Jo Ann Street believed a park could be more than a patch of grass. It could be a refuge, a classroom and a gathering place.
And her unwavering belief that children in North Memphis deserved shade overhead, room to run and flowers in bloom compelled her to create beautiful outdoor spaces they could call their own.
For more than a decade, Street organized cleanups, confronted people who littered and advocated for investment in neglected parks. She commissioned murals for a community pool and helped secure millions of dollars for the rehabilitation of Gooch Park.
Street, a certified Level 1 arboretum specialist and founder of HUG Park Friends, died July 25 at 69.
Her death has left North Memphis without one of its most relentless champions — a woman whose love of nature was inseparable from her belief in people.
“She was a real force of nature in doing good things for North Memphis,” said Kim Haylack of Experience Memphis Gardens.
Street’s 11-year-old grassroots community organization, HUG, got its name from the first letter in Hollywood, University and Gooch, the three North Memphis parks it supported.
A few years ago, she approached Haylack about adding Gooch Park to the Experience Memphis Gardens walking tour.
“I absolutely loved the idea,” Haylack said.
The tour, which now includes Gooch Park, invites people to walk through neighborhoods they might not otherwise visit, discovering gardens and other places of beauty along the way.
For Street, it was another way of changing how people saw North Memphis, and how residents saw their own neighborhood.
Street planted dozens of native trees and advocated for clean, safe and lush public parks, building a diverse network of people and organizations around her work.
“I collaborated with her in planting several of the trees that are over at Gooch Park,” said Connie Shepard, retired Memphis Parks maintenance manager, who had taken a Tennessee Urban Forestry Council class with Street. “It will take quite a force of nature to find somebody who is her equal.”
Norma Lester, a longtime Democratic activist and friend, remembers an event where Street was encouraged to share her personal story and the organization’s mission for an opportunity to win funding.
“She told her story and literally had everyone in tears,” Lester said. “She won. Afterwards, she told me she didn’t believe she deserved to win. She was such a humble person.”
Under Street’s leadership, HUG partnered with the UrbanArt Commission to bring murals to Gooch Park’s community pool, and worked with Memphis Parks and the Trust for Public Land to secure a $3.34 million federal grant from the National Park Service’s Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership program for major park upgrades.
Still, her accomplishments were part of a much larger civic life. Street served as a recording secretary for the Democratic Women of Shelby County, an ambassador for the Tillman and Crump police stations in Memphis, and an advocate for a range of community causes, including the protection and expansion of urban forestry and public parks.
But Lester said Street’s greatest achievement may have been the way she brought people from different backgrounds together. The diversity of those who attended Street’s services was, to Lester, a testament to the many lives she touched.
“I said to myself, ‘Jo Ann, you would be so happy. I know you are just smiling down, seeing all of these people who came out to celebrate you,’” Lester mused.
In the end, the parks may be the most fitting – and enduring – memorial to Street.
The trees she planted will continue to grow. Children will play beneath them. Families will gather in spaces she fought to make beautiful.
And the woman who believed those places mattered will remain within them – in the shade, in the gardens, in the people who care for them and in a North Memphis community that knows it is worth the investment.
