Betsy Shure GROSS

GROSS, Betsy Shure On July 15, 2025, at age 85, Betsy Shure Gross died at home in Davis, California, among family and friends. She is survived by her husband of 64 years, Gary Gross; by her son, Andrew Gross Gaitan; by her daughter, Liza Draper; by Philip Engle and Arthur Engle; the sons of her closest friends; by her sister-in-law, Shelley Alexa Somerville; by many loving grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and by her beloved Giant Schnauzer, Sontu, III. She is survived as well by the dozens of her colleagues whom she inspired and mentored and, in some instances, whose careers she fostered. They include elected and appointed public officials, landscape architects, academic historians of Frederick Law Olmsted and his firm and its legacy, citizen activists, historic preservationists, and real estate developers.

Born in New Haven on April 2, 1940 to Gertrude Frank and Fred M. Shure, Betsy grew up there, attended Sweet Briar College in Virginia, interrupted her education to marry and raise two children, then finished her undergraduate studies at Simmons College in Boston. Betsy and Gary lived in New Haven until he finished his medical education at Yale, then moved in 1971 to Pill Hill in Brookline, where they lived for the next 45 years, before moving to California to live close to their son and his family.

She served in Brookline's Town Meeting and she served on the town Conservation Commission for 20 years, 19 of them as its chair. She recognized in the derelict park and pond at the foot of Pill Hill a landscape akin to Edgewood Park in New Haven in which she had played as a child. Then she discovered why. That park, part of the Emerald Necklace, had been designed by America's first landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of New York's Central Park. Edgewood Park had been designed by his sons. The restoration of Brookline's park, then of Olmsted parks in Massachusetts, and then of the multitude of urban park systems designed by Olmsted or his sons during the era between the end of the Civil War and the start of World War II became her passion both as an activist and then as a member of the Mass. Department of Environmental Affairs. In the early 1980's, she helped organize a neighborhood friends of the park group that cleaned up Brookline's Olmsted Park, then prodded Brookline to restore it to its 19th century glory. In 1981, she organized the first National Olmsted Conference that brought together academic landscape historians, landscape architects, elected officials, municipal park commissioners, real estate developers, and citizen activists interested in restoring their neighborhood parks. That conference produced a national movement, of which she became co-chair, dedicated to the restoration of America's historic urban parks. Then, in state government she pushed forward the Army Corps of Engineers' 92 million dollar project to restore Boston's Emerald Necklace 's Muddy River waterway, a work still in progress.

Contributions in her memory may be made to the Betsy Shure Gross Fund at Mass Parks for All, and to the Friends of Halls Pond, 501c3's located in Jamaica Plain and Brookline, respectively.

Her ashes will be interred Monday, October 20, at 1:30 PM, in Brookline's Walnut Hills Cemetery, 96 Grove Street, Chestnut Hill.