Fisher Park loses a pioneer leader
Mary Lee Copeland wasn't as old as Fisher Park, it only seems as if she had been there since the neighborhood's beginning in the early 1900s.
Her death Tuesday after a brief illness has removed one of Fisher Park's most persistent and vocal warriors.
When threats arose to the neighborhood, which draws its name from the centerpark park split by North Elm Street, Copleland was at the barricades protesting.
"She was there every time to speak at public hearings,'' says Mike Cowhig, a city planner who advises the Greensboro Historic Preservation Commission, which governs the local historic districts of Fisher Park, Aycock and College Hill. "She has been there every step of the way.''
"She was a great and gracious lady and ejected spirit into the neighborhood and neighborhood association," says former association president David Moore, adding later that, "She was always giving an image of what the neighborhood should be."
Copeland and few others began speaking up in the 1970s after seeing the neighborhood headed in the wrong direction. Some years before the city rezoned North Elm Street from downtown through Fisher Park to to allow institutional and multi-family buildings. The idea was to give expansion room for downtown, which in those pre-shopping center days was busy and prosperous.
The rezoning opened the way for squat, ugly, brick apartment complexes, woefully out of touch with neighborhood's old architecture. THe apartments were wedged into lots where homes once stood.
Large homes on the east side of the BLCOK of North Elm came down and office buildings erected. A beautiful house at Elm and West Bessemer was renovated into an office for a chriopractor.
With Copeland in the leadership, the neighborhood declared war when developers proposed an office building next to the park at North Park Drive and Elm Sreet. The old Banner home, which dated to the early days of Fisher Park in the 1900s, would come down for the building.
Copeland's group didn't save the Banner House, but stopped the office building. Williamsburg-style townhouses were built at the site instead. While many park residents wished the Banner house remained, the townhouses have been become an accepted part of the Fisher Park scene.
David Moore said that conflict prompted Copeland and two others to organize the Fisher Park Neighborhood Association. She served on the board for 25 years. The association remains hyper-active, always on the prowl for any intrusion that would harm the mostly single-family character of the neighborhood.
In the early 1980s, Copeland was a leader in the move to make Fisher Park a local historic district, even though the status brought rigid regulations about what property owners could and couldn't do with their yards and home exteriors.
The regulations through the years have angered a few residents who believe they infringe on property rights. But Copeland and most other Fisher Parkers accepted the rules. When they spotted neighbors in violation they knocked on their doors and if no action was taken called city hall.
Fisher Park was Copeland's domain. She lived in a two-story brick house on Magnolia Street on the park's north side. She belonged to Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in the neigbhorhood.
But she didn't limit her preservation interest to Fisher Park. She looked out for the whole city, state and nation.
She was a founder of the Greensboro Preservation Society, now called Preservation Greensboro Inc., formed in the 1960s to save Blandwood Mansion. Rumors circulated of grocery store replacing Gov. John Motley Morehead's mansion. The society rescued Blandwood and over a 30-year period restored it. It is now a National Historic Landmark.
Copeland also served on the Greensboro Zoning Commission, which had a say on what could where in the city.
On the state and national levels, she belonged to the Historic Preservation Foundation of North Carolina and Preservation North Carolina and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Moore said when he and his wife, Agnes, moved to Fisher Park in 1977 the neighborhood's future was so uncertain banks were reluctant to make housing loans.
Thanks to the likes of Copeland that changed. Fisher Park now ranks as one of the city's premier neighborhood.