Anna Dunbar (B.S. ‘78) spent more than four decades helping people care for the environment. Whether through recycling initiatives, stormwater education, or community outreach, she believed environmental stewardship wasn’t about asking people to do more but rather about making it easier to do the right thing.
Her philosophy came into focus during a conversation with a Waco mother of five who wanted to recycle but struggled to fit one more responsibility into an already full day.
“It made me stop to think, ‘Okay, these people don’t have all this time to look at every plastic bottle and think about it,’ so how can we make this easier?” Dunbar said.
For Dunbar, the question wasn’t simply how to encourage people to recycle, but how to meet them where they were. This perspective began long before her career in environmental outreach.
Born in Japan to an Army family, Dunbar spent her childhood moving frequently as her family followed military assignments across the country. By the time she reached high school in Mineral Wells, Texas, she had lived in eight different states.
“My mom was very much a ‘home is wherever we are’ person, so I never felt concerned or upset about us moving to different places,” Dunbar said.
But the constant moves did teach Dunbar to adapt quickly and appreciate the people around her, qualities that would shape both her career and the way she approached service.
As high school came to a close, Dunbar planned to pursue a career in medicine. She had volunteered through a medical explorer program and expected to continue down that path when she enrolled at Baylor.
However, Dunbar’s interests shifted away from medicine after taking an ecology class with Dr. Fred Gehlbach, following the Nixon administration’s creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the passage of several environmental protection acts.
“I started getting interested in this new thing about the environment and that’s how I changed my mind,” Dunbar said. “I didn’t even apply to medical school or nursing school or any of those.”
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Other than the campus population being smaller, Dunbar enjoyed her time at the University similarly to many students today: she spent countless hours at the library, was involved in the service organization CHIS, and enjoyed her Saturdays supporting the football team, especially during her freshman year when she was a Baylor Golden Girl.
“When I think back on my time at Baylor, it’s always the people,” Dunbar said. “The people that you met either in the classroom, the dorm, or as part of an organization.”
After earning her bachelor’s degree in biology, Dunbar continued her education with a master’s degree in environmental science from the University of Texas at Dallas. She joined an EPA internship program during the early years of the agency, entering the profession alongside many other young adults.
“There were a number of young people fresh out of college that had started their careers at the EPA at the time,” Dunbar said. “Some of the folks from the other federal agencies referred to us as the ‘Kiddy Corps’ because it was just a bunch of youngsters fresh out of college starting their careers. It was exciting because we were all learning together.”
Following several years in environmental regulation, Dunbar unexpectedly found herself back in Waco after her husband accepted a faculty position at Baylor.
“I never envisioned that I would move back to Waco,” Dunbar said. “Our daughter was two at the time, and my first thought was, ‘This is the perfect place to raise our daughter.’”
She joined the city of Waco staff in 1995, where she became a driving force behind environmental outreach, recycling initiatives, and stormwater education. Among the accomplishments she remembers most fondly is helping lead the city’s annual Household Hazardous Waste Day, which gave residents a safe way to dispose of materials that otherwise might have ended up in landfills or waterways.
“What really stuck with me was that most people were holding onto these things and wanting a safe way to get rid of them, and they were so excited to be able to do so,” Dunbar said.
She also helped introduce residential recycling to Waco residents at a time when curbside recycling was still a relatively new concept.
“To get residential trash service in Waco, that was a big deal,” Dunbar said. “Now I think that’s an expected service, but at that time, it was new and I thought that was really neat.”
For Anthony Betters Sr., who worked under Dunbar in the city’s stormwater division, those programs highlighted Dunbar’s commitment to the environment and people of Waco, taking her work beyond what was simply required of her.
“Even though we had regulations we had to comply with, Anna always felt it went beyond that,” Betters said. “She would like to walk it all the way back to your home and where you live, work, and play.”
He recalls Household Hazardous Waste Day as one of her favorite projects each year, coordinating the event with city officials, and even neighboring cities like Hewitt and Woodway.
“Anna was really passionate about the Household Hazardous Waste Day,” Betters said. “Anna spearheaded that during our whole term with the city.”
Even after retiring from the city of Waco, Dunbar has remained deeply involved in the community through organizations including Keep Waco Beautiful and the Central Texas Audubon Society. Returning to Waco also rekindled her Baylor connections, and she still enjoys seeing CHIS members volunteering during community cleanups.
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“I didn’t really realize it, but I found it really comforting that I’m back in this place where I had so many great memories,” Dunbar said.
Looking back, Dunbar hopes people remember more than the programs she helped build, but the impact they have had on the community.
“I hope that people remember me as someone who tried to put a lot of effort into making things better for our world,” Dunbar said. “And in the end, what I remember is the people that I met in the process.”
