Mothers and Daughters: Featured Sierran Peggie Griffin and Daughter Gwendolyn
After Gwendolyn Griffin’s arrival on the scene in 1975, mother Peggie and daughter spent many happy times walking in the woods – mom in her hiking boots and Gwendolyn in her infant carrier. When Gwendolyn turned 5, they wanted to go on longer hikes, and Peggie started looking for hiking companions in Tuscaloosa. They connected with Dr. Jim Taylor, who was looking for folks interested in founding a local Sierra Club. They discovered a life-long friend, as well as an organization that met their needs of both enjoying nature and working to protect it. Peggie joined Dr. Taylor and several others in founding the Tuskaloosa Group (now the West Alabama Group) of the Sierra Club. Peggie and Gwendolyn had no way of knowing what a big role this step would play in the rest of their lives.
Peggie was active on the West Alabama Executive Committee for many years, and Gwendolyn was with her every step of the way. One might say that she grew up in the Sierra Club. Peggie began as Outings Leader – and what fun they had discovering the many beautiful places to hike and backpack in Alabama. One action led to another, and Peggie served as Chair of the West Alabama Group for 5 years. During those years, Peggie led a group working to secure curbside recycling in Tuscaloosa. She also joined John Wathen in his work to preserve Hurricane Creek. Peggie led the campaign to move the proposed by-pass from the M-Bend of Hurricane Creek (a beautiful area that is now a park). To publicize the need to save that area, Peggie wrote a grant proposal to the National Sierra Club and secured funding for the making of the movie “The Cliffs of Hurricane Creek”. During that time, Gwendolyn and Peggie spent many special Saturdays walking the trail at Hurricane Creek.
Peggie taught Child Development and directed Oak Trees Child Development Center for 25 years. Environmental education was an important part of her curriculum for both the Child Development classes and the Child Development Center. Peggie became state president of the Alabama Association for Young Children, then formed an environmental lending library for Alabama teachers of young children.
As a preschooler, Gwendolyn began her education with her mom at the Oak Trees Child Development Center. After completing her elementary and middle school years in Tuscaloosa City Schools and her high school years in St. Louis, she enrolled in New College at the University of Alabama, where she designed her degree in Ecofeminism, which few colleges offered. Ecofeminism promotes the idea that social and ecological systems both function more effectively when all beings (human and non-human) are valued. She was always an idealist and her love of nature and desire to protect the environment influenced her actions and decisions through her school years. During college, she started her first business, Griffin’s Earth Friendly Cleaning Service.
While Gwendolyn was away at school and then in college, Peggie became Chair of the Alabama Sierra Club. During that time, she oversaw the Sierra Club Beach Mouse lawsuit against Fish and Wildlife for permitting building in beach mouse habitat. (Peggie and other chapter excom members were threatened with a slap suit by the hotel complex, whose building activities were put on hold.) She also worked with Friends of Forever Wild (this group developed the Forever Wild license plate under the leadership of Joe Copeland), the Gulf Coast Regional Conservation Committee, Friends of Terrapin Creek (working to protect Terrapin Creek from the gold mine), development of stronger CAFO regulations, and supported work to try to stop the burning of chemical weapons in Anniston AL.
Then the calls started coming in that changed Peggie’s direction in life. People called for help from the Alabama Chapter because hog factory farms were locating in rural Northeast Alabama. Through the work she was doing to keep hog factory farms out of Alabama, Peggie became Sierra Club staff in 2000. Her first years on staff focused on bringing an Alabama Sierra Club lawsuit against a hog factory farm that was polluting an Alabama community and its waters, making the movie “The Scoop on the Poop”, and organizing the fight against the “Family Farm Preservation Act” (a friendly, but misleading name for a bill that would preserve the rights of factory farms).
The work to keep factory farms out of Alabama segued into a campaign to support the small family farms of Alabama. As the Southeast Associate Representative for the Alabama Chapter (a long name for “organizer”), Peggie led volunteers in organizing day-long farm tours and other local food events in the major cities of Alabama to teach Alabama residents how and why to eat local. She was a founding member of Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network, serving on the board for 10 years. ASAN has grown from about 10 members to a large, active state-wide organization for sustainable farmers.
The Sierra Club staff position came to an end in 2009, but Sierra Club work was still at hand – as Peggie led the founding of the Coosa Valley Group in Gadsden. Peggie is currently Chair of the Coosa Valley Group, serves as Group Rep on the Alabama Chapter Executive Committee and works to support sustainable agriculture. Through the years, Peggie has received many awards, but the most touching award was the 2018 National Sierra Club Special Service Award, that she received as a result of many letters of support written by Alabama Sierrans. Peggie says that she could not have managed all the work she did for Sierra Club without the help and support of her life partner David Fincher and Gwendolyn.
While Peggie was busy about the work of the Sierra Club, Gwendolyn had “flown the nest” and began her career with a jumpstart on the “Pride Ride 2000.” Because she was committed to cycling as an alternative to fossil fuels, she easily joined the group of women who were riding from California to D.C. to promote equal rights for all people. Her bike ride from Birmingham to D.C. began an inspiring and frustrating time for Gwendolyn doing traditional political work, rallying, lobbying and attempting to sway legislative opinion toward earth awareness. She felt defeated by the dominance of money as the top objective, which gave little consideration to how the planet and its residents were harmed. She thought there must be another way for her to work in support of the earth.
Her next step was making art that promoted love for the wild, both at the local gallery and at the Imagination Festival, where she made art with children. The year at the festival that stands out brightest was when her mom came down to help. Gwendolyn remembers fondly her mom’s smiling natural ability with the children. Though she made many wonderful connections in the art world, she still felt she was not having a big enough outreach. She realized the kind of art she needed to be making was outdoors. She began to understand her own natural ability was with the outdoors. She was lucky enough to get a job working with the Cahaba River Society’s CLEAN program, and spent her days paddling the Little Cahaba with naturalists Gordon Black and Randy Haddock, along with a regular passel of school children. Paddling the Little Cahaba and looking under rocks for macroinvertebrates was a dream job, but she still longed to do more.
The breakthrough came when she began earning her Certificate in Native Plant Studies and volunteering at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. John Manion, who curates the Gardens’ Kaul Wildflower (native plant) Garden and who began the Certificate in Native Plant Studies, became her friend and mentor. John’s guidance helped Gwendolyn move from general gardening, where she was just happy to have her hands in the soil, to specific gardening, where the choices we make can positively influence the planet’s survival. Now Gwendolyn’s volunteer time is with the Native Plant Cultivation group at the Botanical Gardens, where Southeastern plants, some of which are imperiled, are propagated. She counsels people on choosing plants that mimic Southeastern ecosystems, and helps to create ecological corridors in the urban environment of Birmingham.
During her time as staff, Peggie, David, and Gwendolyn (who occasionally lived with Mom) moved to a special place on Gallant Rd., near Attalla AL. Peggie’s dream of living near a mountain was fulfilled, with the “Grandpa’s Mountain” being in the back yard, During this perilous time of the coronavirus, Peggie and David find it very fulfilling to have a hiking trail that they built together – and a garden that provides freshly picked vegetables. They also enjoy their new hobby inspired by Gwendolyn – the growing of native wildflowers; they are currently putting in a new bed of native wildflowers. Peggie has found new direction in her goal to write a book about sustainable agriculture in Alabama – about how it is more important than ever – for our health and our local economy to support Alabama’s small family farms.
Gwendolyn, who now lives in Birmingham, credits her passion for the earth wholeheartedly to her mom and her upbringing in Sierra Club, where her love and understanding of the natural world was cultivated. As a way to see her mom during the coronavirus, she picks up orders of wonderful organic vegetables, breads, cheeses, and mushrooms from the Pepper Place drive through farmers market on Saturday mornings and meets Peggie half way. They frequently meet where they can walk – staying 6 feet apart. Even the coronavirus has not stopped their love for being in Alabama’s wonderful out of doors!