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LALH Trustees Michael Jefcoat, LALH president, is president of Jefcoat Enterprises in Laurel, Miss. He graduated from the University of the South. Jefcoat is a gardener and a collector of books, art, and decorative art. He is also devoted to the work of Eudora Welty and William Faulkner and serves as a trustee of the Eudora Welty Foundation. Jefcoat and his wife, Evelyn, have worked assiduously in support of the restoration of the Welty house and garden in Jackson, Miss., and the restoration of the gardens and grounds of Rowan Oak, Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Miss. Among Jefcoat’s other philanthropic concerns are establishing forestry scholarships and promoting publishing in the field of American landscape history. John Franklin Miller, LALH vice president, served as president of the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores, Mich., from 1995 until his retirement in 2007. Miller received a B. A. from St. John’s College in Annapolis before earning Bachelor and Master of Divinity degrees from Yale University Divinity School. He went on to do postgraduate work in art and architectural history at the University of Maryland and also attended the Williamsburg Seminar for Historical Administrators and the Attingham (England) Summer School on Historic Houses of Britain. Miller began his career in historic preservation at Hampton National Historic Site in Baltimore, Md., and served as chief executive officer at Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens in Akron, Ohio, for more than fifteen years. Under his tenure, he oversaw the rehabilitation of the Warren H. Manning landscape and restoration of the English Garden, designed by Ellen Biddle Shipman. At Ford House, Miller completed substantial architectural restoration and has implemented several initiatives intended to interpret more fully Jens Jensen’s designed landscape. Natalie W. Shivers, LALH treasurer, is an architect, architectural historian, and author who works as Associate University Architect for Planning at Princeton University, where she helps to oversee the preparation of a long-range campus plan. A graduate of Yale University, Shivers earned her master’s degree in architecture from Princeton in 1984. Most recently she was director of campus capital planning at the University of California-Los Angeles, where she oversaw the development of strategic master plans and coordinated their implementation in the design and construction of new buildings and renovation projects on the historic 419-acre campus. She has also served as project architect for two firms in Los Angeles; supervisor of construction and rehabilitation projects at Paramount Pictures, the Turner Entertainment Group, and 20th Century Fox; and architect/project director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C. She is the co-author of L.A.’s Early Moderns: Art, Architecture, Photography (Balcony Press, 2003). Ann Wilhite, LALH clerk, has also served as chairperson of the Director’s Council at the Matthaei Botanical Garden and Nichols Arboretum and sits on the board of the Great Lakes Performing Arts Association. Wilhite received her B. A. from the University of Michigan, where she trained as a concert pianist. She took her M. A. in ethnomusicology at the University of Sydney, Australia. She has also done graduate work at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. Wilhite has served as chairperson of the Royal Oak Foundation, as an officer of The Garden Conservancy, and on the board of the St. Louis Opera Theatre. She has recently completed 15 years on the Board of Opal Creek Ancient Forest Center, in Oregon. She and her husband, Clayton Wilhite, lived in Chicago, Sydney, London, St. Louis, and New York City before moving to Ann Arbor, Mich., in 2000. Ethan Carr is a nationally recognized landscape historian and preservationist specializing in the public landscape of the United States. He has helped redefine the scholarship on American national parks and modern landscape design through his two books, Wilderness by Design (1998, University of Nebraska Press), which won an American Society of Landscape Architects honor award, and Mission 66: Modernism and the National Park Dilemma (2007, Library of American Landscape History with University of Massachusetts Press). Carr is an associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Architecture and is currently is editing the eighth volume of the Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted. He earned a Ph.D. from the Edinburgh College of Art, received a master’s in landscape architecture from Harvard University, and both master’s and bachelor’s degrees in art history from Columbia University. Shannon Hackett, of Kenilworth, Ill., and New York City, has a B.S. from the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas and was a doctoral candidate in Medieval French literature at Northwestern University. She studied horticulture and landscape design at the Professional School of the Chicago Botanic Garden, where she now serves on the Design Symposium Advisory Committee. She is a landscape designer and president of Fine Gardens LLC. Her work focuses on ecological residential design and historic garden restoration. Ms. Hackett’s projects, located in several states, include the restoration of the Jens Jensen-designed Florsheim estate in Highland Park, Ill. Ms. Hackett is a member of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers, MetroHort (New York City), the Midwest Ecological Landscape Design Association, and the Landscape Design Association, of which she is a past president. Susan L. Klaus is an independent historian in Washington, D.C. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, Susan earned master’s degrees from Harvard University Graduate School of Education and the Department of American Studies of the George Washington University, where she trained as an urban historian. Her interests in the development Washington, D.C., and in planning history led her to explore aspects of the career of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. Susan has published numerous articles on Olmsted, Jr. and the work of the Olmsted firm. She is the author of the LALH award-winning book A Modern Arcadia: Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and the Plan for Forest Hills Gardens (2002) and a co-author of A Part of Us Forever: A Centennial History of St. Catherine’s School. A member of the board of the National Association of Olmsted Parks, Susan is also past chair of NAOP’s Board of Advisors. She also has served on the board of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Darrel Morrison, FASLA, is a long-time advocate of the use of native vegetation and native plant communities as a basis for landscape design, and has been teaching and practicing ecologically based design and management since the 1970s. He received his M.S. in Landscape Architecture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and taught there from 1969 to 1983. He then went on to the School of Environmental Design at the University of Georgia, where he was Dean of the School until 1992. He retired from the University of Georgia in 2004 and moved to Manhattan, where he currently teaches in the Columbia University M.S. program in Landscape Design and continues to practice ecologically based design. His current and recent work includes projects at Storm King Art Center, the New York Botanical Garden, and Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Previously, Morrison was the senior landscape designer for the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas, and he designed the four-acre native plant garden at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum in Madison. He was twice awarded the Outstanding Educator Award by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, and he has received the American Horticultural Society's Teaching Award, as well as its Landscape Design award. John K. Notz Jr., of Chicago, Illinois, and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, is a lawyer who retired from 35 years of practice with Gardner, Carton & Douglas of Chicago in 1996. He has since conducted substantive research into the careers of landscape designers including Jens Jensen, Walter Burley Griffin, O. C. Simonds, and William Le Baron Jenney and architects including Marion Mahony Griffin, Dwight Heald Perkins, and William Purcell. Most of what he has published, to date, can be found at the website of the Chicago Literary Club (www.chilit.org). When practicing corporate law in Chicago, he represented several architectural firms, most notably Perkins & Will. Notz has served as a trustee of Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery (whose landscape designers include Jenney and Simonds), as treasurer of the Society of Architectural Historians, and as president of Black Point Historic Preserve, Inc., an 1888 Victorian “stick” house on Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, with a landscape designed by Olaf Benson, with later additions by Tony Tyznik, then of the Morton Arboretum. Elizabeth Barlow Rogers is the president of the Foundation for Landscape Studies, an organization whose mission is to foster an active understanding of the importance of place in human life. A native of San Antonio, Texas, Rogers earned a B. A. from Wellesley College and an M. A. in city planning from Yale University. She is a life trustee of the Central Park Conservancy, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the boards of The Battery Conservancy, Society of Architectural Historians, Regional Planning Association, and the James Marston Fitch Foundation. She is an honorary member of the American Society of Landscape Architects and a recipient of the society’s 2005 LaGasse Medal. In 1979, she was appointed Central Park administrator and was instrumental in founding the Central Park Conservancy in 1980. She led the Conservancy as president until 1996, when she founded the Cityscape Institute. In 2002, she created the Garden History and Landscape Studies curriculum at the Bard Graduate Center. Barbara Shear is research manager for the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. Prior to joining the Philharmonic, one of the nation’s premier orchestras, in 1999, she served as a development consultant to several arts organizations, including the 92nd Street Y. Shear earned a bachelor’s degree at Barnard College, with a major in American studies, concentrating on American cultural history. After receiving a master’s degree in cinema studies from New York University, she worked as a researcher on several books and documentaries, including a history of women in cinema; as a cataloguer for a wide-ranging movie collection; and as a copy writer for Time-Life Films. Subsequently, she moved into the marketing-research field, providing market analysis and strategic planning guidance to both corporate and not-for-profit clients. Shear is a member of APRA, the professional researchers association. For the past several years, she has served on the LALH Consulting Committee. Nancy R. Turner is a past and founding president of LALH. After earning a B. A. at Smith College, Turner worked as a community volunteer in Rochester, N.Y., for fifty years before moving to New York City in 2004. She is a past board member and vice president of the Garden Club of America and an emerita member of several Rochester cultural organizations including George Eastman House Museum, Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester, Genesee Country Village and Museum, Hochstein Music School, and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. While living in Pittsford, N.Y., Turner and her late husband, Richard L. Turner, restored their c. 1840 Greek Revival home and worked with landscape architect Fletcher Steele to design a garden surrounding it, the last garden of Steele’s career. With her four children, Turner founded the Viburnum Foundation to fund programs relating to historic preservation and literacy. Mark Zelonis is the Ruth Lilly Director of Oldfields & Horticulture at Oldfields, the former estate of the J. K. Lilly Jr. family at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Previously he served as executive director of the Heritage Trust of Rhode Island; as executive director at Blithewold Mansion & Gardens in Bristol, Rhode Island; and as director of Fuller Gardens North Hampton, New Hampshire. Mark earned a Bachelor of Science at the University of New Hampshire, Magna cum laude. He worked in the Peace Corps as a tree crops technician in Liberia, West Africa, before going on to receive a Master of Science at the Longwood Program in Public Horticulture Administration and a Museum Studies Certificate at the University of Delaware. He subsequently studied in the program for the Protection and Conservation of Historic Landscapes, Parks and Gardens, at West Dean College in Chichester, England. His numerous awards include the 2003 Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History, Midwest Construction Magazine’s 2003 Project of the Year Award, and the Model Volunteer Program Award from Volunteers in Action in 1994, 1995, and 1996. Nesta Spink, LALH Trustee Emerita, graduated from Smith College with a B. A. After earning an M. A. in art history at Harvard University, she directed the traveling exhibition service of the American Federation of Arts in Washington, D.C., and in New York City. From 1967 to late 1979 Spink worked at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, first as assistant curator and later as curator of collections. In that role she organized a major exhibition of art by James McNeill Whistler. Called Whistler: the Later Years, the exhibition included paintings, drawings, and watercolors from private and public collections from Europe and America. Spink later worked as an associate at R. M. Light & Company, a major international dealer in prints and drawings. She wrote the catalogue for a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition of Whistler lithographs, The Lithographs of James McNeill Whistler (1982), in collaboration with Susan Hobbs. Later Spink catalogued and appraised the Harris Whittemore family collection of Whistler lithographs, which was subsequently purchased by a private collector. In 1998, while the collection was on loan to the Art Institute of Chicago, the institute published a catalogue raisonné of which Spink was a principal author. Since the late 1990s Spink has worked as an independent consultant at Nesta Spink Prints and Drawings in Ann Arbor, Mich., advising private collectors and museums.
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