Sponsor Spotlight: The O’Reilly-Wooten Families
Category Spotlight On | Posted on October 20, 2017
Siblings with a shared love of Ozark Greenways!
Pictured left to right: Larry O’Reilly, Rosalie Wooten, Charlie O’Reilly, and David O’Reilly
Springfield is so fortunate to have several fantastic local companies and families who believe deeply in the importance of investing in the community they live and work in. One extended family that stands out as a longtime supporter of our community-wide trail network are the O’Reilly-Wooten families. We are thrilled that they have been the Presenting sponsors of our Annual Fall Dinner fundraising party for 20 years now! They are role models in both business and in supporting development that promotes access to healthy lifestyle choices.
We asked the family leaders to tell us about how and why they first became involved with the Project Parkway tree planting project back in 1988 (the predecessor to OG, that began in 1991). Trails are part of the culture of their family. They grew up being active because that’s the way it was in those days.
“Everyone in our family loves biking, but when we were growing up we biked for functional reasons. All children biked back then, to get where they needed to go. We biked to the pool and to the park. Every time I go out on the trails, I think, ‘Look at all the different types of people out using them—families, young people, enjoying nature.’ Younger family members share our passion for trails too. Nephew Matt O’Reilly created non-profit TrailSpring to bring first-class mountain biking trails to our area.” —Rosalie Wooten
“Having the trails by the James River has been great. There’s lots of wildlife and beautiful scenery. I think my brother-in-law, Tal Wooten, is the person who first introduced me to the trails, as we would just walk and talk at times. So peaceful! Tal just loved the trails.” —Larry O’Reilly
“I think my initial involvement was by invitation from Tal. My main reason for supporting the Trails is to encourage exercise which contributes to good health.” —Charlie O’Reilly
“Having travelled over the years to a lot of different cities, I have great admiration for a robust trail system that can be used for walking, jogging or biking. Here at home I’ve used the Greenway trails for many years, primarily for jogging. The Galloway trail has been our mainstay for Saturday morning runs over the years, but quite often we (would) meet at Nathanael Greene and run the South Creek trail as well. We are so fortunate to have these trails and I’m extremely interested in and supportive of seeing our trail system expand as much as possible.” —David O’Reilly