Updated March 7th, 2024
Love Dayton’s Natural Spaces? You Can Thank These Four Influential Women in Conservation
March is Women’s History Month, and your Five Rivers MetroParks are highlighting some of Dayton’s most influential women in conservation. A conservation agency protecting nearly 16,000 acres of land, MetroParks would not be able to meet its mission to protect the region’s natural heritage today without these incredible women and their work completed in the past.
Marie Aull (1897 – 2002)
To many, Marie Aull was the godmother of the environmental movement in southwestern Ohio. She was a founding member of the Garden Club of Dayton in 1922 and a beloved environmentalist and naturalist. As both a conservationist and gardener, Aull loved Dayton and its natural beauty, and devoted her life to preserving it. She founded Aullwood Audubon Center and Farm and donated it to the community in 1957. The center became the model for nature centers nationally.
In December 1964, Aull and other Dayton Garden Club members donated $50,000 to assist Five Rivers MetroParks (then known as the Montgomery County Park District, which would be renamed Five Rivers MetroParks in 1995). This was prior to the first levy, which provided funding to establish the park system. The funds were used for the acquisition of some of the district’s first park lands at what are now Possum Creek, Sugarcreek and Carriage Hill MetroParks. She was also one of the founders of Cox Arboretum.
In 1977, Aull donated her home and 30-acre garden to the park district. She continued living in her home, which overlooks the Stillwater River, while keeping her garden open to the public.
Learn more and register for programs at Aullwood Garden MetroPark.
Jean Woodhull (1920 – 2015)
Jean Woodhull was in the audience of a March 1962 meeting sponsored by the Garden Club of Dayton and the Four Seasons Garden Club. She listened to then Ohio City Plan Board Member Felix Rimberg’s call for the preservation of green space and pored over his charts and maps that showed how the Dayton metropolitan area was predicted to develop during the next 18 years. Woodhull also heard a call to action from Glenn Thompson, a journalist with the then Dayton Journal-Herald, about the local disappearance of green space.
After hearing Thompson’s presentation, Woodhull took the challenge and asked what the Garden Club could do to help. She became instrumental in organizing the Save Open Space Committee in the early 1960s that ultimately became the park district. In 1962, Woodhull and Jean Mahoney, Dayton Garden Club member and a Cox family member, convinced James Cox Jr. to donate his farm south of town for what is now Cox Arboretum. She founded the Arboretum with the help of Marie Aull, Jean Mahoney and Ruth Burke, devoted gardener and friend of Woodhull and Mahoney. Woodhull also served as the Cox Arboretum Foundation’s board president from 1979 to 1984.
Nancy (and Frank) Zorniger (1929 – 2021)
In 1978, Nancy Zorniger became an associate board member for the Cox Arboretum Foundation and her husband, Frank, became a trustee and served as membership officer
The Zornigers were especially interested in supporting the Arboretum’s educational programs. In 1985, they provided a gift to start a Youth Education and Participation Garden program, which began by planting 10,000 spring bulbs at the Arboretum entrance.
“The bulbs will be planted by schoolchildren in the fall,” Nancy Zorniger told the Foundation Board at its April 1985 organization meeting, “They will return in the spring and see the beauty they have created.”
It was hoped that some of these children would take that awareness home with them, spreading beauty throughout the communities where they lived.
When the Zornigers were approached to financially support the program next fall, they agreed to not only support it during the coming year, but indefinitely. In 1999, the Zornigers made a $2 million promise as part of a capital campaign. Their gift was acknowledged by bestowing their name on the new building complex designed to welcome visitors: today’s Zorniger Education Campus. This building is home to multiple classrooms and is a place where people of all ages can learn about the natural world.
Mary Klunk (1960 – present)
Affectionately referred to as “Mary, Queen of the Prairie,” Mary Klunk began her career at Five Rivers MetroParks in 1985 as a district aid.
Klunk’s passion for conservation drove her to complete many projects that are instrumental in helping MetroParks fulfill its mission to protect the region’s natural heritage.
“We realized early on that we wanted to be sure we kept biodiversity available, and that requires having many kinds of habitats,” said Klunk.
From the development of the native seed nursery to the recent Germantown MetroPark wetland development and prairie restoration, Klunk has left her mark on the nearly 16,000 acres of land that MetroParks protects.
After a 35-year career at Five Rivers MetroParks, she retired in 2020 as MetroParks’ regional manager of conservation.
Learn more about MetroParks conservation efforts here.
