by Amy Martin
It’s been a year since the passing of Genie Fritz at the significant age of 100. She outlived her husband Ned Fritz by 16 years. Genie was absolutely remarkable, as you can see in her legacy list.
More than serving as Ned’s typist, editor, and sounding board, together they co-founded some of Texas’s most important nature preservation groups: Texas Committee on Natural Resources (TCONR), now Texas Conservation Alliance, and Natural Areas Preservation Association, now Texas Land Conservancy (TLC).
Yet, before all that, Genie was an outstanding activist for women’s rights, equal housing, and social justice, starting a group that ultimately morphed into the Dallas Housing Authority and helping to form the Southwest Women’s Federal Credit Union, which in the ’70s gave loans to women when banks would not. She held top positions in the local and state League of Women Voters.
So it was fitting that lagnappie of her life was remarkable. I was honored that the extended Fritz family invited my Ned Fritz Legacy cohort, Kristi Kerr Leonard, and me to participate in the final distribution of Genie’s cremains at the Catahoula Forest Preserve, the first land Ned and Genie purchased for TLC, deep in the Big Thicket.
I mixed the cremains, which are nearly pure phosphorus, with compost, nitrogen, and potash, so that they would not harm the greenery. Into that I blended spiderwort seeds, a Texas wildflower as beautiful and tough as Genie. It’s known for naturalizing robustly.
The family and long-time friends stood in a circle before the Catahoula sign, where Ned’s ashes were interred years prior, sharing memories and thoughts of Genie. While we scattered the flower seed-cremains mix at our feet, the group was stunned to watch a raincloud form nearly right over our heads. As if the ever-sensible Genie were looking on and thought, “Those seeds need to be watered in.” It became termed “the grandmama cloud.”
Some of us hiked further into the forest with the remaining cremains mix and formed a circle to repeat the act. We were astounded as another rain cloud formed overhead, raining in the seeds. It was truly a blessing. So wonderful to think that circles of beautiful blue-violet flowers will recall her legacy every spring.
As talks and such for Wild DFW: Explore the Amazing Nature Around Dallas-Fort Worth wind down after two years, I’ve been able to return to research and writing for the Ned Fritz biography. At the Edward C. Fritz Archives at SMU’s DeGolyer Library, I was copying a few decades’ worth of TCONR newsletters, of which I’ve always subscribed. Each one typed and edited by Genie. I feel her presence still.
Photo of me, (on far right) Kristi, Genie, and Jean Ann Powers of First Unitarian Church of Dallas, where we all attended, at Genie’s 100th birthday party in spring 2024 by Scooter Smith.
