Snapshot: Laura Michel

Laura M. Michel A LIFETIME of DEDICATION

By John Voneiff II, BCC Member

In 1980, Laura Michel graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in Ornamental Horticulture. It was during an economic downturn. People weren’t hiring. This was particularly true for recent college graduates. Laura told me when we met in the Roland Park library on Monday, September 21, 2020 that when she couldn’t find a position in landscaping or gardening, she applied everywhere. It didn’t matter, she just needed a job—any job. One morning, while perusing the Baltimore Sun classifieds, a specific opening caught her eye. Baltimore Country Club was seeking an individual to tend to its gardens and grounds. Laura applied. Merrell Frank, the Club’s Golf Course Superintendent, had made it his task to beautify the neglected commons surrounding both clubhouses. The gardens and grounds in Roland Park, since the closing of the golf course in 1964, were especially wanting.

Frank offered Laura the position. She didn’t give the meager four dollar per hour wage a second thought. She was thrilled to find, as she describes it these forty years since, 'the perfect match.'

Recognizing he was interviewing the right person, Frank offered Laura the position. She didn’t give the meager four dollar per hour wage a second thought. She was thrilled to find, as she describes it these forty years since, “the perfect match.” One year later, in 1981, Merrell assigned Laura exclusively to the care of Roland Park. Neither Laura or Merrell could have foreseen that for Laura this was the beginning of a lifetime labor of love. Baltimore Country Club,” Laura told me, “has been a wonderful place to spend the years. I look forward to every day. It has gone by so fast.”

Baltimore Country Club has been a wonderful place to spend the years. I look forward to every day. It has gone by so fast.

There is no question about the proverbial adage—“Time flies.” Those of us who have accumulated age, can’t help but look back and reflect upon our own irresistible legacy of time. It seems like children who were swimming in the Five Farms pool only yesterday, now have families of their own. It has been 121 years since Willy Smith won the 1899 U.S. Open at Roland Park by eleven strokes—56 years since the last round of golf was played on the first eighteen hole golf course in Maryland—40 years (nearly 15,000 days) since Laura undertook the preservation of our thirty-two acre Roland Park campus. She is there today—sporting her wide brimmed floppy hat, meticulously trimming shrubbery, cutting grass, sweeping the paths, wielding her chainsaw, or potting perennials. Laura Michel was born and raised in Kingsville, Maryland near Belair. She went to Kingsville Elementary and graduated from Perryville High School in 1976 before receiving a full scholarship to the University of Maryland College Park. The Michels lived on a thirty acre farm. Along with her two sisters and two brothers, Laura was always outdoors. The Michel children fell in love with the woodlands and its wildlife. Their father, James, dutifully tended his four acre formal garden, on the same farmland, until his passing in 2019. Her husband, Barton, before retirement, was a greenskeeper at Eagle’s Nest Country Club. But Laura’s earliest remembrance, the genesis of her love of horticulture, came from spending hours with her grandfather who founded, and until his death, was the proprietor of a commercial greenhouse in Parkville. What member of Baltimore Country Club can visit Roland Park (spring, winter, summer, fall) without harboring a prideful appreciation for the splendor of its superlative garden greens, floral blooms and pristine grounds? For much of this, we are beholden to Laura and her four decades of faithful and immeasurable service to us all. ◆