The Foundation's Board

President
Helen Koehler,
Pres/Treas		 Helen Pankratz Koehler resides in Levy County where she is chair of the Levy County Tourist Development Council. She is President of The Goethe Trail, Inc, a non-profit that helps support the shared use trail system in Goethe State Forest. Mrs. Koehler started volunteering with the Florida Park service shortly after moving to Florida in 1982. She received a Gubernatorial appointment to the first Recreation Trails Council and later became the Founding president of the Friends of O'leno State Park (cso).
An avid equestrian trail advocate, Mrs. Koehler held a Gubernatorial appointment to the FL Greenways and Trails Council for 5 years and is presently an alternate. She is a Board member on the Sunshine State Horse Council, Friends of Florida State Forests and is currently a Section Leader on the Cross Florida Greenway and serves on the Advisory Committee of the FL Rec Trails Program.

Mrs. Koehler is a native of Baton Rouge, LA and Graduated from the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette.

Vice-Chairman
Sally Thompson,
Vice-President		 Sally Thompson served on the Florida Greenways Commission, the Florida Greenways Coordinating Council and was first Chair of the Florida Greenways and Trails Council. She is one of the original members of the Florida Greenways and Trails Foundation. She chairs the Tampa Greenways and Trails Citizens Advisory Committee and is Vice-Chair of the Hillsborough Greenways Committee.
Thompson is one of the founding members of the Tampa Bay Conservancy, a nonprofit local land trust. She has a BA from Hollins University and an MPA from the University of South Florida. She served on the Governing Board of SWFWMD for over 11 years, and is retired from the City of Tampa.

Treasurer
William LaMée,
Board Member		 William F. LaMée is the President and Co-Founder of The Great Outdoors Conservancy, a nonprofit national land trust, located in Bradenton, Florida. A graduate of the University of Florida and former president and publisher of The Bradenton Herald, Mr. LaMée, started Oktoberfest Suncoast in 2001 as a major fundraiser on Floridas west coast for the land acquisition activities of the Conservancy.
Mr. LaMée is a former member of the Florida Greenways and Trails Council serving from 2002-2005. Mr. LaMée currently serves on the governing board of Florida Communities Trust and was appointed to the Florida Greenways and Trails Foundation in April 2006.

O'Brien, Board Member
Meritt O'Brien,
Board Member 		Merritt F. O'Brien,a graduate of University of Connecticut, has been a Floridian since l964. As a South Florida resident he worked with Dade County Parks & Recreation Dept. as a District Supervisor of Golf Courses. In l979 he relocated to Sebring where he founded his own parts company. He continues to work at Brake Service of Central Florida, Inc.
In Highlands County he has been actively involved in the Sebring Sunrise Rotary Club serving in many leadership capacities including President 2005-06. Merritt currently serves as Chairman of the Recreation & Parks Advisory Committee to the Highlands County Board of Commissioners.
In l999 he was able to take his interest in bicycling to the community. Serving as the Chairman of the Trails Initiative Committee (1999-2003) the Blueways, Greenways, Bikeways and Trails Master Plan for Highlands Country was initiated and completed. The Board of County Commissioners incorporated said plan into the County Comprehensive Plan in 2000 and 2003.
In 2004 the Ridge Trails Association was founded by Merritt O'Brien, who continues to serve as the President of the 501C3 organization. The RTA initiated the "Heartland Triathlon" in 2006 which is the largest participatory event in Highlands County. "The Big Canoe Challenge" was inaugurated in 2007 which allowed participation in the community waterways for Florida residents as well as generating income for the RTA.
The Town of Lake Placid, Florida formed a 2007 Trails Committee and Mr. O'Brien was requested to serve as Chairman of the sub-committee (part of the Long Range Transportation Committee) which developed a trail master plan specifically for the Town. The plan was subsequently adopted by the Town Council.
Merritt and his wife have six adult children and twelve grandchildren.

Board Member
W. Dale Allen,
Board Member		 Dale Allen joined the Trust for Public Land (TPL) in 1981, was appointed Southeast Regional Manager in 1986, made a Vice President in 1988, and Senior Vice President in 1999. As regional director, he is responsible for TPL's work in a nine-state area that stretches from the Carolinas south to Florida and west to Louisiana.
Among his most notable land preservation accomplishments during his twenty-five year history with TPL is the preservation of the 450-year old deSoto-Apalachee Historic and Archaeological site and the Miccosukee Canopy Road Greenway in Tallahassee. Dale has been a member of the Florida Trail Association for more than 20 years, and was responsible for surveying and developing the Florida Trail from the Suwannee River to the Apalachicola River, a distance of 150 miles which included sections through the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge (the only coastal section in north Florida) and along the Aucilla River and Sinks.

A native Floridian, Dale was raised in Hollywood and attended schools in Broward County. He is a 1970 graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Board Member
Richard Dunkel,
Secretary		 Richard Dunkel is President of Trail Friends, Inc. in Mount Dora, Florida. He has been a bicycling and Rails-to Trails advocate since 1988. He was one of the founding Board Members and first Chairman of the Florida Chapter of the Rails to Trails Conservancy. He started Trail Friends, Inc., a Central Florida based trails organization, of which he is the current President.
He was a several term member of and Chairman of the Florida Department of Environmental Protections Recreational Trails Council. He has been active on a National, State and local level lobbying for Trails. Currently, he is the Secretary of the newly formed Citizen Support Organization for the Office of Greenways and Trails. Rich has sat on a number of Trail and Bike-Ped Boards and has been involved in many land and paddling trail projects throughout the State of Florida.

Board Member
Chris Burns,
Board Member		 Chris Burns is an attorney in Jacksonville with the firm of Terrell Hogan Ellis and Yegelwel, P.A. He has served on many professional associations. In community service, he is a member of the Florida Bicycle Association, and the Citizen Support Organization for the Jacksonville/Baldwin Rail Trail.
He served on the Jacksonville Bicycle-Pedestrian Advisory Committee.

Chris and his wife Cynthia have three children, and Chris is Chair of the Board of Trustees for his children's school.

Board Member
Herb Hiller,
Board Member		 Herb Hiller's current assignment as Southeast Region Program Consultant for the East Coast Greenway Alliance benchmarks almost 40 years of leadership in sustainable tourism, bicycling and trails.

In the 1970s as executive director of the Caribbean Travel Association, Herb prioritized locally resourceful tourism and secured long-term funding for its effectuation through the Caribbean Tourism Research Center, which he organized.
He initiated Florida's late-20th-century bicycling and bed-and-breakfast movements. He has served on the board of American Youth Hostels, as editor of The International Ecotourism Society Newsletter and as consultant to Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.

Additional recent consultancies include 1000 Friends of Florida, Visit Florida, Florida Parks, Volusia County's River of Lakes Heritage Corridor, and the Hollywood Beach CRA.

As a writer, Herb's Guide to the Small & Historic Lodgings of Florida won the Society of American Travel Writers Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award as best travel guidebook; his Highway A1A; Florida at the Edge, won Grand Book Prize honors of the North American Travel Journalists Association.

Herb contributes a bi-weekly report on Florida travel and tourism to the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

He is also founding chairman of the Society of American Travel Writers Institute for Travel Writing & Photography, which convenes each January in Orlando.

 
 
     

©2008 by FLORIDA GREENWAYS & TRAILS FOUNDATION, Inc.