By Cathy Miller

A dedicated steward of the environment, Diana Dove is a well-known educator and speaker in Warren County. When she agreed to be our Person of the Week, she quickly added, “What a great week to be featured! It’s ‘National Pollinator Week’ June 22–June 28.”

What’s a pollinator? A pollinator causes plants to make fruit or seeds by moving pollen from one part of the flower to another part to fertilize the plant. Bees, hummingbirds and some kinds of butterflies are the best pollinators.

Born in Houston, Diana’s family moved to Somerset County when she was five, then to Warren County when she was 20 years old. She and her husband, Mike, then lived in Hunterdon County for their first years of marriage, relocating to Washington Borough where they happily lived for 30 years. Now, they’ve resided in Lopatcong for one year.

Diana has been widely recognized for her achievements, most recently on June 22 when she received a citation from the Garden Club of New Jersey and Jeannie Geremia, president, for her work with kids in Karen Nash Memorial Butterfly Garden; with the public in the community and schools; and with Dove Environmental Education at town-wide events:

• The Garden Club of New Jersey honored Diana with their “Top GCNJ Youth Leader Award” for her work as a GCNJ Youth Consultant for Environmental Education and Karen Nash Memorial Butterfly Garden Youth Chair and Co-President.
•  The Alliance for New Jersey Environmental Education presented Diana with one of her greatest awards, the state-level “Patricia F. Kane Lifetime Achievement Award.” Previously they’d named her ANJEE’s “Environmental Educator of the Year.”
•  In 2000, the Washington Board of Education awarded Diana and Helen Hollenbeck a “Board of Education Appreciation Award” for coordinating Memorial School’s Earth Day Festival.
•  In 2004, Washington Borough PTO President Vaneice Sweet presented Diana with the “Humanitarian Award for Notable Achievement and Environmental Excellence.”
•  In 2018, Mike and Diana were inducted into the “Hackettstown Area Senior Hall of Fame” and in 2019, they received the Washington Business Improvement District’s “Community Partner Award.”
•  Mike and Diana enjoy exhibiting their nature and whale photography and have shown at Kathy’s Kove 5 East Art Gallery and the Asbury Coffee Mill.

Getting started

Diana attended Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA) and was the first student to simultaneously earn a BS in Forestry and Wildlife with a Concentration in Biology while earning a BA in Communications focusing on photography and television courses. As a Forestry major, she was trained and qualified for the “Incident Qualification Red Card for Wildland Firefighting” and fought a huge fire for two days in the mountains of West Virginia.

Diana wasted no time jumping feet first into her environmental work. “During summers off from college I worked for Somerset County Parks, staying with them 10 or 11 years. While a freshman, I was hired at the Great Swamp in Basking Ridge as a naturalist. When I graduated, I had a job waiting for me as a senior naturalist at Lord Stirling Park in Basking Ridge. I worked on a pilot program launched by the National Park Service called Babies and Beasties, geared for 18 month olds and their caregiver. I did a song and craft and we always took a walk outside since outdoor-based learning was a big part of the program.

“I designed a curriculum for the first-ever environmental Montessori nursery school, primarily for three and four-year-olds. It operated out of the environmental education center at Lord Stirling Park. Every day we had a different lesson, with a total of 340 lessons. Prior to that, as a summer intern I taught two different topics a day, during a five-day course, to groups of 12 to 15 children. I’d have a pond study for kindergarten and first grade or a mammals program for grades five and six. We did as much outdoor-based learning as we could.

When she worked a couple years for Morris Area Girl Scouts, she realized the potential for Jockey Hollow in Mendham to become a learning space for local schools, too.

“I created my own job and became the director of the environmental education center at Jockey Hollow for the Morris Area Girl Scouts. Within two weeks, we had busloads of kids.”

Dove Environmental Education

When Diana and Mike decided to start their family, Dove Environmental Education became full-time. “I set my own hours. Mike would sit with the new baby in the car or the library and I’d go teach. The baby was always with me.”

Dove Environmental Education offers instruction in 30 areas, including marine science and New Jersey wildlife programs, for all ages. By attending Department of Environmental Protection workshops, Diana stays on top of current standards, covering areas that tie into next generation science models.

“[Mike and I are] both experienced presenters with plenty of field experience. Rather than having students read a book or watch a video, we share stories, integrating the vocabulary and some of the main concepts. We totally engage the kids so they remember it better.”

Morris Museum has a loan department where Diana borrows taxidermy animals to use in their presentations. “I like them because they can’t harm the children, they’re easy to care for, I can take all of them out and they won’t attack each other – all important things to consider,” Diana explained, smiling. “Everyone can get a real close look at them, actually sharpening their observation skills. We’ve even done art classes at the high school where we brought the taxidermy animals for students to sketch.”

Another local tradition that Dove Environmental Center has become entwined with is the Karen Ann Quinlan Hospice Butterfly Release Celebration, an event that honors life and loved ones. The event is usually held in Washington’s Karen Nash Memorial Butterfly Garden at Memorial School, which Diana helped found in 1996 through a school PTO committee, though it was a virtual gathering this year.

In addition to the new format in response to the pandemic, something else marked this year’s event as special: Diana Dove was invited to perform a song she’d written: “Thank You For Your Heart of Gold.” She added a verse about butterflies and performed in the garden.

The garden was designed by Tomás Gonzales and established as a not-for-profit community/school based education and environmental organization. Diana is currently its co-president and youth chair.

In its nearly 25 years, the award-winning, quarter-acre schoolyard wildlife habitat and pollinator garden has always been self-sustaining. Some assume it’s funded by the school, which would mean taxes, but actually runs 100 percent on contributions and donations.

“Volunteering at the Karen Nash Memorial Butterfly Garden during the pandemic is very different from volunteering during non-pandemic times,” Diana said. “We couldn’t have any children here because all school activities were cancelled. At one point no one was allowed in community gardens.”

Tasks have fallen behind due to social distancing, but they have established ways to get work done while also maintaining safety, like limiting the number of people allowed in the garden at a time and assigning tasks away from each other.

“We fell far behind having been unable to garden in the spring, but we’ll catch up. Now the problem is we’re going on the 25 year mark, and many things are due for upgrade or replacement.”

Private Life

Diana has lived with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) since August 2001, so she qualified for Therapeutic Riding At Centenary (TRAC). She made a few lifestyle changes, saying, “I switched my diet to organic food, eliminating chemicals and toxins, and started exercising again. I work at being positive and staying around positive people. I do things I enjoy and learned to pace myself better. I’m still doing too much, but what I’m doing makes me happy so I don’t want to stop!”

She has always adored horses, having ridden as a child. She noted, “Centenary has 6 to 8 horses that qualified for the program. They have to be stable, responsive to leg movements and the reins, and have to know words. If a rider is unable to use their legs or the reins, they say ‘walk on’ and the horse knows to walk on.” The Centenary program is extremely well designed to protect both the rider and the horse.

Belle was the horse assigned to Diana. She’s 28 years old and has been a Therapeutic Riding Horse for 12 years in the TRAC program. Diana said gleefully, “I love that horse. We just connect. We walk on and we trot and I hope to canter soon.”

Belle recently won the PATH (Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship) Intl. Region 2 Equine of the Year 2020. She has since been nominated as the PATH Intl. National Equine of the Year 2020. George Paffendorf, assistant director of TRAC, asked Diana to write one of two recommendations for Belle for her national recognition. It took about two days, but she was happy to do it for Belle. Members of the TRAC program are awaiting results of the National Nomination. Hopefully Belle will win. Diana added, “She’s just perfect.”

Sharing her thoughts about TRAC, Diana noted, “The purpose of the program is to train students to be certified therapeutic riding instructors. TRAC horses are extraordinary, as are theTRAC staff, students and volunteers. Karen Brittle, director of TRAC, has assembled a tremendous team and foundation of support for people with disabilities. It’s a very happy place to go and an excellent program to be involved with.”

Diana will be a featured performer on the Acoustic Stage at this year’s Festival in the Borough on September 19 in Washington. “I am very much hoping to have everyone I know come hear me sing. I don’t get to sing very often any more, now that all the coffee houses and restaurants are limited by coronavirus.” Dove Environmental Education will also be on hand with kids’ activities and enviro-info in a separate area of the Festival.

Diana said, “I have to say it’s wonderful to be Person of the Week, but Mike’s really an important part of my ‘team.’ I don’t get anywhere without him. Behind this Person of the Week is a support I can’t even put into words. We’ve been married 39 years and dated for ten before we got married. Next year’s going to be a big one, our 40th wedding anniversary, which means 50 years together. You know the song “The Wind Beneath My Wings” – I feel like Mike is the wind.”

When asked what accomplishment makes her most proud, Diana said, “I am most proud of my family – my husband Mike, our son [Sean] and daughter [Chelsea], and the way in which they treat people and care about others.”

How to get involved

Over the summer, Dove Environmental Education will have a booth from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at both the Washington Borough Farmers’ Market by the Pocket Park on Saturdays and the Warren County Farmers’ Market at White Township School on Sundays. They are a featured presenter at Liberty Township’s summer camp during the first week of August. Diana’s traditionally a big presence at the annual Warren County Farmers’ Fair, which unfortunately has been cancelled for 2020.

For information on programs, virtual programs, or singing, contact Dove Environmental Education at dianadove13@gmail.com.

Karen Nash Memorial Butterfly Garden is located at 300 West Stewart Street, Washington. For virtual photographic tours and announcements, visit the Facebook page.  

Updated June 26 to better reflect residential history.