About the Friends of Blackwater

Latest News

• Friends Featured in Heritage Spotlight
• Friends Receive Heart of Chesapeake Country Heritage Award
• Friends Receive Commendations for their 30th Anniversary!

The Friends of Blackwater is a nonprofit citizens support group founded in 1987, assisting Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) in Cambridge, Maryland, and the Chesapeake Marshlands National Wildlife Refuge Complex to carry out their educational, interpretive, and public use missions. Currently our ranks include over 400 members who have helped us become one of the preeminent voluntary conservation organizations in our area. The Friends of Blackwater are part of the larger network of almost 200 Friends groups that support the National Wildlife Refuge System around the country.

Members of the Friends of Blackwater exercise varying degrees of involvement, although many members find satisfaction in volunteering their time to help the group in its various activities, such as operating The Eagle's Nest Book and Gift Shop in the Blackwater NWR Visitor Center. All proceeds from the gift shop go toward purchasing items or services that are not funded by the Department of Interior.

As federal budgets shrink, groups like the Friends of Blackwater are more essential than ever in helping to protect treasures such as Blackwater NWR. Take a moment to explore this section of our website and learn more about our current projects, how to become a member or a volunteer, and how to get our newsletter.

Friends of Blackwater Board of Directors

Cindy Burns

Cindy is a lifelong Marylander. She grew up swimming in the Magothy River and fishing the pilings of the Bay Bridge with her father. While several of her seven siblings have retired to other states she prefers the Land of Pleasant Living. She and her husband Dave moved from Montgomery County to Cambridge in 2013. They have two children living in the DC area. They can often be found working or playing outside and spend many family vacations hiking and camping in National Parks. Recently, they traded their tents for a trailer and now enjoy restful, rootless sleeping. Cindy retired from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency after 34 years to fully enjoy waterfront living on the Choptank River. Never one to stay idle, following her retirement she finished her doctoral degree, got a puppy, a part time job, and began volunteering at the YMCA and at Blackwater NWR. At the Refuge she primarily helps with the Environmental Education program, enjoying the opportunity to share the wonder of nature while engaging the kids in outdoor learning. Cindy is a plant person at heart and continues to learn about the visitors to Blackwater - the waterfowl, the wading birds, and the raptors!

Friends of Blackwater Role: President, Executive Committee; Governance Committee Chair

Jill Levin

Born in Washington, DC and raised in Montgomery County, Maryland, Jill began her financial journey in the early 1990s when she became co-owner and managing partner of a real estate buyers brokerage franchise in Melbourne, Florida. At the same time, she started and ran her own mortgage brokerage business. Moving back to the Washington DC area to start her family, she was the business manager of a Bethesda dental practice for 12 years. She pivoted back into mortgages with a concentration on assisting single mother first time home buyers. Jill retired in 2023 as a Senior Loan Officer, and currently works part time as a licensed Title Insurance Producer Independent Contractor and conducts real estate settlements. In 2023, Jill completed the Maryland Master Naturalist Program at Blackwater NWR. She also began her volunteer work with Friends of Blackwater at that time, and in 2024 accepted an offer to serve as Treasurer of the Friends of Blackwater Board of Directors. Jill highly recommends the Maryland Master Naturalist course to everyone. This course led Jill to learn about Friends of Blackwater, and we are glad she did. Jill and her husband Steve relocated to Cambridge in 2020 from Montgomery County, where they first met while in elementary school. They are both now mostly retired and are full-time residents on the Shore. In their spare time, Jill and Steve enjoy volunteering at Blackwater (they live just 10 minutes away), kayaking, fishing, enjoying local seafood, and taking advantage of the Arts in the Easton-Cambridge area.

Friends of Blackwater Role: Treasurer, Executive Committee; Finance Committee Chair

Sue Fischer

Sue Fischer grew up as an Air Force brat and moved around a lot—spending most of her childhood in the Midwest and overseas. Once the moving bug hits, it is hard to stay in one place but at the advanced age of 30, she finally finished college and lit in northeastern Washington State where she and her former husband joined the hippie movement and built and lived in a cabin in the woods with electricity, but no running water. After several years of that paradise, which included skiing in and out to work everyday, she moved to Spokane where she taught elementary school for the next 20 years. Love brought her to Cambridge five years ago when she reconnected with her current wife, Kit Bradshaw, at the end of a cross country bike trip. They now live between Cambridge and Hurlock on Aeberle Road with 9 cats and four dogs. As an elementary teacher, Sue has been involved in Environmental Education for many years, which is what brought her to Blackwater NWR as a volunteer when she came to live in the area.

Friends of Blackwater Role: Secretary, Executive Committee; Finance Committee

Rick Abend

Richard “Rick” Abend has hunted and fished in Dorchester County since he was a teenager. He has owned property in Madison since 1972. A lifelong Maryland resident, Rick grew up in Anne Arundel County and, after graduating from Brooklyn Park High School, had a 30-year career with the National Security Agency (NSA), holding both technical and managerial positions in the signals analysis career field. For six years of that time, he also served in the Maryland Air National Guard and U.S. Air Force where he worked on various aircraft weapons systems. After retiring from NSA in 1997, he was “finally” able to move to his farm, which he calls “Abend Hafen” (German for Evening Haven). With an avid interest in forestry and wildlife management, he has managed the wooded acreage as part of the American Tree Farm system since 1989. Rick has been volunteering with the University of Maryland’s “Maryland Woodland Stewards” program since 1990. More recently, he has been participating in the Delmarva Woodland Stewards program. Rick is also a member of the Dorchester County Forest Conservancy District Board where he has served as Recording Secretary since 1998. He became a member the Friends of Blackwater NWR (FOB) Board of Directors in 2005, served as FOB Vice-President 2006-2013, and served as FOB President for 10 years from Oct. 2013 to Sep. 2024. Rick married his wife, Kathy, in 2006. They enjoy camping, hunting, wildlife photography, managing their farm, and using it for conservation education. In 2014, they were recognized by the MTFC as the Maryland Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year and also received the 2018 Chesapeake Forest Champion Award for Exemplary Forest Stewardship from the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and U.S. Forest Service.

Friends of Blackwater Role: Governance Committee, Programs Committee

Harry Heckathorn

Harry spent much of his youth enjoying fishing, camping and seasonal outdoor sports in Minnesota. An influential high school biology teacher encouraged him to join the Conservation Club and provided an opportunity to work on a tree farm. But it was the night sky and the launch of the first Sputnik that provided the inspiration for Harry to pursue a science career involving space—first in astronomy and then in space science and rocketry. He earned his doctorate in astrophysics in 1970, held a post-doctoral position at what was then NASA's Manned Spaceflight Center in Houston, worked in the Physics Departments of the University of Houston and Johns Hopkins University, and worked 25 years in the Space Science Department of the Naval Research Laboratory where he developed astronomical instruments for use at terrestrial observatories, on sounding rockets, and on the Space Shuttle. With the demise of the Space Shuttle Challenger he became interested in rocketry and missile defense and managed the development and use of simulation software and data archiving and retrieval facilities for the Missile Defense Agency. Now, with his feet firmly planted in Dorchester County, Maryland, Harry has taken the opportunity to return to the conservation activities of his youth.

Friends of Blackwater Role: Programs Committee, Wildlife Camera and Night Sky Tour Support

Ellie Ludvigsen

Ellie is a recent recruit to both the board (accepting her position in 2019) and to the Eastern Shore (buying a 100 year-old house in Cambridge in 2017). Although she grew up in Colorado and loved exploring the outdoors as a hyperactive kid, she discovered she was a water person when she saw the Gulf of Mexico at age 2 1/2. After undergraduate work, she spent 31 years working in the NYC Criminal Justice System, first as a female street gang worker and then in a variety of management, training, and program positions, gaining experience, insight, and humor in the often demeaned "badest" neighborhoods. She has a MA in Public Administration and Forensic Psychology. She fell in love with photography as a young child and has used visual and performing arts and full-body learning throughout her career to reach those who learn in non-traditional ways. She returned to Colorado in the mid-90's to take care of family obligations where she developed her photography interest into a business specializing in art and street photography and instruction. The latter morphed into helping many people with brain injuries or anomalies to use the tools of photography for rehab or advancement as well as general photography instruction. In Cambridge, she is active as a volunteer with Blackwater NWR at the Visitor Center, grade school programs, and other special projects. She is also active with the Cambridge Association of Neighborhoods, which promotes community and local government involvement. She loves to spend time outdoors, is enjoying water, renovating her home, keeping up with her two indoor, feral special-needs cats, having fun with her now adult grandson, and figuring out what she's going to be when she grows up.

Friends of Blackwater Role: Governance Committee, Programs Committee

Steve Sarro

Steve was born outside of Philadelphia and his family moved to Delaware for his high school years. Steve graduated from the University of Delaware with a BS in Biological Sciences and began a career in the Zoo and Aquarium field as a seasonal animal keeper at the Brandywine Zoo in Wilmington, DE. Soon Steve was hired by the Maryland Zoo as a full-time animal keeper and over his 20 years there he was promoted to curator of the bird department. After 20 years at Maryland Zoo, Steve accepted a position at the Salisbury Zoo and then was offered a director of animal care at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. While that was an amazing position, Steve was hired on at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, DC as a curator of the Small Mammals as well as additional duties as acting curator of Asia Trail/Pandas, Primates, American Trail, and Reptile Discovery Center over his tenure. Steve had been a program leader for the African Penguin Species Survival Plan and the Spectacled Owl Species Survival Plan for 30 years before he retired at the end of 2023. He still remains in an advisory position with numerous zoo committees. He relocated to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, enjoying his gardens and pets at his home in Salisbury. Steve had visited Blackwater for the past 30 years and was recently voted onto the Board, being excited to assist this fine group of people and the Refuge.

Friends of Blackwater Role: Finance Committee

Suzanne Pittenger-Slear

In 1999, Suzanne joined Environmental Concern (EC), a 501(c)(3) public non-profit corporation located in Easton, Maryland. In 2002, the Board of Directors elected her President and CEO. Suzanne's work is focused on wetland education and outreach, with specific attention paid to the benefits of native plants and living shorelines. In addition, she has been instrumental in directing Environmental Concern’s corporate reorganization and expansion during her tenure. Suzanne visited South Korea, one of twenty U.S. delegates to attend the 10th Conference of the Parties for Wetlands of International Importance. There are forty-one Wetland Sites in the United States, and Blackwater NWR is one of the forty-one designated sites. Suzanne continues to speak to groups about these essential wetland sites and celebrates World Wetlands Day every year on February 2 at Blackwater NWR. She celebrated Environmental Concern’s 50th Anniversary in 2022 with staff members and their families. In addition, the Talbot County Chamber of Commerce recognized EC and other Chamber Businesses celebrating a milestone anniversary at a summer event. Suzanne has been a Dorchester Garden Club member since 1994. She enjoys propagating and growing succulents and spending time with her husband, Gene, on the waterways near her home in Cambridge.

Friends of Blackwater Role: Programs Committee Chair