Melanie White on the magic of Overton Park
For Overton Park Conservancy board member Melanie White, the park has been a place to become part of a family.
After moving to Memphis from San Francisco in 1985, Melanie sought to reclaim all the time she’d spent commuting. She settled in Central Gardens and joined a running group that began at the Midtown Huey’s and traveled through Overton Park. It was the beginning of more than 30 years of friendships made on the park trails.
“Over the years, I have made my best friends in the park, mostly spontaneously through running. It has been a huge part of my life,” she says. For years she and several friends had a tradition of bringing their families and walking a loop together on Thanksgiving morning. She’s discussed quantum mechanics on runs with a Rhodes math professor, debated politics with fellow runners, and donated a stroller to a St. Jude family who visited the park to remind them of life on their farm back home.
Of her interaction with the family, whose three children were all sharing a single small stroller, she says, “That could only have happened at the park. I am sure I would never have stopped them on the sidewalk. But something about this place makes people say hello and check on each other.”
Melanie’s commitment to the park extends beyond her daily runs. As vice president of the volunteer organization Park Friends for more than 20 years, she was involved with countless activities to protect and beautify the park. She helped to take care of trails, plant trees, pick up trash, and lead hikes. Park Friends created the first Old Forest Trail Map and installed the trail markers along the loop. Park Friends also became involved in the Overton Park Junior Open Golf Tournament, providing towels for the participants and recruiting sponsors and volunteers.
Melanie stepped down as vice president in 2010, and in 2012 she joined the board of the newly formed Overton Park Conservancy. “I’m lucky to be on the board, because I get to hear so many positive comments. The park is safe, clean, friendly, and free.”
“It’s not free to maintain,” she adds. “We have to raise money to keep it in good condition.” She cites an increase in visitors as a positive outcome of creating the Conservancy. “Especially on weekends, the park is such a microcosm of Memphis. It proves to you that all people can get along.”
In the long term, Melanie hopes to see the Conservancy become financially stable enough to support educational programming. She loves watching families, especially those with no background in nature, connect with the wildlife of the park. “I love it when I run and I see a copperhead, and I can tell people that this is a beautiful creature and not something we should be afraid of.”
In addition to her board service, Melanie volunteers regularly with the River City Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution to do landscape work in the formal gardens. She loves that the group has taken ownership of the space and hopes other park users feel that same level of investment. The park belongs to the people of Memphis, she points out. “They’re not park visitors, they’re park owners.”
Melanie hopes park lovers will financially support this “unique and wonderful place where you can make friends, find peace, give back, take your children and grandchildren, and experience so much history. And in the mornings, it’s almost like a chapel the way the light comes through the trees. It’s just a magical space.”
