George Howell & Clay Hill Memorial Forest Serve Children

Original Source – Summer 2014 – Page 7

 

“My calling is to do things and create things that have to do with children,” said George Howell, husband of the late Joan White, whose family had owned Clay Hill Memorial Forest before donating it to Campbellsville University.

“The earlier you can get children out and into the woods and teach them something about nature, the better it is because it stays with them,” he said. “That’s the way we’re going to be able to preserve God’s creation.”

As he said this, he picked up a turtle and took it over to Dr. Richie Kessler, associate professor of biology, who was teaching a group of third graders about conservation. The children were fascinated with the turtle, which had slowly come out of its shell.

“What would be good to say to someone who has done something to save nature?” Kessler said to the children.

“Thank you,” they said.

“And if you can’t tell somebody thank you, how can you show them?” he said. “By how you take care of what’s left behind; like what we talked about— conservation.”

Kessler gave the turtle back to a smiling Howell, who put it back on the path to continue its journey.

Howell said if he had to redo his life he would have become a teacher.

“I didn’t realize that was my calling,” he said. “It was just one of those things I was interested in.”

Throughout his life he was chairman of the Junior Chamber of Commerce in Alabama, a baseball coach, Sunday school teacher, and youth leader for retreats and youth groups, and was on a school board. He was also involved in a mentoring program for local schools and donated money to camps for inner-city children.

One day, Howell thought it would be nice to bring the idea of an interactive forest to Clay Hill, and in 1996, he and his wife’s brother, Ted, donated their portion of the forest to CU with the condition that the land be used for environmental and forestry education and research.

Howell’s portion serves as a laboratory. It is preserved and untouched, aside from Little Angel Spring where Joan is buried.

“She inspired the whole thing. She loved the land and this forest,” Howell said.

Clay Hill offers activities for adults and children, including a tree exhibit for the visually impaired, where people can feel how the root system inside a tree works.

“This is the number one most educational field trip,” Cheryl May, seventh grade science teacher at Lebanon Middle School, said. “There is so much learning to do.”

Dr. Gordon Weddle, professor of biology, said bus fare to Clay Hill is free.

“We pay for students to come here,” he said.

Howell said Green Minds, a student club dedicated to serving the environment, is why he supports the student trips.

“I really think the students at CU are much more attuned to the environment,” he said.

For more information about Clay Hill Memorial Forest, visit www.clayhillforest.org or call (270) 465-9570.