The Foundation's Board

Upcoming Board Meetings:
August 19
October 21 2008
Paramount Hotel
SW 13th Street
Gainesville Florida

Foundation Gets a New President

Helen Koehler of Levy County is our new FGTF President.

Helen Koehler,
President

Helen Pankratz Koehler resides in Levy County where she is chair of the Levy County Tourist Development Council. She is President of The Goethe Trail, Inc, a non-profit that helps support the shared use trail system in Goethe State Forest. Mrs. Koehler started volunteering with the Florida Park service shortly after moving to Florida in 1982. She received a Gubernatorial appointment to the first Recreation Trails Council and later became the Founding president of the Friends of O'leno State Park (cso).

An avid equestrian trail advocate, Mrs. Koehler held a Gubernatorial appointment to the FL Greenways and Trails Council for 5 years and is presently an alternate. She is a Board member on the Sunshine State Horse Council, Friends of Florida State Forests and is currently a Section Leader on the Cross Florida Greenway and serves on the Advisory Committee of the FL Rec Trails Program.

Mrs. Koehler is a native of Baton Rouge, LA and Graduated from the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette.

Sally Thompson, Vice-President	Sally Thompson served on the Florida Greenways Commission, the Florida Greenways Coordinating Council and was first Chair of the Florida Greenways and Trails Council. She is one of the original members of the Florida Greenways and Trails Foundation. She chairs the Tampa Greenways and Trails Citizens Advisory Committee and is Vice-Chair of the Hillsborough Greenways Committee.
Thompson is one of the founding members of the Tampa Bay Conservancy, a nonprofit local land trust. She has a BA from Hollins University and an MPA from the University of South Florida. She served on the Governing Board of SWFWMD for over 11 years, and is retired from the City of Tampa.

William LaMée, Treasurer	William F. LaMée is the President and Co-Founder of The Great Outdoors Conservancy, a nonprofit national land trust, located in Bradenton, Florida. A graduate of the University of Florida and former president and publisher of The Bradenton Herald, Mr. LaMée, started Oktoberfest Suncoast in 2001 as a major fundraiser on Floridas west coast for the land acquisition activities of the Conservancy.
Mr. LaMée is a former member of the Florida Greenways and Trails Council serving from 2002-2005. Mr. LaMée currently serves on the governing board of Florida Communities Trust and was appointed to the Florida Greenways and Trails Foundation in April 2006.

George Edwards,
Secretary

George Edwards was born and reared in Kansas City, and earned his professional degrees in Geology at the University of Kansas. After jobs in mineral exploration and mapping in Argentina, a stint as Mine Geologist for a copper mine in Michigan, and several years doing research for the Federal Government, he joined Corning Glass Works, retiring after nearly 30 years as Chief Geologist. His professional specialty is the economic geology of industrial minerals. He and his wife Lee moved to Gainesville from Upstate New York in 1998.

George has served as President of the Board of Trustees of the National Soaring Museum, a Fund Trustee for the Robert L. Bates Memorial Scholarship Fund, Inc, President of the Gainesville Cycling Club, Vice President of Operations for the Harris Hill Soaring Corporation, and currently serves as the President of the Board of Directors of the Friends of Paynes Prairie, Inc. He belongs to the Friends of San Felasco Hammock, and the Friends of the Gainesville-Hawthorne Trail, as well as various professional societies.

In his spare time he rides the many trails of Florida on his Florida-built Catrike Speed.

W. Dale Allen,
Board Member

Dale Allen joined the Trust for Public Land (TPL) in 1981, was appointed Southeast Regional Manager in 1986, made a Vice President in 1988, and Senior Vice President in 1999. As regional director, he is responsible for TPL's work in a nine-state area that stretches from the Carolinas south to Florida and west to Louisiana.

Among his most notable land preservation accomplishments during his twenty-five year history with TPL is the preservation of the 450-year old deSoto-Apalachee Historic and Archaeological site and the Miccosukee Canopy Road Greenway in Tallahassee. Dale has been a member of the Florida Trail Association for more than 20 years, and was responsible for surveying and developing the Florida Trail from the Suwannee River to the Apalachicola River, a distance of 150 miles which included sections through the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge (the only coastal section in north Florida) and along the Aucilla River and Sinks.

A native Floridian, Dale was raised in Hollywood and attended schools in Broward County. He is a 1970 graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Richard Dunkel,
Board Member

Richard Dunkel is President of Trail Friends, Inc. in Mount Dora, Florida. He has been a bicycling and Rails-to Trails advocate since 1988. He was one of the founding Board Members and first Chairman of the Florida Chapter of the Rails to Trails Conservancy. He started Trail Friends, Inc., a Central Florida based trails organization, of which he is the current President.

He was a several term member of and Chairman of the Florida Department of Environmental Protections Recreational Trails Council. He has been active on a National, State and local level lobbying for Trails. Currently, he is the Secretary of the newly formed Citizen Support Organization for the Office of Greenways and Trails. Rich has sat on a number of Trail and Bike-Ped Boards and has been involved in many land and paddling trail projects throughout the State of Florida.

Chris Burns, Board Member	Chris Burns is an attorney in Jacksonville with the firm of Terrell Hogan Ellis and Yegelwel, P.A. He has served on many professional associations. In community service, he is a member of the Florida Bicycle Association, and the Citizen Support Organization for the Jacksonville/Baldwin Rail Trail.
He served on the Jacksonville Bicycle-Pedestrian Advisory Committee. Chris and his wife Cynthia have three children, and Chris is Chair of the Board of Trustees for his children's school.

Herb Hiller,
Board Member

Herb Hiller's current assignment as Southeast Region Program Consultant for the East Coast Greenway Alliance benchmarks almost 40 years of leadership in sustainable tourism, bicycling and trails.

In the 1970s as executive director of the Caribbean Travel Association, Herb prioritized locally resourceful tourism and secured long-term funding for its effectuation through the Caribbean Tourism Research Center, which he organized.

He initiated Florida's late-20th-century bicycling and bed-and-breakfast movements. He has served on the board of American Youth Hostels, as editor of The International Ecotourism Society Newsletter and as consultant to Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.

Additional recent consultancies include 1000 Friends of Florida, Visit Florida, Florida Parks, Volusia Countys River of Lakes Heritage Corridor, and the Hollywood Beach CRA.

As a writer, Herb's Guide to the Small & Historic Lodgings of Florida won the Society of American Travel Writers Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award as best travel guidebook; his Highway A1A; Florida at the Edge, won Grand Book Prize honors of the North American Travel Journalists Association.

Herb contributes a bi-weekly report on Florida travel and tourism to the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

He is also founding chairman of the Society of American Travel Writers Institute for Travel Writing & Photography, which convenes each January in Orlando.


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