Name for new preserve came naturally

Finding a name for the 42-acre nature area he donated to the city of Lawrence was an easy choice for John McGrew.

Pat Dawson Billings was a dedicated teacher and lover of the outdoors, McGrew said. She was the wife of Bob Billings, a Lawrence developer and founder of the Alvamar development. Dawson Billings died of cancer in 1975 at the age of 37.

“She was just a really terrific lady, one of those outstanding teachers who motivated kids, and then she died at way too young of an age,” said McGrew, owner of McGrew Real Estate and a friend of Billings and Dawson Billings.

Dawson Billings graduated from Kansas University in 1960 with a bachelor’s degree in education. She taught at Pinckney and Sunset Hill schools and then Central Junior High School. She shared her husband’s vision for Alvamar during the early stages of development, friend Barbara Hodgson said.

“And there had to be a lot of vision at the beginning,” Hodgson said.

“She loved life. She loved the outdoors,” McGrew said Wednesday at the Pat Dawson Billings Nature Area, near 27th Street and Crossgate Drive. “She’d see this as a natural classroom. She loved to fly-fish, and she was very good at it.”