Her initiative cleaning up the area led to a national leadership role as a founding board member and co-chair of the National Association for Olmsted Parks, which is now the Olmsted Network. Preserving and protecting parks designed by renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted was only part of her environmental activism. Her advocacy also helped bring tens of millions of dollars of local, state, and federal funding to various projects -- often against significant odds.

"My favorite expression is, 'It can't be done,'" she told The Boston Globe in 1998. "I take that as a personal challenge."

Ms. Gross, who devoted decades of professional and personal time to environmental preservation while serving in state, local, and volunteer roles, was 85 when she died in her Davis, Calif., home July 15.

On Friday in Washington, D.C., the Olmsted Network will honor her accomplishments "with the Caroline Loughlin Volunteer Service Award, our most prestigious recognition," the organization said in a statement that praised her "visionary work and lifelong dedication to preserving and advancing Olmsted's legacy."

Her efforts "left an enduring impact on parks, planning, and public space nationwide," the organization said.

"I think the most exquisite component of Olmsted's vision, for me, is the fact that his parks are places where there really is democracy and dirt, where everyone is welcome," Ms. Gross said in an Olmsted Network video posted on YouTube.

Like a public library, a public park is "one of the few places left in society where you can come, spend as much time as you want, and have no cost except interest and commitment," she said. "So his vision of parks for people, all kinds of people, was always critical for me."

The Olmsted Network, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving and promoting Olmsted landscapes around the world, has also announced that it is naming a new impact fund for Ms. Gross. The application-based grant program will provide direct, emergency support to those "working to preserve and protect Olmsted-designed or Olmsted-inspired landscapes."

"Betsy's leadership helped shape the Olmsted Network and a national vision for parks as democratic spaces," Sue Breitkopf, the organization's president, said via email. "Honoring her with our highest award and a new impact fund ensures her legacy will keep nurturing landscapes -- and communities -- for generations to come."

Ms. Gross served for two decades on Brookline's Conservation Commission, chairing the panel for nearly all that time, and helped found a Massachusetts affiliate of the national Olmsted organization.

She also formerly worked with the state secretary of environmental affairs as special assistant for community preservation.

Among her other environmental initiatives was her key role in helping bring attention and funding to the Army Corps of Engineers' Muddy River Restoration Project to restore the waterway's Emerald Necklace areas.

In a statement, the Muddy River Restoration Project Maintenance and Management Oversight Committee called her "a guiding force" whose "words and work inspire our stewardship."

In the 1980s, Ms. Gross helped raise millions for the political campaigns of former lieutenant governor Evelyn Murphy, who in 1986 became the first woman to be elected to a statewide office in Massachusetts.

"She was a remarkable woman," Murphy said in an interview. "She was passionate in everything she did."

Born in New Haven on April 2, 1940, Betsy Shure was the older of two sisters.

Her mother, Gertrude Frank, was a homemaker, and her father, Fred M. Shure, patented a process for preserving wedding gowns.

Ms. Gross grew up in New Haven and spent time with family in Bridgeport, Conn., as well, visiting Olmsted-designed parks in those cities.

In childhood and youth, "she was interested in becoming a writer and was fascinated by the romantic poets, by Wordsworth and his love of nature," said Dr. Gary Gross, her husband.

They had met as teenagers at summer camp in Ridgefield, Conn., and dated while she attended Sweet Briar College in Virginia. They married in 1961, after he graduated from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.

"She was a dynamic, interesting person, who had an extraordinary smile and lit up every room," he said. "She had the capacity to inspire every person that she met."

They settled in Brookline after he finished his education at Yale School of Medicine. Once their two children were older, Ms. Gross completed her bachelor's degree at what was then Simmons College.

While living in Brookline, "it became clear to me that parks and open space were the places that both students, wives, and members of the community went for sanctuary, rest, and creation," she said in the 2001 oral history. "And they were awful."

While living near Olmsted Park and serving on a neighborhood association board, she "said to a couple of the folks, 'This is crazy. That's such a beautiful park. Why don't we just get down there and clean it up?' They said, 'Well, nobody ever mentioned it, but maybe that was a good idea.' So we went down one weekend, and just literally cleaned it up."

She and her husband lived in Brookline until a decade ago, when they moved to California to be closer to their son, Andrew Gross Gaitan, and his family in West Sacramento.

In addition to her husband and son, Ms. Gross leaves a daughter, Liza Draper of Claremont, N.H.; eight grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

Family and friends will gather Monday at 1:30 p.m., in Brookline's Walnut Hills Cemetery to inter her ashes.

As Ms. Gross became more involved with others interested in preserving the parks and vision of Olmsted, who designed Central Park in New York City, she was a principal organizer of a national Olmsted conference in the early 1980s that brought together activists, scholars, landscape architects, and elected officials who spearheaded a national movement.

In the oral history, she said that Olmsted's "vision of parks for people, all kinds of people, was always critical for me," as was his belief in parks as passive, restorative places, rather than as principally for activities such as sports.

"I'm enthusiastic about the passive landscape, because I think that there's plenty of organized support for baseball fields and football fields and soccer fields," she said in the video interview. "But what the Olmsted movement has achieved is a growing and enhanced commitment for passive open space and its value to a community."

Betsy Shure Gross, Brookline environmental activist who championed Olmsted's parks, dies at 85 - The Boston Globe