Natural Honors: Jean Reese Worthley '44

Release date: April 23, 2008 |

In early October, a humble wood cottage will be dedicated at the Howard County Conservancy in Woodstock, MD. The location is a new--and fitting--one for the building, better known as the Hodgepodge Lodge, the setting for a popular 1970s syndicated children’s television program, produced by Maryland Public Television, starring Jean Reese Worthley.

The dedication was the second recent accolade for Jean. In June, when Maryland Public Television hosted its first Vision Honors Banquet, Baltimore-born Kevin Clash, the creative genius behind the Sesame Street character Elmo, was presented with the first "Miss Jean" Worthley Award for Service to Families and Children.

Her career in television got an unlikely start. When she and her mother noticed a tower being erected behind their farm in Owings Mills, MD, they climbed under their backyard fence and crashed an outdoor party celebrating the launch of the TV station. Looking for a job closer to home, Jean (who was working at the time as a preschool teacher) asked about secretarial work. The program manager suggested another position, one requiring experience with children.

For the next seven years, Jean taped nearly 800 half-hour episodes with a cast of children that frequently included her daughter and Brig Berney, son of Ethel Weber Berney ’46. With the ever-present parrot, Aurora, perched on her shoulder, Jean introduced children to the natural world, one animal at a time.

Viewers loved the show, but the host--who had majored in biology at Goucher--was not sure how her former professors would rate it. "At one of the Goucher Country Fairs" she recalls, "there was a little pond with plastic fish floating in it. They were numbered, and the number on the fish corresponded to a certain prize. When Dr. [Gairdner] Moment picked one and said, ‘Ah, this must be a Hodgepodge Lodge fish,’ I knew then that he approved. Later, he even appeared on an episode about earthworms."

These days, Jean tailors her lessons to an older audience. After her husband, Elmer, passed away in 1991, she took up the reins of his Saturday botany class for adults. And, to the delight of Goucher alumnae/i and friends, she serves on the Alumnae/i Tours Committee, organizing excursions that focus on, appropriately, nature and gardens.