Community Foundation welcomes urban sanctuaries group

Oct. 27—The Community Foundation of Northeast Alabama welcomed Nature Sacred from Annapolis, Md., Thursday afternoon at Mural Park at West Anniston Gateway.

The event celebrated the 17 "Open Spaces, Sacred Places" the foundation has created in northeast Alabama. The Nature Sacred board was in town for a board meeting in Talladega and to tour the area. Nature Sacred — known previously as Open Spaces, Sacred Places, a nonprofit — is a growing network of urban sanctuaries created to improve a community by creating a stress-reducing space for residents and visitors.

Speakers included Mayor Jack Draper, Community Foundation president and CEO Jennifer Maddox, Fred Smith, vice president of community partnerships at the foundation, City Manager Steven Folks and Frazier Burroughs, Anniston PARD director along with Nature Sacred board members. Longtime West 15th Street businessman General Jackson told everyone the meaning of the mural in the park, which faces the street, along with some of the history of West Anniston.

Smith thanked Nature Sacred for making a two-day trip to Alabama.

"Today is a day where you get the hub, the place where our office calls home, it is the place that throughout northeast Alabama we consider to be our place of origin that is Anniston, Alabama," Smith said.

J. Mitchell Rogers, vice president of community partnerships at the foundation, said after the event that the origins of the Community Foundation constructing these nature sacred places can be traced back to a book.

"They (Nature Sacred) created this photo book that they mailed out to community foundations across the United States which landed on Jennifer's desk which birthed the idea for us to memorialize Susie Parker Stringfellow," Rogers said.

Maddox said on Friday that Nature Sacred paid for all the books to be distributed.

"We got it and we decided to honor the 100th anniversary of Susie's legacy and we decided that we would put two of these sites in the nine counties that we serve," Maddox said.

"We, the community foundation, made $10,000 grants to do that, we provided the bench and the marker but as it turned out Nature Sacred, they decided that they would actually provide the benches for us," she said.

Maddox said the Community Foundation continues to award grants to do things at the sites.

Stringfellow left her mark in the Anniston area when she died in 1920 and bequeathed her home and eight acres of land to serve as the site for Stringfellow Hospital, a nonprofit hospital for tuberculosis patients opened in 1938, according to a monument in Mural Park. In early 1997, according to reports at the time, a multi-decade deal between Stringfellow Memorial Hospital and a Florida hospital chain, Health Management Associates, generated millions of dollars that became seed money for the current foundation, which debuted in early 1999.

Smith said that each Nature Sacred space in northeast Alabama is unique.

"Each site has a theme but they all share the same concept, it has a portal, a path, a destination place, a sense of surround, and a bench, every site has those elements but we have the uniqueness to use the theme of that particular community so that we can amplify the message of inclusiveness and how green spaces benefit the human being," Smith said.

For a complete listing of all the Nature Sacred places in northeast Alabama and additional information: https://www.cfnea.org/ossp

Staff writer Bill Wilson: 256-235-3562. On Twitter @bwilson_star.