Senior of the Year

At Riderwood Village in Silver Spring, foxes, deer and a friendly-but-pesky groundhog live in harmony with their human counterparts. Bats reside in resident-built bat houses. Soon, wood ducks will have their own island refuge in the middle of one of the retirement community's ponds.

They're all there because of Anne Blackburn.

Blackburn, 72, a Riderwood resident for two and a half years, is the Greater Silver Spring Chamber of Commerce's recipient of their 2005 Senior of the Year award because of all the work she's done in the Riderwood community.

"Anne has a passion for environmental issues and has found many projects within that realm on campus to share her expertise," wrote Claudia Farr, Riderwood's senior community services manager, in her nomination letter to the chamber. "...[She] models a combination of strong leadership and motivational skills. This along with her passion for life inspires those around her to value their environment and their community."

"She's just a fantastic lady," said Pat Metz, Riderwood's director of communications. "She's so involved and very into saving the environment."

Blackburn said she was honored to receive the award.

"When I heard, I thought, 'Why should I get something? I'm just getting to do what I love,'" she said.

Blackburn, who takes a variety of classes and participates in several discussion groups at the senior facility, is particularly interested in preserving and adding to Riderwood's environment. She began a recycling program and is also involved in preserving habitat for animals and insects.

"If it walks, swims, flies or crawls, we want to have it here," she said.

Blackburn and other environmental stewards are doing an inventory of all the living creatures in the community, she said. They've documented almost 60 different types of birds, as well as deer, foxes, opossums, raccoons and one pesky groundhog.

"He got into the gardens," she said, adding that the creature found and enjoyed one resident's prized squash. (She's hoping to find a way for the hungry groundhog and the frustrated squash-grower to co-exist peacefully.)

Blackburn has ensured even bats have homes at Riderwood, and that the bats are used as pest control. Riderwood's woodworking club built bat houses for the campus. The group is also working on bluebird houses.

"We're going to try and lure a few wood ducks here too," she said, and a home for rescued native turtles.

Blackburn was instrumental in helping Riderwood partner with the downtown Silver Spring-based Wildlife Habitat Council to form a Backyard Conservation habitat enhancement program, Farr said in a subsequent interview. They're hoping the program, which includes a variety of workshops, will serve as a model for other retirement communities.

That program led to Blackburn's involvement with Riderwood's Wildlife Management Plan, which focuses on environmental projects across the campus. Blackburn wrote the first draft of the plan and co-chairs the Wildlife Management Plan Committee, Farr said.

Blackburn also has worked with residents to form a group of "Weed Warriors" to rid the area of invasive plants that overpower native ones, and started a tree-recycling program to help residents get rid of their Christmas trees.

"Helping to make things better is just heaven," she said.

Blackburn's love for the environment came from her experiences on a family farm in Pennsylvania during World War II. Each family on the farm had a "victory garden," and children were required to weed and maintain them. "It was a wonderful way to grow up," Blackburn said.

When she got older, she went into education, then began working with decision-makers and citizen groups on environmental issues.

Years later, she said, "It's been lovely to be able to use those skills."

Blackburn said she loves to stay busy and feel useful, particularly since for a few years, she was afraid she wouldn't be able to be very active. While living in the Woodmoor neighborhood of Silver Spring, where she resided for eight years before moving to Riderwood, Blackburn recovered from two heart attacks. She said it was a quiet time, during which she wasn't able to do much besides garden.

"I loved my yard," she said. "There was sun in the front, semi-shade on the side and shade in the back. It was a gardener's dream."

Now, she said, she's happy to be active again. She and her husband, 73-year-old Jim Aldrich, have both immersed themselves in Riderwood's community. Through her activities, she's met many of Riderwood's other residents and on Monday, as she walked through the corridors, many of them stopped to say hello.

In addition to the work she does with the environment, Blackburn is part of Riderwood's welcoming committee, where established residents help new residents get settled, and part of the retirement community's performing arts council. She helps bring musicians to the community and helps sell tickets to the events.

"It just gives me a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction," she said. As people get older, some aren't able to be as active as she is, and she appreciates the fact she can still be involved in so many things.

"I'm able to reach out to a lot of people," Blackburn said.