Lee Botts was never someone to brush off a kindness, no matter how expected those around her considered it.
Geof Benson, executive director for Dunes Learning Center, remembers the time he saw a small, banged-up car on the side of U.S, 20 near a trail. Region environmental trailblazer and activist Botts had just been in an accident and was still inside the car when he stopped.
Benson, seeing that the car was totaled, coaxed Botts out and offered her a ride home. You’d have thought he’d baked her a cake, so moved was she by the gesture, he said.
“She was so grateful that I’d stopped to help. All I could think was, ‘After all the things you’ve done for everyone, and you’re thrilled with this?'” Benson said Sunday of his friend and mentor, who died at age 91 Saturday in Oak Park, Illinois, of natural causes. “The difference in magnitude always stuck with me.”
Born Leila Carman, the Mooreland, Oklahoma, native started off her career writing a garden column for the weekly Hyde Park Herald in Chicago in the 1950s, becoming the paper’s editor-in-chief in the 1960s, according to her son, Paul. Conservation was her passion, however, and in 1968, she joined the staff of the Open Lands Project in Chicago, and eventually served as the inaugural executive director for the Lake Michigan Federation, which is today the Alliance for the Great Lakes, from 1971 to 1975, Paul Botts wrote in her obituary.
Her accomplishments had broad-reaching implications for the Midwest, including persuading Mayor Richard J. Daley to have Chicago become the first Great Lakes city to ban phosphates in laundry detergents, Botts wrote. She also led U.S. advocacy for the first bi-national Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (1972), was a key advocate for the landmark federal Clean Water Act of 1972, and played a key role in persuading Congress to ban PCBs via the 1974 Toxic Chemicals Control Act, Paul Botts wrote.
Lee Botts relocated to Gary’s Miller section in 1988, where she became an adjunct professor at a local college and joined various boards and committees, Paul Botts wrote. While there, she founded the Indiana Dunes Environmental Learning Center, an independent non-profit located within the Indiana Dunes National Park that offers year-round environmental education programs and overnight nature-camp experiences for grade-school students and teachers.
Currently, around 14,000 students from Indiana, Michigan and Illinois, enjoy the center Lee Botts set out to create, but she, as always, wanted more, Benson said.
“She wanted us to double the size of the center’s campus so more children could have the experience. That would make her so happy,” Benson said. “Her presence and inventions and vision were just incredible.”
Colleagues of Lee Botts echoed Benson in their awe of her plans for the Region. Dunes Center board member David Wright, of Gary, met her 20 years ago and called her environmental work “timeless.”
“I chaperoned for my son’s elementary school trips to the Indiana dunes Environmental Learning Center. Decades later, I was blessed to become a member of the board of the Dunes Learning Center, as it is now referred to,” Wright said. “Lee not only helped foment my efforts in environmental advocacy but, as co-founder of the DLC, she helped guide my son’s volunteer work and helped me bond with him, as she has with countless other kids in Gary, Northwest Indiana and the Midwest.
“She will be missed but her impact will be felt for generations to come.”
Kay Nelson, enivironmental affairs director for the Northwest Indiana Forum, worked with Lee Botts in every phase of her career. She’s grateful to have been “bossed around” by such a formidable friend.
“She was a fabulous mentor, never hesitating to ‘take me to the woodshed.’ I chose to learn from her,” Nelson said. “With her contacts on the environmental side and mine on the business side, we made a very good team on pulling the two sides together. One of her biggest concerns was that we would lose those relationships.”
Lee Botts’ career was topped off in the end by adding “documentarian” to the list. Working with another documentarian, Patricia Wisniewski, “Shifting Sands: On The Path To Sustainability” was released in 2016, Paul Botts wrote. It’s been broadcast on more than 70 U.S. public-television stations, received a regional Emmy Award, been included in several major film festivals, and been screened by scores of local citizens’ groups and public libraries throughout the Lake Michigan states, he wrote.
“I drove her to a lot of meetings, and I always yelled at myself for not having a tape recorder because she always had these meaningful anecdotes to share,” Nelson said.
Lee Botts is survived by her children Karl Botts of Chicago, Elizabeth Botts of Oak Park, Paul Botts of Chicago, and Alan Botts of San Francisco, California; her daughter-in-law Heather McCowen of Chicago; and her grandsons Alex Botts and Theo Botts.
Plans for a memorial service will be announced.
