Longtime Garden Club leader promotes beauty in the City Beautiful

By Rebecca Rodriguez
U/Miami News Service

After countless meetings, fundraisers and long hours spanning 20 years, Coral Gables now has the arched, landscape entrances into the city that longtime resident Betsy Adams helped put into place.

“I asked myself, ‘What can we do?’ ” Mrs. Adams recently recalled about when she became president of the Coral Gables Garden Club in 1989.

One year later, Mrs. Adams and the Garden Club had embarked upon a project, Adopt An Entrance, which raised $1.2 million for the construction of three Mediterranean-style entrances at Coral Way and Red Road in 1991; Miracle Mile and Douglas Road in 1997; and Ponce de Leon Boulevard and Southwest Eighth Street in 2008.

For her continuous and successful efforts to beautify the city, Mrs. Adams, 80, received two prestigious awards in 2009 -- the Leadership Award by Florida Federation of Garden Clubs in May and the Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce's George E. Merrick Award of Excellence in June.

Both awards recognize Mrs. Adams for fulfilling Mr. Merrick’s dream to create elegant entryways at major intersections. Construction began in the early 1920s but ended when Mr. Merrick abandoned the project following the Depression.

“I meet a lot of people in my line of work,” said Mark Trowbridge, Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce president and CEO. “I remember vividly our first encounter. She has more energy than anyone I’ve ever met. She’s warm, genial. I felt like I was in the presence of a real rock star.”

Though she spearheaded the projects, Mrs. Adams is quick to share the credit.

“We had such an amazing group of people,” Mrs. Adams said, among them Jane Wilson, who invited her to join the Garden Club decades earlier.

Her husband, Larry Adams, she said, also played a major role.

“I really can’t imagine doing any of it without his help,” she said.

It was her husband who lured Betsy Adams from Washington, D.C., to Coral Gables.

From 1947 to 1951, she worked for the FBI and the Department of Commerce in Washington, conducting loyalty checks on government employees to rule out possible communists. She also played on the FBI’s basketball team.

“I had played back home when I was in high school,” said Mrs. Adams, who originally is from Lenoir, N.C. “So I played on the FBI team. We played aircraft companies and other big companies.”

A chance encounter while visiting her sister in Coral Gables in March 1951 quickly changed her life. She met Larry Adams, and by October they were married.

“It was love at first sight for both of us, I suppose,” said Mrs. Adams, who has lived in the Gables ever since. Her husband tells a different story. He recalls seeing Betsy and a friend at the corner of Collins Avenue and 71st Street in Miami Beach where he was a Florida Power & Light employee working on the power lines.

“My eyes popped out on springs like something you see in the cartoons,” he said of seeing the former Miss District of Columbia pageant runner-up. “I just thought, ‘I need to talk to that girl,’ but she wouldn’t even look at me.’ ”

Once he accomplished that first step, her FBI days were history.

“I got married so I had to resign,” she recalled. “My husband didn’t want me to work, so I stayed home, raised a family and enjoyed every minute of it.” The couple has been married for nearly 60 years.

Although she has clocked countless hours into making the City Beautiful live up to its moniker, it’s her family of which she is most proud. The couple has three children — Larry Jr., 57, an architect; Ron, 54, a lawyer; and Thad, 49, a senior adviser for The Allen Morris Co.

“I’m a family gal,” she said, adding that110 people attended the most recent family reunion in Lenoir. “My brother bought our old house and lives there now. So we head back for reunions every other year.”

Although her brother moved back home, Mrs. Adams said she can’t be persuaded to leave the city.

“This is where my kids went to school,” she said of Coral Gables. “As far as we’re concerned, this is home. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”

While family came first, Mrs. Adams made time for community. Even with the entryway project accomplished, she went on to further the Garden Club’s efforts by raising enough money to commission a statue of George Merrick, which was dedicated in 2006 at the front of City Hall.

And she still is not finished.

“Right now we’re working on getting a bronze figure of Mrs. Merrick,” she said. “We want to place it in the garden at the Merrick House. We want it ready by the house’s 100-year anniversary next fall.”