(WSB photos)
Back in October, during opening ceremonies for the fall Duwamish Alive! event, Willard Brown was honored as a Green-Duwamish Champion for his work saving and restoring the Delridge Wetlands Natural Area – a former Seattle City Light substation site. Today he got to celebrate the award at the site with some of his youngest partners in the restoration work:
Students from nearby Louisa Boren STEM K-8 use the site for outdoor environmental education. Today they were going to plant a tree in Willard’s honor, but the ground was too hard to dig after multiple mornings with sub-freezing lows! So that’ll have to wait for a warmer day.
Willard led the wetland project as part of his work for the Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association, from which he recently retired. DNDA executive director David Bestock talked with the students about his accomplishments.
Willard is one of the first to be honored as a Green-Duwamish Champion; the Duwamish Alive Coalition explains that the award is meant “to recognize and honor those individuals and organizations who have made significant contributions to improving the health of the Green-Duwamish Watershed,” adding:
Willard’s dedication to a wholistic approach of engaging and improving the community, its environmental health, education, and wellbeing is exceptional. His vision of “kids across all demographics, income, language, race, culture, all are equal in their support and stewardship of the habitat that they inherit,” has been his driving motivation, supplied by his never-ending positive energy which has helped Nature Consortium/DNDA open a new chapter in its legacy.
The Delridge Wetlands site is at 23rd/Findlay.
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