Abby Connolly
As the summer kicks into full gear and we start to stay outside and enjoy nature a lot more, it’s important to remember the people in history who have fought to preserve our planet’s natural beauty and ecosystems.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas has been referred to as the ‘Guardian of the Glades’ for all the work she did to protect and stress the importance of the Florida Everglades. This is her story.
Marjory was born in Minnesota in 1890. After graduating high school in 1908, she attended Wellesley College to study English literature. She was elected Class Orator and graduated in 1912.
After college, she briefly lived in Newark, New Jersey, and met newspaper editor Kenneth Douglas. They married a few months after meeting, but their marriage did not last long, as Kenneth quickly developed an issue with alcohol and put them both in debt.
In 1915, her father invited her to live with him in Miami, Florida, where she got a job as a society reporter and editor for the Miami Herald, which her dad had founded in 1908.
During World War I, Marjory began volunteering for the American Red Cross in 1917 and got to travel to Europe. Throughout this time, she continued writing for the Herald and wrote about her experiences there.
After finishing her work with the Red Cross and returning to Miami, she was made assistant editor at the Miami Herald. This was when the subject of her articles turned toward redevelopment concerns in Florida and other topics she was passionate about, like women’s suffrage, civil rights, and more, in her popular daily column “The Galley.”
Marjory left the Herald and turned to freelance writing in 1923. She wrote award-winning short stories for a series of publications and started teaching at the University of Miami from the late 1920s to the early 1930s.
Since she was known as a vocal advocate for Florida’s natural beauty and the Everglades, author Harvey Allen approached Marjory in the early 1940s to contribute to his book series about rivers in America.
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