Dr. Shirley G. Cross

EAST SANDWICH — Dr. Shirley Gale Cross of Spring Hill, East Sandwich, passed away peacefully at her home on July 14, 2008. She was 92.

Born in Oklahoma to Albert E. and Marjorie N. Gale, she was raised in Gloucester and Marblehead. As a Girl Scout, her love of the outdoors, hiking, and camping developed early. She received her Bachelor of Science degree from Massachusetts State (now University of Massachusetts) under Professor R.E. Torrey, before taking her Ph.D. in systematic botany at Radcliffe College (now Harvard University) under Professor M.L. Fernald. Her drawings of Rhynchospora (a family of sedges) illustrate Gray's Manual of Botany. In 1941, she married her friend and classmate Chester E. Cross, who received his Ph.D. in paleobotany from Harvard. They moved to Spring Hill, and she became the owner of three cranberry bogs, on which they grew dry harvested berries for the fresh fruit market until shortly before Chet's death in 1988.

She was an early and active advocate for the preservation of open space, helping to obtain a federal grant to purchase property at Sandy Neck. Other conservation projects included the town's acquisition of Brady's Island and the Holly Reservation, as well as several donations of her own land. She worked with the Sandwich Women's Club to restore the Deacon Eldred House and turn it into the Thornton Burgess Museum. She was also a founding member of the Thornton Burgess Society and instrumental in developing the Green Briar Nature Center and Jam Kitchen. She drew the designs for a series of cup plates featuring different herbs. For the past 25 years, she focused on development of the wildflower garden at Green Briar, designing, weeding, collecting plants, and growing many from seed, and organizing her group of loyal volunteers, whose contributions made the garden possible.

She and Chet had a long-abiding interest in alpine flowers, stimulated first on family climbs in New Hampshire's White Mountains in the 1930s and continuing with a family celebration near the summit of Mount Washington in June 2005. In between, they viewed and photographed the alpine flora on the volcanic slopes of central Hokkaido, Japan; on a climb through the rhododendron forests to over 12,000 feet in the Langtang Valley north of Kathmandu, Nepal; on the precipitous Andean slopes of Bolivia and Peru; and in Switzerland's picturesque Alps. Later, in 1997, Shirley journeyed to Namaqualand in western South Africa to see the desert bloom. Visitors to the wildflower garden at Green Briar may enjoy flowers from several of these places, as well as many common and rare native plants.

She is survived by her sons, Peter N. Cross, Christopher E. Cross, and Dr Timothy A. Cross; daughters-in-law Ileana Fajardo Cross and Dr. Susan McGill Cross; nephews, Dr. Bruce Aitken and his wife Dr. Lina Aitken, and Brian Aitken; grandchildren, Dr. Shimae Cross Fitzgibbons and her husband, Dr. Peter Fitzgibbons, Allen Cross and his wife, Lisa Cross, Nathan Cross, Carrie Cross Wan and her husband, Eric Wan, Alejandra Cross, and Lydia Cross; and great-granddaughter Emiko Fitzgibbons.

A memorial celebration will begin with a service at St. John's Episcopal Church, Sandwich, at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 9, followed by a reception in the wildflower garden at the Green Briar Nature Center, Discovery Hill Road, East Sandwich. The family requests that floral colors be worn rather than black and that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to either St. John's Episcopal Church or to the Thornton Burgess Society, noting that the donation is for the Wildflower Garden Endowment Fund.