Jere Knight: Conservation Advocate of Bucks County
When you walk the Jere Knight Trail at Heritage Conservancy’s Fuller-Pursell Nature Preserve, you’re walking in the footsteps of a woman who spent decades helping people and the environment. To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re taking a look at Jere Knight, a Bucks County resident who lived a remarkable life.
Jere Knight (1908-1996) was a national fencing champion, an intelligence officer in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps during WWII, the editor behind the original “Lassie Come-Home” book, a translator of Central American poetry, and an advocate for conservation and peace. But here in Springfield Township, Bucks County, she’s remembered most for her work in protecting Cooks Creek as a state-designated conservation area.
The Early Years
Born Ruth Frances Brylawski in Philadelphia, Jere Knight earned bachelor’s degrees in psychology, languages, and a master’s in political science from the University of Pennsylvania — a feat not many women were accomplishing at that time. She worked as a secretary for the Pennsylvania chapter of the League of Nations Association. There she met Eric Knight, a cinema editor and fellow Quaker, who shared her passion for the arts and nature.
They married in 1932, and while Eric wrote, she edited. She worked as an assistant story editor at Selznick International Pictures, assisting with projects like Gone with the Wind and helping Eric develop his stories, including Lassie Come-Home (1940) and the war novel This Above All (1941).
Jere Knight, June 10, 1972 issue of TV Guide.
Loss and Service
When Eric Knight tragically died in a 1943 military plane crash in Surinam, Jere focused herself on being of service to others.
While Quakers are generally pacifists, she decided to stand against Hitler. She became a major in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), directing a team of cryptographers and earning a Bronze Star for her intelligence work. She wrote speeches for General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who reportedly requested her company at dinner while traveling through Europe.
After the war, she worked as a research and editorial associate to Lehigh University history professor Lawrence Henry Gipson, helping edit books on the British Empire that won a Pulitzer Prize. She also helped with the literary estate of poet E.E. Cummings, wrote libretti for operas, translated poetry by Central American women, and published her own collection, The Uphill View, in 1993. “Establishing yourself as a writer in your 80’s is almost ridiculous,” she told Bucks County Town and Country Living in 1994. “It’s really a great personal risk.”
An Ecologist at Heart
Back home in Springfield Township, she turned her attention to Cooks Creek, a local watershed running through Springfield and Durham townships that was under threat from development and pollution.
Jere collected data, wrote reports, and advocated until Cooks Creek was designated a state-protected conservation area: an exceptional value stream protected for its ecological significance.
And then she kept going. Jere attended township meetings, showed videotapes on water pollution at community events, and famously stated, “As long as I’m around this community, I’m gonna yack.”
Recognition and Legacy
In the early 1980s, longtime Cooks Creek Watershed supporters and Springfield Township residents Peter and Joan Fuller created a nature trail along a Cooks Creek tributary on their property and named it the Jere Knight Trail in honor of her environmental advocacy. In 1993, the Fullers donated 64 acres to Heritage Conservancy, and the property became the Fuller Preserve (now the Fuller-Pursell Preserve, 117 acres). The trail has kept Jere’s name ever since.
In 1994, Springfield Township supervisors named Jere Knight their first Community Quality-of-Life Honoree. While they were reading her long list of lifetime accomplishments, she quickly shifted the attention from herself to the causes she was fighting for while rallying the community to action.
Jere Knight passed away in 1996 at age 88. This Women’s History Month, we celebrate her legacy and the trail that bears her name. When you walk the Jere Knight Trail today, you’re walking through a watershed she helped protect.
Explore the Jere Knight Trail and visit our Fuller-Pursell Nature Preserve HERE.
