Liberty Prairie Conservancy honors 91-year-old land steward
By Judy Masterson jmasterson@stmedianetwork.com April 6, 2011 10:18PM
Liberty Prairie Conservancy President Jeff Sundberg of Libertyville presents the first Lake County Conservation Award to Barbara Turner, 91, of Long Grove. | Thomas Delany Jr.~Sun-Times Media
Land stewards
Liberty Prairie Conservancy is a nonprofit organization that helps people preserve and steward wildlife habitat, farmland and other open space throughout Lake County. For more inforamtion, visit www.libertyprairie.org.
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Updated: June 6, 2011 4:46AM
Barbara Turner’s life has been shaped by the land she grew up on — a verdant woodland with a valley and a stream that borders the deep ravine of Indian Creek — property that is preserved for generations to enjoy.
“People over the years have wondered why we didn’t develop it,” said Turner of the Long Grove property that has been her home for more than 80 years. “But if you really care about the land, if you understand the value of it — that it’s more than what can be developed on it — you understand you can’t replace what’s there.”
Turner, who will turn 92 in June, was honored Tuesday by the Liberty Prairie Conservancy, which presented her with its inaugural Lake County Conservation Award for her efforts to preserve and steward the 36-acre Reed-Turner Woodland Nature Preserve.
Steve Barg, conservancy executive director. hailed Turner’s “leadership, patience and persistence” in helping Reed-Turner Woodland become one of the first private properties to be preserved in Illinois by The Nature Conservancy.
“Barbara Turner a pioneer in woodland restoration and stewardship,” Barg said. “And her property continues to be a research and learning lab for others.”
The award will be given annually by the conservancy to a recipient who “embodies the spirit of conservation through their actions to preserve, restore or advocate for open space,”
Turner spent much of her childhood on the property, which her father, Chicago banker Guy Reed, began purchasing in 1929 and where she and her late husband, Harold Turner, raised two children. Harold Turner was a longtime organist and pianist for WGN radio and the Bozo show.
As a girl, Turner explored woods, ravines and nearby farms. She fished and ice-skated on the 8-acre Reed Pond — once a dry marsh — excavated by her dad.
She donated the land for conservation through The Nature Conservancy in 1976 and served as steward of the site, which is now managed by the Long Grove Park District.
Rich in natural habitats, dotted with hickory and oak trees and home to a sedge meadow and burr oak savanna, the preserve is ideal for birding, photography and nature walks. It has long been dedicated as an Illinois Nature Preserve, the strongest level of protection afforded to natural areas of the highest quality.
Growing up in a cabin in the woods rooted Turner to the land and gave her a strong “sense of place, “a place to retreat to,” and memories “that stay.”
“I’ve been associated with this land for so long — I’ve lived here for so long — I wish everybody could have something that special,” said Turner, who still lives on two acres of the family property that will eventually be added to the preserve,
Turner urges people to “come, walk the land,” to gaze across the valley formed by a glacier thousands of years ago.
“It’s the diversity on the land that makes it so interesting,” she said.
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