{"id":1009,"date":"2016-06-17T19:10:43","date_gmt":"2016-06-17T19:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/?p=1009"},"modified":"2025-07-26T17:22:33","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T21:22:33","slug":"tupper-w-thomas-66","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/tupper-w-thomas-66\/","title":{"rendered":"Tupper W. Thomas \u201966"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/span>s a high school student, Tupper W. Thomas \u201966<\/strong> spent a summer living with a family in Pakistan. Part of an American Field Service program, the experience \u201cchanged my way of looking at the world,\u201d Thomas says. It also convinced her that she wanted to \u201cfollow a different path\u201d from her friends.<\/p>\n

For the young woman growing up in Minnesota in the early \u201960s, that meant attending Goucher College. At the time, \u201cno one from Minnesota was going to Goucher. And to me, that was dramatic,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Now renowned as a national expert in parks and as the urban planner who rejuvenated Brooklyn, N.Y.\u2019s Prospect Park, Thomas is about to step down as executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, an advocacy organization dedicated to supporting the city\u2019s green spaces.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time she\u2019s retired. In 2011, Thomas resigned after 31 years as the chief administrator of Prospect Park and 23 years as the founding president of the Prospect Park Alliance, a nonprofit formed to support the park. Three years later, she returned to professional life.<\/p>\n

Whether this retirement sticks or not, Thomas, who in April was the recipient of the AAGC\u2019s Excellence in Public Service Award, has no plans to take it easy. As she told the New York Times<\/em> in a recent interview: \u201cI\u2019ll be right out there writing letters and harassing my elected officials.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Goucher, Thomas majored in political science and immersed herself in activities offered by the Sarah T. Hughes Field Politics Center. \u201cBy this time, I had decided that I was going to save the world, but do it locally,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In her junior year, Thomas won a $200 grant, which she used to partially fund a summer spent in New York. She applied to John V. Lindsay\u2019s mayoral campaign\u2014discovering when she did that \u201cJohn Lindsay\u2019s twin brother\u2019s wife went to Goucher,\u201d she says. She was assigned to a precinct in Queens.<\/p>\n

After graduating, Thomas was hired by the New York City housing agency. \u201cIf you worked hard, you could move up the ladder. Lindsay was a new, young mayor and wanted things done fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1980, after raising her children and earning a master\u2019s degree in urban planning from Pratt Institute, Thomas spotted a New York Times ad for a job as administrator of Prospect Park. Designed in 1867, the 580-acre green space was frequently cited by its creators\u2014 landscape architects Frederick Olmsted and Calvert Vaux\u2014as one of their most successful endeavors.<\/p>\n

But like other urban parks then, Prospect Park was in need of greater funding and a make-over. Its buildings and facilities were in disarray; its reputation was as a haven for drug dealers. \u201cYou know, I was 35, and I thought, \u2018Of course, I can fix this. Of course, people should be able to use the park,\u2019\u201d the Brooklyn resident says.<\/p>\n

By the time she retired as park administrator in 2011, Prospect Park\u2019s luster had been restored. Under her leadership, it was attracting 9 million people each year\u2014up from two million\u2014 and the Alliance was raising more than $8 million a year\u2014up from $200,000 in 1987.<\/p>\n

Now she\u2019s ready to give retirement another try. Nonetheless, Thomas says: \u201cI will still be busy working for parks\u2014 just not quite so busy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saving the world one green space at a time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1011,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[54973],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[87540],"class_list":["post-1009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-spotlight"],"yoast_head":"\nTupper W. 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