Charlene Holzwarth

Charlene McMahon Holzwarth was born in Beattie, Kansas, in 1927. After earning a BS degree from Kansas State University, she moved west to Oregon. Here she continued her education, earning an Oregon Teaching Certificate. She began a career of teaching elementary age children in Portland which lasted 34 years, mostly as a full-time substitute teacher.

In 1951 Charlene married Milbert Holzwarth, a contracting officer for the US Forest Service in Region 6. The family lived in John Day, Eugene, and Portland. Milbert retired with 30 years of service. He died in 1982. Charlene and Milbert have three children, all of whom live in Oregon.

When the children were young, Charlene was an active leader in 4-H, Campfire, and the PTA. Charlene joined the young Native Plant Society of Oregon in 1963, at a time when the Society was primarily a Portland organization. She soon assumed the duties of Treasurer for the group. From 1979 to 1980, after regional chapters had begun to form, she served as State Treasurer under President Frank Lang.

In 1983 Charlene was urged by Portland Park employees, neighbors, and members of NPSO to help save the John and Lilla Leach property in southeast Portland for the public. Charlene was instrumental in the designation of the Leach Garden as a public park. She was especially effective in working with the adjacent landowners, and was instrumental in the founding of the Leach Garden Friends who have a contract with the City of Portland to manage this garden. Leach Botanical Garden is one of the important native plant gardens in Oregon. It has a library, a small museum, and items from the Leaches’ pharmacy and home. Charlene has volunteered at the Leach Botanical Garden for over twenty years.

She continues to be a member of the Portland Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Oregon and in 1980 began the trail lists of their observations; the lists were later kept at the Leach Garden. After Milbert’s death, Charlene yielded to a lifetime love of adventure in exotic places by joining the Peace Corps. In her late 50s, Charlene spent two years, from 1984 to 1986, in Sierra Leone, Africa. There she helped train ten village elementary school teachers and acquired funds from the US to repair four school properties in remote villages. Her mode of transportation in Africa was a motorcycle!

In 1995 Charlene, with co-authors Linda Mullens and Golda Kirkpatrick, wrote the charming book, The Botanist and Her Muleskinner about Lilla and John Leach and their adventures in southwestern Oregon. The book is a historical account of the botanical explorations of this husband and wife plant collecting team who botanized in the Siskiyou Mountains during the 1920s and 1930s and made the first scientific collection of Kalmiopsis leachiana. Now a septuagenarian, Charlene remains active at the Leach Garden as a gift shop hostess and special project coordinator. She continues her active participation in the Native Plant Society of Oregon.

– Bette Howard and Joyce Peters, Leach Botanical Garden and Portland Chapter, NPSO.