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Walt Ray \u201995, M \u201997<\/b><\/p>\n
A Tale of Two Rivers<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> By\u00a0Sara Ann Hutto \u201917<\/b> Ray is making his mark on landscape architecture \u2014 and the future of the Chattahoochee River<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> Walt Ray grew up on a river in rural, northwest Pennsylvania \u2014 the Alleghany River, to be exact. When he wasn\u2019t working on the family farm, Ray spent summers, evenings and weekends in and around the river, hiking, climbing, paddling and \u201cgetting lost,\u201d he laughs.
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\n\u201cWe worked hard all summer on the farm, so when hay season was over, our reward was an overnight trip down the Alleghany River with my dad,\u201d Ray says. \u201cHe would be in the johnboat, and my brothers and I would be in canoes.\u201d
\nRay developed a passion for the outdoors in his childhood, and he also had an interest in design. Landscape architecture was the perfect marriage. After a spontaneous visit to Clemson during a spring break trip to the beach, Ray rescinded his acceptance to Penn State and enrolled in the University\u2019s fledgling landscape architecture program.
\n\u201c[Clemson] felt like an extension of sort of how I\u2019d grown up, you know,\u201d he says. \u201cSmall town, small size, very approachable \u2014 and lovely, of course.\u201d
\nA member of the landscape architecture program\u2019s third graduating class, Ray stayed in Clemson for another two years to earn his master\u2019s in horticulture.
\nEventually, he settled in Atlanta and launched his career in an urban design studio, where he fell in love with planning and designing the public realm: \u201cI want to set the stage on which people are going to live and work and play. I learned how to engage the public \u2014 how to ask questions and learn about what communities need.\u201d
\nEleven years as the founding director of the Park Visioning program at the nonprofit Park Pride followed, a job in which Ray got to design 32 parks for communities in Atlanta. He was working for the City of Atlanta when he saw the job posting for director of the Chattahoochee Program for the Trust for Public Land, which entailed activating and preserving the Chattahoochee River and its valley from Helen to Columbus, Georgia \u2014 about 285 miles.
\n\u201cIf I could have ever written my own job description, this would be it,\u201d Ray says.
\nOne of the first things Ray did as director was convene the Chattahoochee Working Group, a loose organization of representatives from cities, counties and nonprofits in the region, in an effort to get conversations started about the development of the river, which is currently in recovery from heavy pollution in the \u201960s.
\nAlong with the Working Group and Scape, a landscape architecture firm out of New York City, Ray and many partner organizations drew up plans for what is called the Chattahoochee RiverLands, the 100-mile stretch of river that winds through metro Atlanta. The plans include a shared-path greenway; river amenities, like boat ramps, kayak launches and campsites; and tributary trails to help visitors reach the river.
\nThe project is now moving into the implementation phase, which Ray knows will take a generation or more to fully realize. But it\u2019s the scope and scale of the project that excite him, and he knows it will only be accomplished by working together, in tandem with each community impacted by the river.
\n\u201cThe RiverLands will really be the mark that I leave on the planet,\u201d Ray says. \u201cAnd I think it\u2019s a wonderful legacy.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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Walt Ray ’95, M ’97 is making his mark on landscape architecture \u2014 and the future of the Chattahoochee River<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":23702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,8],"tags":[590,1765,2811,2813,3097],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-23706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumniprofiles","category-my-clemson","tag-chattahoochee-river","tag-landscape-architecture","tag-summer-2021","tag-summer-2021-alumni-profile","tag-trust-for-public-land"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2021\/06\/Walt-Ray.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23706"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}