The legacy of Rejeana “Little Bit” Loper is all around Laurel, particularly in the landscapes of downtown and the historic district.
The longtime city employee passed away last April, but a majestic memory of her will stand strong and tall for decades to come in the form of, fittingly, a live oak tree in one of the many places she spent years beautifying.
The tree was planted in Euclid Park for the celebration of Arbor Day, just days after what would have been her 54th birthday. The Laurel Garden Club hosted a ceremony there in her honor and planted four more trees there with the help of Hunter McLeod and Four Seasons Lawn & Landscape and members of St. John’s Day School’s “Hoe and Hope” club.
“Her hard work and determination in all of Laurel’s parks was truly a gift and a labor of love,” club members said in a press release.
Almost a year after Loper died of cancer, Laurel Parks and Recreation director Elvin Ulmer reflected on her loss and her legacy.
“Anybody who knew Little Bit knows she was always going 90 miles per hour,” he said, smiling as he looked around the park. “None of the guys could keep up with her, and she had the best attitude. She was a people person.”
She was as comfortable around well-to-do garden club members as she was with homeless people, Ulmer said, adding that she would sometimes give money and food to the latter.
“She was more than just a worker, she was a caring person who represented the city well,” Ulmer said. “She didn’t see color or (status). We miss her. You don’t get many employees like that. She could do the work of five men. She worked circles around everyone.”
Loper worked for the cit for 14 years and passed away on April 2, 2023.
Efforts to enhance Euclid Park are ongoing, Laurel Garden Club members said. More trees and the shoring up of the canal are in the planning stages to restore the park, which “suffered tremendous decline” over the past several years in part because of aging hardwood trees. Last year, club members and city parks and rec workers installed five metal benches that were donated by William Mullins and family, Dr. John Wallace, Mrs. William Wallace, a Laurel/Jones Council of Garden Clubs grant and the Laurel Garden Club. Native plantings will be added to the seating area to make an even more scenic setting, club members said.
The land for Euclid Park, originally known as Addison Addition, was donated to the city by T.G. McCallum in the early 1920s. The Chicago-based Root, Hollister, Reeves and Harris Landscape Architecture Firm designed it, along with Gardiner Park and Mason Park, which Tallahala Creek flows through “like a string of pearls.”
The fountain on the south end of Euclid Park was acquired in New Orleans, after being shipped from New York, and donated to the city by Blondie Lott. It was restored by Robinson’s Foundry in Mobile in the mid-1970s.
The Euclid Garden Club formed and maintained the grounds until it disbanded in 1960, then in 1965, the Laurel Garden Club voted to take over, with each member agreeing to raise or donate $50 toward that effort.
The following year, the club hired Edith Henderson of Atlanta — who did the landscaping at the Jones County courthouse and Laurel City Hall — to spruce up Euclid Park.
After Hurricane Katrina devastated the tree canopy in 2005, the Laurel Garden Club used funds from the Garden Club of America’s Zone IX Restoration Fund to install an irrigation system and add several live oaks to the landscape.
In 2017, the Laurel Garden Club members, parks and rec employees, junior gardeners from the Hoe and Hope club and volunteers worked together in the first Weed Wrangle-Laurel, a one-day, area-wide volunteer effort to rescue public parks and green spaces from non-native, invasive species of trees, vines and plants. The 50 or so participants removed more than 75 percent of the Chinese privet, honeysuckle, kudzu and wisteria.
Loper would have been proud of the ongoing efforts at Euclid Park, Ulmer agreed. And if she had been there, she would have been working circles around everyone else.
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