2009-01-22_AgendaPacket - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

~e Blyth Berg Brookman wants Freshwater to offer solutions of many people take pride in a flourishing crop of dandelions. Blyth Berg Brookman is one of those people. She talks enthusiasti- cally-she's enthusiastic about almost everything-about refusing to spray herbicides on her lawn on the shore of Lake Miruletonka out of concern the chemicals would wash off the grass and into the lake. "We didn't spray for dandelions," she said recently. "Being different at that time, we probably had the worst-looking lawn in the neighborhood." Brookman, a member of the Freshwa- ter Society Board of Directors since 2002, now lives on a wooded, non-Lakeshore lot in Shorewood. But for 20 years she lived on Lake Mimnetonka in Minnetrista. In addition to dandelions in the lawn, there was the issue of Eurasian water- milfoil bespoiling the lake's beaches and shorelines. She didri t support poisoning the milfoil any more than she did spray- ing the dandelions. Instead, she was among the Lakeshore owners-including her neighbor at the time, Freshwater founder Dick Gray-who relied on mechanical cutters, rather than chemicals, to fight the milfoil. "All the neighbors were treat- ing the water chemically, and it just felt wrong," Brookman said. "It didn't make sense to me you could treat the water with poi- son, and not have an impact." Gray eventually recruited Brookman to join the Freshwater board. She serves on the board's finance and executive committees and is vice chair of programs. She has been active in the Freshwater "Water 1s Life" art contest and she strongly supported the Guardianship Council, ablue-ribbon advisory group appointed to help the society focus its mission. Brookman considers Gray a mentor and a model for the kind of environmen- tal leadership she wants the j` ;. ++~ ' Imo' ~ ~-.~ 1R< Blyth Berg Brookman, Freshwater Society Board Freshwater Society to exert. "He just did what was the right thing to do," she said. "But he was never pushy." She wants the Freshwater Society to help define critical Minnesota water issues, and to do so in a way that reas- sures people there is hope for solving problems that exist. "The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority," Brookman said. "The Freshwater Society has the unique position of educating and guiding others to conserve and protect fresh water." Brookman grew up in Albert Lea, the fourth in a family of four daughters. Her father was a meatpacker and her mother worked in a law office. She graduated from St. Cloud State vrith a degree in medical technology, although she had decided by her senior year that medical technology probably wasn't going to be her career. She moved to the Twin Cities and worked briefly in a dentist's office, then got a job as a teller at a Minnesota Federal Savings and Loan branch in St. Paul. She went to night school at Metropolitan State Universit}; earned another degree in busi- ness and became an assistant manager of the branch. Eventually she looked for another job, and networking took her to Dain, Kalman & Quail, a Minneapolis stock brokerage. In 1981., Brookman moved to another Minneapolis brokerage, Craig-Hallum Inc., where she specialized in medical technol- ogy stocks. That firm has been bought out and merged a number of times, and it now is Wachovia Securities. Brookman is a partner and vice presi- dent of investments, specializing in retire- ment planning. In her spare time, Brookman is a scuba diver, downhill skier and a horseback rider-she owns a 23-year-old Arabian gelding. She is a lay reader and a leader of the youth group at her church, St. Martins by the Lake in Minnetonka Beach. She is a member of the board of direc- tors of the Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center, and she has been recruited to join the board of the Stevens Square Foundation, which funds social service programs in the Twin Cities. Brookman, a single mother, sprinkles every conversation with refer- ences to her two sons: Benjamin, who is graduating this month .from Northeastern University with a business degree, and Cal- vin, a 10`h-grader at Mituletonka High School. Part of her vision about the Freshwater Society's role-the part about offering hope and celebrating successes-came from an experience when Benjamin, in the early primary grades, did a class project on the destruction of rain forests. She said the proj- ect left him deeply moved, and he became quiet and withdrawn for several days. "That was my defining moment," she said, "when I said we shouldn't teach our kids issues like that without giving them hope and solutions." FACETS December 2008