Henley defends his foundation in wake of report; Non-Walden causes reportedly funded
Author: Andy Dabilis
Publication: Boston Globe
Date: September 7, 1993
Abstract: Henley addresses accusations about misdirection of funds for Walden.
Singer Don Henley's crusade to save Walden Woods in Concord from development got a million-dollar boost with yesterday's concert at Foxboro Stadium, but not before he had to explain where some of the nearly $5 million raised so far has gone.
Henley brought performers Elton John, Melissa Etheridge, and Sting into a pre-concert news conference before scores of reporters, photographers and television cameras packed into a tent, where the performers reiterated their support for saving the area around Walden.
"I'm involved in other efforts to stop development," Henley said. But preserving Walden, where 19th-century writer Henry David Thoreau lived and wrote about civil disobedience, was "sort of the mother of all the battles," Henley said.
"This is the birthplace of the modern conservation movement . . . and the peace movement," he said of the 2,680 acres encompassing Walden Pond and its environs. "What happened in this little shack in this little woods reverberated around the world," Henley said.
Henley and his friends have worked for three years to raise money to buy land around the pond that had been slated for development as condominiums, office parks and parking lots.
But Henley said he was irked by a recent report from the Associated Press in Boston. AP said that $ 46,000 from Henley's foundation, the ISIS fund, was given to conservationist causes in his home area of East Texas, and California, and $ 1,000 to a western Massachusetts group.
Henley said the foundation needed another $ 4.5 million to preserve Walden and defended the fund-raising and expenditures. "Every penny raised for Walden Woods goes to Walden Woods," he said.
But Henley later said much of the money had been raised outside New England, and that small donations had been given back to groups who donated substantial amounts for the Walden Woods Project.
He said one fund-raiser in California raised $ 500,000 for Walden. Henley asked rhetorically if he should have asked them, "Thank you for the $ 500,000 you raised for Massachusetts. Do you mind if I kick back $ 10,000" for a local conservation effort in California.
Later, onstage at Foxboro Stadium, Henley returned to the issue. He told the 48,000 fans that AP is "one of the sloppiest and most irresponsible news organizations in the US."
The crowd applauded wildly.
The drive to save Walden began in 1990 with a concert in Worcester. Henley has called on recording artists and friends in the arts for other concerts and fund-raisers in Los Angeles and New York as well.
He said he thought it would take at least two more years to raise more money to pay for additional lands, environmental restrictions and to close a dump near Walden. "You're not rid of me yet," he said.
Sting, who has raised money to try to save South American rain forests, said he came to Foxboro when Henley asked because "it's all connected. You can't separate Walden Woods from what's happening in the Amazon." Earlier, he said Walden "seems to be important symbolically, if not practically."
John said he wanted to help because Walden Pond "is a very beautiful part of the world and too many beautiful parts of the world are vanishing."
Henley noted that Sting and John, who are from England, "don't even live in this country and they are helping out."
Henley said he thought ticket sales alone yesterday would raise $ 1 million and that the land around Walden eventually would be turned over to a local land trust and be used as a conservation area and for low-impact walking trails with historical markers and other references.
Henley said he thought the fund-raising by celebrities represented a failure by government, including the state and local government, to conserve areas like Walden.
"I've been there plenty," he said. "I know every tree by name."
Since 1990, the project has acquired about $ 8 million worth of historic and environmentally sensitive land near Walden Pond, including a $ 3.5 million purchase in July, financed by a loan from the Trust for Public Land, to be repaid in two years.
While the environment was on the mind of Henley and his friends, music lured many of yesterday's audience, attracted by other performers such as the Boston band Aerosmith, and Jimmy Buffet, the king of laid-back Key West escape sounds who just finished several nights at Great Woods.
Ed Kennedy, 49, and his wife, Emma, 47, from Warwick, R.I., said they wanted to hear Elton John. "I enjoy the singers and it's a good cause," she said during Etheridge's opening act. They said they had never been to Walden.
Steve Wright, 38, of Warwick, said he and his wife, Anna, won tickets to the concert. "I've never been there," he said of Walden. "But it impressed the hell out of Thoreau, didn't it?"
Katelin Chmielinski, 16, of Weymouth, was at Foxboro for the concert and to work concessions. She said she had learned in school that Thoreau "lived in Walden Woods and became one with nature. He stood up for what he believed in."
Her friend, Katie Rooney, 17, also of Weymouth, at first said she was there for the music, but quickly chimed in after hearing her friend that "I don't want Walden Woods to go condo."
