“Standing Where She is Blessed”: Honoring Environmental Advocate Phyllis Curtis
This is a story about saving our land and natural habitats, and honoring the people who dedicate their lives to that aim. This also is a tale about two Ukiahans that began in the Deerwood neighborhood in the 1960s and continues today. Testimony to the power of their relationship sits on a bluff along the Point Arena coastline. In May 2018, Ukiah’s Phyllis Curtis, longtime resident and founder of the Inland Mendocino County Land Trust, was surprised with a celebration dedicating a bench in honor of her lifetime devotion to the environment and its conservation.
The man who came up with the idea for the bench, and who constructed it with the help of a friend, was Jeff Trouette. Trouette’s plumbing skills have long been valued in inland Mendocino County. Coast residents know him better as a photographer, where he shows his work in Mendocino’s Prentice Gallery.
Jeff Trouette grew up in Ukiah’s Deerwood neighborhood. Playing tennis at the old swim and tennis club as a boy, he met Phyllis Curtis and her husband Hugh. When the Curtises learned that Jeff and his family and friends enjoyed diving for abalone, they offered him an open invitation to access the sea through their Mendocino coast property. This openness and generosity made a lasting impression on young Jeff. Now 57, Trouette still thinks of 94-year old Phyllis as a wise grandmother. He has been especially touched by her passion for the land and its resources.
“I think of her as a true champion of the environment. Phyllis Curtis leads by example, and if she has a reason to act on anything with the environment, she supports it 150%,” says Trouette.
The best example of Curtis’ passion for the land and her penchant for going “all-in” is the Inland Mendocino County Land Trust. She and Hugh, who moved to Ukiah in 1957 after falling in love with the valley, witnessed growth and it impacts over the years. They knew this land conversion and development meant a loss of the inland area’s agricultural heritage, open space, and habitat for wildlife.
Curtis says, “By 1997, I knew it was time to save the land.”
Her conviction led her in 1998 to found the Inland Mendocino County Land Trust, which is committed to preserving the oak woodlands and agricultural lands of Mendocino’s interior through partnering with landowners to create conservation easements.
Jeff Trouette explains one of the secrets to Curtis’ success in her environmental advocacy.
“Phyllis has an important quality. She doesn’t draw a line in the sand,” he says. “Instead, she’ll bring an example to you. She is one of those rare people that we listen to. She can get people assembled and get them to listen.”
An experience on the Coast earlier this year offered Jeff Trouette a chance to acknowledge his respect and gratitude for Curtis. While working on a friend’s coastal property, he learned about a donation program of the Mendocino Land Trust to support construction of benches on conserved properties that it owns.
“Having learned good land stewardship from Phyllis, I said I’d be interested in contributing,” says Trouette. When he found out that the donation allowed him to put his own name on the bench, he considered it, but only briefly. It soon dawned on him, if there were to be a name on a bench overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Pelican Bluffs, it had to be Phyllis’s.
Not only has Trouette adopted the Curtis passion for the land, he also seems to have inherited a penchant for putting in 150% effort. First, he and his friend Gary Burica, a veteran supervisor of the CCC with extensive bench-building experience, got the OK from the Coast’s Mendocino Land Trust director Ann Cole to take on the project.
Cole says, “We greatly appreciate the bench donation, made by Jeff Trouette, and his idea to honor Phyllis this way. The bench is placed at a wonderful lookout spot with fantastic views of the coastline at Pelican Bluffs. This property is one of six preserves protected and owned in perpetuity by the nationally accredited Mendocino Land Trust, and one of many places where the Land Trust has worked with the community to build a trail for everyone to enjoy.”
Trouette and Burica were able to re-mill and use leftover timber from McKerricher State Park. To Jeff, recycling wood for the bench seemed an appropriate choice in honoring Curtis.
His next step was deciding what words to place on the plaque with Phyllis’s name. Privately, Trouette contacted Phyllis’ daughter Kim Curtis. Together, they agreed to surprise her mother with a celebration on the bluff after the bench, with plaque affixed, was completed.
Jeff admits, “Keeping this event concealed from Phyllis felt like I was lying to my grandmother.”
So, Phyllis Curtis labored for awhile under the illusion that the trip to Pelican Bluffs would be a chance for board members of the two land trusts to meet, while enjoying one of the Mendocino Land Trust’s several ocean bluff acquisitions. It proved to be that, and more. Besides representatives of the two conservation organizations, the celebration drew long-time friends and relatives from far distances, including grandchildren and a great nephew. Kim Curtis chose a quote from the poet Mary Oliver for the plaque.
Below the words “Dedicated to Phyllis Curtis” is the quotation: “Sometimes I need only to stand where I am to be blessed.”
—Dot Brovarney
