Richelle Brown, Ivette Bledsoe and Tom Keene recently were elected to the Board of Directors of Firefly Trail, Inc., a non-profit organization whose mission is to partner with local communities to create a nationally significant multi-purpose rail-trail from Athens to Union Point, Ga.

When built on or near the historic corridor of the Georgia Railroad Athens Branch, the 39-mile trail will provide an unparalleled resource for recreation, tourism, economic opportunity and community-building. Connecting three counties and eight municipalities, the proposed trail will provide a safe, level, off-road path for walking, running, cycling and other non-motorized uses, with side-paths in many areas for mountain biking and horseback riding.

Richelle Brown

Brown is a librarian and a long-time trail advocate with experience in trail creation in her home state of Virginia. A magna cum laude history graduate of the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va., Brown came to Northeast Georgia from Maryland, where she earned her master’s degree in library science at the University of Maryland in College Park. She has served as a reference and processing intern at the National Anthropological Archives in Suitland, MD., graduate research assistant with the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at University of Maryland, and visitor use assistant with the National Park Service at Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial in Arlington, Va.

Among her volunteer experience, Brown lists serving as community outreach committee chair for the Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy, visitor services and collections volunteer with Loudoun Museum, and oral history volunteer at the Alexandria Archaeology Museum, all in Virginia. Her special interest lies in communicating the benefits of the trail through electronic media and preserving recollections and memorabilia of the railroad, which ceased operations in 1984. She notes that her great-grandfather supervised gandy dancers on the Southern Railroad.

Ivette Lopez Bledsoe

Bledsoe is a licensed clinical social worker who practices neuropsychotherapy at Resilia in Watkinsville. She earned her bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech and her master’s degree in social work from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Most recently, she practiced as a psychotherapist and biofeedback therapist in Fort Collins, Colo., from 2005-2015, when she relocated to Watkinsville. Bledsoe is also a certified Yoga instructor and health education specialist.

Her interest in the Firefly Trail grows from her love of the rail-trails she used in Colorado and her passion for physical and mental health. With more than 22,000 miles of rail-trails in the United States, she notes that they are proven to provide significant wellness benefits for the people who use them and the communities they connect. Benefits include improved cardiovascular health with reductions in blood pressure, obesity and diabetes, stress reduction, and opportunities for family and community togetherness.

Tom Keene

A recently retired professor of history, Keene was raised on a dairy farm in Lancaster County, Penn., where he lived and worked until going off to college. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Dickinson College, Carlisle, Penn., and then earned his master’s and doctor’s degrees in history from Emory University, Atlanta. He was a professor of history at Kennesaw State University from 1973-2014, where he also served as director of the Office of International Programs from 1988-2003 and Chair of the KSU Athletics Board from 2005-2012. In his work, he specialized in the history of science and South Asian history.

Keene has been a member of the Benton MacKaye Trail Association since 1996, including serving as conservation chair and president, and currently is vice president/president elect. During his tenure, the association and numerous partners have successfully extended the wilderness trail, now 290 miles long, from its beginnings at Springer Mountain near Blue Ridge, Ga., through parts of Tennessee and North Carolina to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Brown, Bledsoe and Keene join Firefly Trail board members Mary Cook, John Devine, David Hagaman, Mike Hall, Gary Hedrick, Mary Quinn, Mark Ralston and John Stephens. Firefly Trail Inc., is seeking additional volunteers and potential board members, especially as it gears up to assist the City of Maxeys in raising matching funds for and implementing a $100,000 recreational trails grant recently announced by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

For more information about the trail or to become involved, please visit www.fireflytrail.com or contact Mary Cook, treasurer and volunteer coordinator, at [email protected].