What’s in a name? I enjoy walking along the wooded trail in the Zachary Taylor Nature Area (which runs from Military Road, up to the Marymount campus). On a recent stroll, passing the sign into the trail, I asked myself this question: why the heck is a nature area named for Zachary Taylor?

I know that this wooded expanse, which includes the stream valley known as Donaldson Run, does have a common border with Taylor Elementary School (along with common borders with dozens of houses). But why would the County name this trail after our 12th president?

Well, I am still trying to track down the details about that naming of the park area. But I would also ask this question: what person might appropriately be deserving of the honor of being named for this park? I hereby suggest that it would be wonderful to call it the Tom Richards Nature Area.

Tom Richards was a two-term County Board member in the 1960s. His legacy is perhaps summed up in one headline from an article praising Richards: “A Theodore Roosevelt For Arlington Parks.” Early in 1961, Richards noticed that the Gulf Branch stream valley was being encroached upon by development. As a brand-new Board member, he went to the County Manager with his concern, expressing his opinion that the County needed to purchase portions of the stream valley for parkland purposes. The County Manager had no interest in doing so, but Richards persisted, and within weeks, the County Board budgeted funds to purchase the valley area from Military Road to the Potomac River. Due to Richards, we now have a beautiful trail down to the Potomac, which then connects with other stream valleys.

But this was just the beginning of Richards’ involvement in parkland preservation. His vision of what was possible was remarkable, but even more remarkable was his ability to turn a vision into a significant accomplishment. Richards’ work moved on to other stream valleys: Donaldson Run, Windy Run, and Long Branch.

Richards was able to convince his fellow Board members to budget funds to save these streams from over-development. And he gained a reputation that was disparaged when he ran for re-election in 1964. Ken Haggerty, his Republican opponent, belittled Richards as “Nature Boy.”

Richards embraced that nickname as a positive value, and he easily won re-election. And then he set his sights on Four Mile Run. While snowbound at LaGuardia Airport one day, Tom Richards took out his AAA road map, and figured out a way to connect portions of Four Mile Run for a bike trail. He called Dick Armas, the County planner, and together they figured out a plan that was acted upon by the Board, and that now gives us a wonderful bike trail along Four Mile Run.

Tom Richards’ next idea was to connect Roosevelt Island to Mount Vernon with a bike trail. Richards was by then the chair of the land use committee for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, and he was able to convert his vision to reality. As all current local cyclists know, that bike trail now exists, providing the possibility of a 34 mile round trip (and a connection to the Four Mile bike trail).

One of his proudest moments came when he urged the County to buy parkland upstream along Gulf Branch, on the opposite side of Military Road from the original purchase. Based on this suggestion, even more parkland was acquired, leading up to the Fort Ethan Allen Park area, and including an old stone house that is now the Gulf Branch Nature Center

There is not enough space in my column to describe all of Tom Richards’ accomplishments on park preservation (much less all the other work that defined his eight years in office, which includes the initial work on getting the Metro system built in Arlington).

But to get back to my original thought: wouldn’t it be nice to have that trail going up the Donaldson Run stream named after Tom Richards, and not Zachary Taylor?