natural beauty of Florida—including the construction of I-75 literally through Carr's Micanopy backyard —"she stood up for what remained of Florida's wildlife and wild places," Macdonald wrote.

Carr's accomplishments include protecting and restoring Lake Alice on the University of Florida campus and Paynes Prairie in Alachua County, plus leading Florida Defenders of the Environment's successful campaign to stop construction of the Cross Florida Barge Canal, which would have had catastrophic environmental consequences, especially for the Floridan Aquifer.

Macdonald believes Marjorie Harris Carr's childhood experiences in Bonita Springs and Fort Myers "shaped her understanding of Florida's ecology and inspired her sense of optimism about everyone's potential to be good stewards of the Earth."

Had the Harris family remained in Boston instead of following the Florida dream to a small orange grove in Bonita Springs, Macdonald said, "Florida would look very different today."