Joan Walne had a hand in Dallas parks, philanthropy and more – Lake Highlands

Joan Walne is enthusiastic about Dallas metropolis parks. The Lake Highlands North Recreation Middle spraygrounds, Rory Meyers Youngsters’s Journey Backyard on the Dallas Arboretum and Klyde Warren Park have been all created throughout her 9-year tenure on the Dallas Park Board, however she’s additionally a fierce advocate for postage stamp-sized plots deep inside neighborhoods the place households can toss a ball, fly a kite and unfold out a picnic basket.

Threads of Walne’s affect weave by means of all features of Dallas life. She satisfied Richardson ISD to maintain the neighborhood along with one freshman middle as an alternative of carving the neighborhood up for a 3rd junior excessive within the Nineteen Nineties, and lobbied for a brand new aquatic middle on the Lake Highlands North Recreation Middle when our pool was scheduled to be shut down. She’s held management positions in Lake Highlands Ladies’s League, Youngsters’s Medical Middle, Junior League of Dallas, the Dallas Arboretum, Honest Park, Preservation Dallas and the Dallas Historic Society. She’s presently board chair of Kershaw’s Problem, which helps girls and youngsters in Dallas, Los Angeles, Zambia and the Dominican Republic; on the board of the Belief for Public Land, working to create parks and inexperienced areas in city areas; and a member of the manager committee on the Dallas Zoo.

Walne realized the artwork of selfless service from her mother, Patricia Graves, and her mother-in-law, Frances Walne. Graves reared her two ladies as a single mother in a one-Dairy-Queen-town close to Denver and later turned a faculty counselor in RISD. Her daughter earned a scholarship to attend SMU.

“She taught me that our circumstances don’t outline us and also you don’t know an individual till you’ve walked a mile of their footwear,” Walne says. “She all the time stated this life isn’t a gown rehearsal, and I’ve carried that ahead with my very own youngsters and grandchildren.”

Frances Walne, a pacesetter in Lake Highlands Ladies’s League and space PTAs, turned an early widow when husband Herb, founding father of Herb’s Paint and Physique, died of lung most cancers at 58.

“Frances set a beautiful instance of loving her household effectively and inserting significance on the worth of household. I’m not an enormous occasions individual— I like celebrations, however I really like on a regular basis life. I really like figuring out what my grandchildren are doing. I don’t wish to hover, however I take pleasure in leaping in any time I’m requested,” she says.

Walne and husband Alan are also known as “Lake Highlands’ Energy Couple,” and she or he embraces the concept that the 2 can accomplish extra working collectively. Alan has credited her clever counsel throughout pivotal moments on the Dallas Metropolis Council, State Honest of Texas board, Parkland Hospital Board of Managers and Salesmanship Membership of Dallas board, amongst different management roles.

Images by Jessica Turner.

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“I feel we’ve tag-teamed effectively,” she says. “His involvement has by no means been simply his, and when alternatives have come my manner, Alan has been my greatest cheerleader. Typically we dovetail and generally we’ve got our personal function, however we all the time help one another.”

Walne says she and her husband share an overriding philosophy to go away the neighborhood higher than they discovered it, and the perspective has been adopted by daughter Sarah and son Robert. Sarah and Ryan Hefton are rearing their youngsters close to White Rock Elementary, the place Sarah lately served as president of the PTA. Robert and Stephani Walne additionally ship their children to WRE, and Robert simply completed his time period as president of the Trade Membership.

Walne says encounters with younger mothers within the neighborhood have left her stunned by their dedication and capabilities. “I lately had a possibility to take a seat in on a committee, and I might hardly converse. They have been, one after the opposite, so proficient and so spectacular.

“In the present day’s mothers discover wonderful alternatives for service alongside their youngsters, which fashions great conduct, and I see faculty teams attempting to not focus a lot on themselves. It doesn’t take them lengthy and so they don’t need to look far to discover a place the place they’ll make a distinction, whether or not it’s a one-time challenge or an ongoing effort.”

Younger mothers know the key to service, Walne says; the one who advantages most isn’t the individual in want in any respect.

“We weren’t placed on this earth to be takers. We have been put right here to share our skills and be other-centered. It’s so rewarding to know you made a distinction in somebody’s life.”

It’s too early to inform if Walne’s spirit of service is rubbing off on her seven grandchildren, however her love of Dallas appears to be. They gleefully settle for her invites to go to the Arboretum and the zoo, even when they’re too younger to know the function she’s performed in constructing them.

“The Arboretum offered an ideal spot to refresh with my mom and Alan’s whereas they have been effectively and whereas they battled sickness, and now we take pleasure in taking the littles,” she says. “I recognize the alternatives they open for households and for studying.”

Learn extra about this yr’s fierce females.