October 16, 2016<\/p>\n
The year was 1933. Frank Smith was twelve years old and he had just climbed to the 14,255-foot summit of Long\u2019s Peak<\/a> while at Camp Audubon in Colorado.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an achievement that still makes him proud. But more importantly, being in the snow-capped Colorado mountains changed the perspective of a young boy born and raised in a flat, humid city, albeit in one of the leafiest, most privileged neighborhoods in Houston.<\/p>\n \u201cThey made us pay attention to the flowers and the trees, and study and identify the mammals,\u201d he recalls of his summers at Camp Audubon. \u201cIt was the first time my attention was directed toward natural things.\u201d He had learned \u201ca lot of other things,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I had never been taught anything about the natural world.\u201d<\/p>\n Those fortunate summers in the Rocky Mountain high forest wilderness during the Great Depression set Smith on a remarkable path of conservation and environmentalism. He read the books of John Muir<\/a>, founder of the Sierra Club<\/a> in 1892, including The Mountains of California<\/em><\/a>. That path would lead Smith to found and lead numerous organizations, most recently Save Buffalo Bayou, that have helped protect and preserve bayous and streams, including Buffalo and Armand bayous, Galveston Bay and its estuaries, and create public park lands around the state of Texas. He would work with virtually all of the region\u2019s prominent conservationists, all of them becoming close personal friends. Some of them had been friends since childhood.<\/p>\n But first he would have to grow up, join the Navy, establish several engineering businesses, invent some things, and meet Terry Hershey<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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