Senator Bob Graham

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Yesterday we lost a great Floridian, from a time when being great and being Floridian meant something different than it does now. During his eight years as Governor and eighteen as Senator, Bob Graham did more for Florida’s environment than anyone else in history, and it isn’t particularly close. After retiring from the Senate, Graham joined with Nathaniel Reed in founding the Florida Conservation Coalition (FCC) to unite the conservation community in preserving Florida’s springs, rivers, and natural lands. His knowledge, energy, and resoluteness for protecting Florida’s environment were unmatched.

In 2012, while in graduate school at the University of Florida, I started an internship with FCC that would lead to my career in environmental advocacy. Over the next seven years, I had the incredible privilege of working closely with Senator Graham on environmental issues throughout Florida. In many ways, what he and Nathaniel started at FCC 14 years ago is what we try to carry on at the Springs Council today.

Senator Graham’s legacy is so enormous that it can’t be summed up, but we do have his own thoughts from a 2017 guest column in the Orlando Sentinel, which begins:

When you reach the age of 80, as I recently did, you think about your legacy. My dictionary defines legacy as “something that is the result of events in the past.” In other words, the things we create, build or preserve that benefit those we will never know, and may never know of us.

This is a particularly important thought when you have lived “in the arena … marred by dust and sweat and blood,” as Teddy Roosevelt so forcefully put it. When the people have given you the great honor of spending yourself “in a worthy cause …”

When I look back at my nearly 40 years of public service to the people of Florida, my legacy is not the offices to which I was elected, but what I achieved while in those offices. This is something that the current leadership in Tallahassee would be wise to reflect on.

Of all those achievements, there are none more permanent and therefore significant than the land and water we conserved to protect Florida’s environment, economy and quality of life. These lands, which define our state, will remain protected from development no matter who is in charge in Tallahassee or Washington D.C.

These lands are my legacy.

We conserved these lands through a series of programs — Save Our Rivers, Save Our Coasts and Save Our Everglades — that spoke directly to the people of Florida. The connection was tangible. Buy this forest, and you will save the Wekiva River. Buy this beach, and you will save Grayton Beach and the Emerald Coast. Buy the development rights on this ranch land, and you will save it for continued productive agriculture. Buy the Big Cypress; it will contribute to the salvation of the Everglades.

These programs conserved hundreds of thousands of acres of lands that Florida visitors and residents continue to enjoy and depend upon to this today. If you have ever swam at Wakulla Springs, cruised up the St. Johns River, enjoyed seafood from Apalachicola, kayaked down the Suwannee, taken a glass-bottom boat ride at Silver Springs, or admired America’s Everglades, you have directly benefited from these programs.

These places and experiences are Florida’s legacy.

Senator Graham was the best of us, and he left Florida a better place than he found it. We need more leaders like Bob Graham. He will be missed.