Rich Enthovan, Tommy Masterson and Lis Akin: Danny Fulgencio

Rich Enthovan, Tommy Masterson and Lis Akin: Danny Fulgencio

At White Rock Lake, East Lawther hooks around like a long, narrow horseshoe, at the center of which hundreds of saplings dot the field. Dozens of tiny trees surround the stone tables and children’s playground. They don’t look like much beneath the wizened trees that stretch out their arms to shade park-goers below, but someday, when the circle of life brings the old, rugged trees down, the saplings will replace their welcomed services.

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At least, that’s the hope, says Rich Enthoven, president of For the Love of the Lake, the organization that planted the trees last January.

“One of the things we want is a good life cycle of the trees,” he says. “Many of the trees you see were planted in the 1930s when they built the whole place originally, so now those trees are 80 years old, and a lot of them are reaching the end of their life cycle.”

That’s why every winter since 2006 on a day between November and February, hundreds of For the Love of the Lake volunteers, along with city staff, spend a weekend afternoon planting trees. Last January, 400 volunteers planted more than 150 trees in two hours.

This year, on Nov. 9, a group will plant in the open areas of the Big Thicket between the Bath House Cultural Center and Mockingbird. All summer volunteers have been meeting once a month to help prepare the thicket for planting. In November, those same volunteers will help plant a fresh batch of young trees to replace those that have been lost, and will be lost, over the decades.

“The whole process of all those trees that were put in, they’re dying off by the hundreds every year,” explains Tommy Masterson, vice-president of For the Love of the Lake. “So, if we don’t replace hundreds a year, ultimately our grandkids and great-grandkids will have no trees around here.”

The trees we enjoy at White Rock Lake today originally were planted as a part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) during the Great Depression to put young men to work, Masterson says. “If we don’t replace the trees,” he says, “it’ll go back to cropland, like it was.”

Enthoven agrees: “If you look at old pictures of the lake, it’s a different place back then — just very harsh and open.”

Back then, the CCC transplanted trees from the Trinity River area to White Rock Lake. More recently, many of the trees planted in the grove at East Lawther and Poppy came from a tree farm that the Federal Aviation Administration required to be bulldozed because it had become a perfect nesting place for birds too close to the airport.

“We transferred the trees from there, to save the trees, and brought them here,” Masterson says. “We got the trees for free, but we had to pay to have the trees dug and transported and everything.”

Now they get the trees, as much as possible, from the City of Dallas, he says.

After the trees are planted, For the Love of the Lake maintains the trees for two years.

“You can’t just plant a tree,” Enthoven says. “You have to have it irrigated in Texas, so that’s where the funds come in.”

For the Love of the Lake raises thousands of dollars to irrigate the new trees through their Celebration Tree Grove plaques, which people can buy for $1,000, $5,000 or $10,000 to honor, remember or celebrate someone.

Planting and maintaining trees is just one of the services For the Love of the Lake provides at White Rock Lake. In fact, the group has a hand in just about everything that goes on at the lake, says executive director Elisabeth “Lis” Akin.

White Rock Lake is the largest urban park in the United States, she says. It’s 1,772 acres, which makes it twice the size of Central Park in New York City, so there’s plenty of work to go around.

One of the most well-known services is Second Saturday Shoreline Spruce-up, during which volunteers pick up trash around the park early in the morning and which they’ve been doing on the second Saturday of each month since April 1996. Originally, the city had a program called Adopt-a-Shoreline (similar to Adopt-a-Highway) that featured nine groups that came out twice a year to clean up. It simply wasn’t enough to maintain the park, so For the Love of the Lake offered to take over the Adopt-a-Shoreline program, and eventually expanded it to around 43 to 48 groups at different times. Over the years, more than 100 groups have volunteered to spruce up White Rock Lake. The signs you see at the lake state who takes care of each section.

For the Love of the Lake also leads the Texas Stream Team, a water-monitoring program. Volunteers have aided in structure renovations, art touch-ups and trail replacements. They’ve raised funds for many updates: dozens of freeze-proof drinking fountains, park benches, picnic tables and 550 covered trash receptacles, to name a few. They work closely with the city and other officials on big projects such as the White Rock Lake Dog Park and children’s play areas, pitching in with volunteer labor or raising funds when needed.

To get involved with For the Love of the Lake
visit the website at whiterocklake.org