Lakewood neighbor Kathleen Foley may be the best advertisement for White Rock Lake.
Photography by Gabriel Cano
Of course, that makes sense because Foley is the White Rock Lake Foundation president. She’s also the epitome of cool, calm and collected. She describes the lake as a place where you can find peace, too.
“It’s like a sanctuary,” Foley says. “You don’t really realize you’re in town in an urban area. So you can go out there and sit; you can sit peacefully. You can watch all the families laughing and carrying on. And you can walk. You can see birds. You can sit by the water and contemplate, meditate, whatever it is you want to do. Sometimes you just need like a day or two for a vacation to really give you that break; you can go out there and spend a few hours, and it gives you that break that you need to realign yourself.”
Foley grew up in Arlington as the youngest of her siblings, a fact that she regularly used to her advantage.
“I always tell them mom liked me best because I was a little clone of her,” she says. “I looked exactly like my mother, exactly like her. So when they were mean to me, I’d always tell them, ‘You’re just jealous because mom likes me best.’”
Following her sister, Foley moved to Nevada and spent a big chunk of her life there.
“My sister was living out there at first,” Foley says. “I moved out there to ski and just for the summer. And I ended up staying for 40-plus years.”
Foley lived by Lake Tahoe for seven years and then moved to Las Vegas to finish her degree at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She worked in casinos during this time, and when she was ready to do something different, she got her license to do appraisals.
“That’s where I got to where I enjoyed being around people because you see people from all over the world there,” she says. “Believe it or not, everybody talks about, ‘There’s all this division.’ The majority of people get along, and they’re all pretty nice.”
Foley raised her son in Nevada and returned to Texas about eight years ago after he moved away. Her brother had also been settled in Dallas since about 1970, and her sister came to this area in the ’90s.
“When you get older, family means more. I didn’t have any family out there. I raised my son, and he left, and I thought, I’ve been abandoned,” she laughs.
Foley’s relationship with White Rock Lake began well before her permanent move to Dallas. Her sister moved near White Rock Lake and introduced Foley to it.
“I have been coming here since the ‘90s,” she says. “I had been coming out here and going out to the lake and the Arboretum and going around the trail and just sitting by the water. I was always involved. … They would have functions, and I would always come out and help with the foundation.”
Being at White Rock Lake is also something Foley has prioritized as she’s aged.
“You just realize (you need to) slow down and enjoy what’s around you,” she says. “That’s why I like spending time at the lake because you’re in this Metroplex area here, and you’ve got 1,000 acres out there. It’s just like a whole different world.”
Foley’s involvement with the foundation was inspired by noticing things that needed to be done at the lake and a desire to make improvements. Of course after she came back to Texas, her involvement ramped up.
“When I moved out here, it’s like, OK, now I’m full-time,” she laughs. “Full-time help now, not just part-time.”
Foley started out as a member and then served as treasurer and vice president before becoming president of the foundation. She describes her current role, which she has had for three years, as a point-of-contact or coordinator between the members of the board — described by Foley as creative and devoted people.
“I’m not a boss. There’s no boss in a volunteer organization,” she says. “It’s basically, I guess, just a liaison coordinator position. Because you’ve got all adults; they’re there because they want to be there. They’re not there because they want to be ordered around. That’s not happening. We’re all adults. We’re all basically even and equal. Nobody’s really superior to anybody else.”
The White Rock Lake Foundation works on improvement projects, collaborates with the Dallas Park and Recreation Department and works with other lake-related organizations.
“People come and they say, ‘We need this, we need that.’ And the park department says, ‘We need this, we need that,’ and we try and figure out what we can do the most for, the best for, what’s a priority, things like that,” Foley says. “So, we’ve done biking and walking trails. We’ve done monument signage, lighting.”
Yet, there’s a never-ending list of things that still need to be done, the president says. Police at the Northeast Patrol Division need two ATVs to get to inaccessible parts of the lake to provide assistance during emergencies. Surrounding neighbors want solar-powered gates in certain areas to prevent teens from congregating after hours. The lake needs to be dredged again because the silty water is creating an unsafe environment for boaters.
“We know what residents around the lake want done and what some of the groups around the lake want done, and we try to be as helpful and raise money and coordinate things as much as we can to get as much done,” Foley says. “We’ll work with other groups, too. If they’re doing something, we’ll work in conjunction with them.”
Foley reminisces fondly about the environment around White Rock Lake. Sure, there are improvements that need to be made, and there have been vehicular burglaries in the parking lot, though Foley says those are trending downwards. But when she’s at the lake, she sees happy families with members young and old, kids running around outdoors and no arguing.
“Today’s society is so high stress and anxiety and performance-ridden and pressure,” she says. “It’s just nice to be able to know that you can breathe.”
