Fresh Water: MARY BARLEY: Everglades Forever

MARY BARLEY

The fifth-graders at Embassy Creek Elementary School in Cooper City, Fla., north of Miami, raised $1,000 this year to help save the Everglades. And they spent weeks studying who should get it. Not surprisingly, last month they handed the check to the Everglades Foundation and its chairwoman, Mary Barley. "The Everglades is one of our most important natural cathedrals," she told them. "It will be your legacy to the country."

Legacy is what drives Barley, 53, the widow of the foundation's founder, George Barley. An Orlando real estate tycoon turned environmentalist, Barley died in a 1995 plane crash before he could...

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