Mary McKSchmidt
Author, Poet, Photographer
When Mary and her husband, Rubin, retired in 2005, they could have lived anywhere in the country. They chose to move to Michigan. Avid sailors, they’d sailed three of the five Great Lakes and fallen in love with the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. An avid photographer, Mary worked with singer, songwriter Ruth Bloomquist to create the short video, This Place We Call Home, a place that touches both hearts.
Advocate for the Great Lakes
On learning the health of the Great Lakes was at a tipping point, Mary began researching the many stressors affecting the quality of the water. She began sharing what she learned in presentations, newspaper columns, on her blog, and in her book, Uncharted Waters: Romance, Adventure, and Advocacy on the Great Lakes.
Making Nature Accessible to Seniors
In 2014, Mary’s 87-year-old mother, Jane McKinney, moved from Tucson to a senior-living apartment seven miles from her and Rubin’s home. As both mother and daughter were nature enthusiasts, they walked several times a week through nearby parks in Holland and Saugatuck. Over the next eleven years, Jane transitioned from walking independently to arm-in-arm, to using a cane, a walker, and eventually a wheelchair. Finding senior-friendly spaces became tough. What they needed was a senior-friendly bench shaded by a tree and located on a safe path. Such places were hard to find.
In 2022, Jane and Mary launched the Bench and a Tree initiative designed to add senior-friendly benches to Michigan parks. Jane passed in July, 2025, but the initiative continues. The first senior-friendly spaces to be added as a result of the Bench and a Tree will be in Ottawa County, the county in which she lived the last eleven years of her 98-year life.