Twenty-two years had passed since Anita Gorman and her three-year-old granddaughter stepped into the conservation center on its opening day. They were among the first visitors to the center, located in the heart of Kansas City, that bears her name.

Now she was back, on a recent late-winter morning, seeing her dream center in full educational mode, experiencing for the first time the best realization of what she worked for decades ago.

Exuberant children. Everywhere.

The fourth-grade class from Topping Elementary School in the North Kansas City Schools, collaborating with LINC’s Caring Communities program, swarmed into the center’s indoor and outdoor learning spaces.

Gorman, a LINC Commissioner and former Missouri Conservation Commissioner — among many other civic roles — watched the children as they eyed the flicking forked tongues of live snakes, pricked at the talons of raptors and walked the native woodland preserved on eight acres of land leased from the Kauffman Foundation at 48th and Troost Avenue.

“It makes me proud,” Gorman said. “It makes me feel very lucky to live in Missouri that we have a place like this for children.”

LINC invited Gorman to join in the visit so she could enjoy watching the children that Topping Elementary and LINC gathered to take part in the center’s education programming.

The site was named the Anita B. Gorman Conservation Discovery Center in honor of Gorman’s life’s work for nature in many ways, including service on the Kansas City Board of Park and Recreation Commissioners, the Missouri Conservation Commission, and for championing the idea and leading the fundraising to put a conservation center in the heart of the city.

“I was a farm girl,” Gorman said. She grew up in rural Clay County surrounded by and enamored with nature — a love she carries with her today and wishes to share.

The dream was to create a conservation center for children and adults in the city who did not have many opportunities to experience nature, said Stacey Davis, the center’s manager.

“Her idea was to build an oasis right here in town,” Davis said. “It was all created with native plants and an environmentally friendly design — all things that were very important to Ms. Gorman.”

The center’s team of teaching conservationists took groups of Topping students through programs that engaged them with touchable animals, plants and artifacts in analyzing how native Missouri creatures survive in the wild.

“All of our programs are tied to the fish, forests and wildlife of Missouri,” said Steve Jacobsen, the center’s assistant manager. “Our mission . . . is helping kids and adults learn about those resources and how to enjoy them and manage them.”

Topping’s team of fourth-grade teachers said they and their students appreciated the way the lessons of the day blended well with their science curriculum back in school.

The Discovery Center provided a “fantastic” experience, Topping teacher Eric Chavez said.

“It was made for children,” he said. “It was made for curiosity and engagement. As my kids walked through, so many things were catching their eye. I’m sure they could spend a whole day there.”

Many of the kids wrote thank-you cards to LINC and are wondering what other kinds of adventures might be possible, said LINC Caring Communities Coordinator Connie Parker.

“This was a great collaboration for LINC and the school district,” she said.

Hosting school groups has been one of the Gorman Conservation Discovery Center’s primary outreach efforts over the years. The 57 children Topping and LINC brought to the center added to the more than 300,000 children in some 13,000 school programs that have visited here since 2002.

And Gorman was delighted to witness one of those visits first-hand.

The diversity in the group of Topping students was notable to her, as well as their widespread enthusiasm and engagement in the nature programming.

“The kids enjoyed it,” Gorman said. “This will make an impression on them for the rest of their lives, and that’s great for the state too.”

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer