Dr. Cross Remembered

     Shirley G. Cross, whose passion for wild and wooded places helped preserve many hundreds of undeveloped acres in town and through whose gardening abilities was born the wildflower garden at the Green Briar Nature Center, died on July 14 at the age of 92.
     According to her family, Dr. Cross died peacefully at her Spring Hill home.
     Dr. Cross, who held a doctorate in systematic botany, was an avid gardener, who spent countless hours tending the many plants that surrounded her home.
     But her gardening talents extended well beyond the white picket fence of her two-acre property. Dr. Cross may be best known in town for her work on the wildflower garden outside the Green Briar Nature Center on Discovery Hill Road.
     It was Dr. Cross who convinced the directors of the center to allow her to plant and tend the garden when the Thornton W. Burgess Society first purchased the property back in 1979.
     “I told them that if you’re going to call yourself a nature center, you better represent both kingdoms—the animals and the plants,” Dr. Cross said during a past interview with The Sandwich Enterprise. “If not, you really don’t have a center at all—you only have half a center.”
     For 28 years, Dr. Cross directed the group of volunteers who tend the garden each Monday morning. She gave up that lead position four years ago, but continued to gets her hands dirty with the volunteer crew from time to time.
     But Dr. Cross’s work for the community cannot be solely measured by her work outside the nature center. In the 1960s, she was a member of the town’s conservation commission, serving as its chairman for a time, in her words, “before it became so horribly legal as it is now.”
     During her years with the commission and even afterward, she helped lead efforts that forever preserved many hundreds of acres of open space, including the 243-acre Ryder property off South Sandwich Road in 1974, a portion of what is now known as the Briar Patch in East Sandwich, and 1,000 feet of beachfront on Sandy Neck.
     “Both Shirley and her husband, Chet, were land preservation leaders,” said John N. Cullity, president of the Sandwich Conservation Trust, whose first job as a youngster was working on the Crosses’ cranberry bogs in East Sandwich. “In the 1970s, there was a group of conservation activists at work in East Sandwich and Shirley, always in a quiet way, was a leader of the group. Her skill was she knew how to research an issue, knew who in town to talk to. She was also very well spoken at Town Meeting.”
      Mr. Cullity credits Dr. Cross with stirring his passion for land preservation. “She is the direct inspiration for the work I’m doing now with the Sandwich Conservation Trust.”
      Dr. Cross, as a member of the Sandwich Women’s Club, also led the charge to convince Town Meeting voters to restore the Deacon Eldred House on Shawme Pond in 1974, which now serves as the home of the Thornton W. Burgess Museum. The town had purchased the property two years prior and wanted to tear down the ramshackle structure to create a parking lot.
     The plan was for the women’s club to restore the interior of the building if the town would take care of the exterior. There was a lot of political opposition. Many town officials thought it was an unnecessary expense. But Dr. Cross spoke at Town Meeting and convinced voters to approve the work.
     Dr. Cross created a scrapbook detailing the renovation work of the building. The book, containing photographs, newspaper clippings, permits, and detailed written accounts of the work, is now in the collection of the Sandwich Archives.
     The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Commission on the Status Women recently recognized Shirley G. Cross as an Unsung Heroine for 2008.
     Dr. Cross was one of seven women from Plymouth and Barnstable Counties so honored.
     The mother of three sons, Peter N., Christopher E., and Dr. Timothy A. Cross, Dr. Cross ran a Cub Scout patrol for a few years in East Sandwich.
      Dr. Cross grew up in Marblehead. After graduating from high school she studied for a time at Massachusetts State College (now the University of Massachusetts).
     She received her doctorate from Radcliffe College in 1937.
     Asked in 2005 if a woman earning a doctoral degree was unusual in the 1930s, Dr. Cross said: “Well, it certainly wasn’t unheard of, but I don’t think it was terribly appreciated.”
     Dr. Cross met her husband, Chester E. Cross, while at Massachusetts State College. Mr. Cross died in 1988 of a heart attack, soon after retiring as director of the Cranberry Experimental Station in Wareham.
     Besides her sons, Dr. Cross is leaves six grandchildren, Dr. Shimae Cross Fitzgibbons, Allen Cross, Nathan Cross, Carrie Cross Wan, Alejandra Cross and Lydia Cross; a great-granddaughter Emiko Fizgibbons; and two nephews, Dr. Burce Aitken and Brian Aitken.
     A memorial service will be held on Saturday, August 9, at 1:30 PM at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Sandwich, followed by a reception in the wildflower garden at the Green Briar Nature Center. The family requested that floral colors be worn by those attending and that memorial donations be made to either St. John’s Episcopal Church or to the Thornton W. Burgess Society’s Wildflower Garden Endowment Fund.