Water Researcher and Explorer talks to Explorers Club
By Deb Peterson
(Reprinted from the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Sept. 20, 2010)
HOT FOR WATER: Alison M. Jones, flag-certified explorer and devoted water researcher, was in town recently to talk to the St. Louis chapter of The Explorers Club about her experiences as director of the “No Water No Life” organization and a recent trek along the Mara River Basin in Africa.
Jones, who lives in Manhattan when she’s not researching the world’s watersheds, spoke and presented a slide show to about 50 people in a dining room of the St. Louis Racquet Club. The group was made up of club members and their guests so it was not unusual to turn to the person seated next to you, as I did, to find out that she – in this case, Cindy Peters – was part of a medical expedition to the Mount Everest Base Camp.
Seated next to Peters was Science Center topper Doug King, who also had been part of the base camp study.
L–R: Lotsie Hermann Holton and Alison M. Jones at St. Louis Zoo. Photo by Jeff Huntington.
Jones earned her Explorers Club Flag 93 for the trip last September and October along the 254-mile Mara River from its source in Kenya’s Mau Forest to its termination at Lake Victoria in Tanzania. Her organization is researching six watersheds in North America and Africa, including the Mississippi River Basin, to raise awareness of freshwater resources and the dangers of degrading the watershed.
Along with her ties in the larger sense to The Explorers Club, Jones was here because of her longtime friendship with Lotsie Hermann Holton, a past chair of the club’s St. Louis chapter.
Among those enjoying the speaker’s series were: Mary Burke, Jack Curran, Gretchen Freund, Eliot Herman, Rick Holton, Benjamin and Eileen Hulsey, John and Sue Hume, Carla and John Marshall, Peggy Nacke, Sandy Peters, Dr. Mabel Purkerson, Karla Wilson, Becky Doane, Betsy and Doug Domoto, Paul Zemitzsch and Robin Callahan, Jessie Ternberg, Cherri Briggs, Anne Fischer, and Jack Galmische.
Jeanne McLean Schmitt, Stacy King, Abigail Lambert, Maureen Vaughn, Cheryl Holman, Jeff Huntington
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