Connecting two fields: the baseball field and the sunflower field through family memories and loving tributes

By Sally Tippett Rains

Editor’s note: STLSportsPage’s newsletter recently featured a photo of a sunflower field in South County called “Marian’s Place” and encouraged our readers to go. Cardinals fan Chris Rollins saw it and told us he has a connection to it.

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Seeing a post about “Marian’s Place” the new sunflower field in South County touched the heart of Cardinals fan Chris Rollins, because to him it’s not just a sunflower field, it is a creation of love from his uncle Tom Rollins to his aunt Marian Rollins.

“Thats my aunt Marian,” he said of the sunflower field at Cliff Cave Park that is taking off this year as the newest destination to view sunflowers. “My uncle Tom is behind all this. It’s a wonderful place with more to come.”

How would a field of sunflowers cross paths with Cardinals baseball and a beloved family member with Dementia. Somehow Tom Rollins has done that by weaving together the ties that family, health and familiarity create with the sunflower field he built.

Let’s start many years ago with the Rollins family, who like many from St. Louis are Cardinals fans.

Chris Rollins said his grandparents Ed and Rose Rollins, had two sons: Robert, Chris’ dad, and Tom, his uncle ,along with their daughter Pam Mahar.  They had a cabin down in Marquand, Missouri, which is east of Fredricktown. The family would gather there for fun family times.

“I remember going there,” said Chris Rollins, shown left with his wife, Judy. “It was on the Castor River and I remember the radio was always tuned to Cardinal game.”

Tom, who served in Viet Nam remembers the times at the cabin fondly and said the baseball games played a big part.

“We’d all go down there and go out fishing,” he said. “After we got back we’d have these big fish fries and Jack Buck was playing on the radio. It started with my dad, and he’d always have Cardinals baseball on.” (Photo of Jack Buck, right, courtesy of St. Louis Media Hall of Fame)

What they really liked about listening to the games on the radio was they could be active while listening. This was at the time there weren’t many games on television but every family in St. Louis had the radio on.

Tom and his wife Marian were big advocates of exercise, getting outside and doing things and enjoying themselves.

“You’d be out in your back yard and you could hear Jack Buck’s voice coming from other yards,” he said.

He feels like Cardinals baseball promotes his goal of being active with going to the games and the many activities they promote like the Kids Clinics and 5K race. Years later when his wife got Dementia due to a Neurological condition, he felt staying active, getting outside, and enjoying life was a big key in her living two years longer than the doctor gave her.  He also felt eating healthy, cutting out sugar, and enjoying a healthy lifestyle helped.

When he  started planting the sunflower field, she was still alive and got to see it.

“Marian’s wish was to see kids having fun outside playing, and doing activities that promoted exercise and good health– which playing baseball did,” he said. “This is how baseball figures in with Marians Place.”

From Ed Rollins came down the love of baseball for Tom and his brother Robert, which they shared to their famlies

“ I remember going to a game with my dad when Ted Simmons was still playing,” said Chris Rollins. “It was at Busch II and the last one I remember going to with my dad. We were playing Cincinnati and it went to extra innings. I told dad ‘Ted Simmons will end this game in one swing’—and  he did!”

Chris Rollins says his love of baseball started playing Crestwood Khoury League at eight years old with his dad as manager of the team.

“He managed us all the way eight years through Juveniles,” he said. “Orlando Cepeda was my favorite back then before Ted Simmons; along with Bob Gibson & Lou Brock. Cards have always been my favorite team.”

Cardinals baseball was always there. In St. Louis, the Cardinals games were always playing in the background.

“Though they were brothers, Tom was quite a bit younger than my dad. They didn’t go to a lot of Cardinals games,” said Chris, “But he told me Marian loved listening to Jack Buck on radio.”

She didn’t like to sit still, so listening to Cardinals baseball on the radio enabled her to keep doing whatever she had planned while being able to listen to the familiar sound of Cardinals baseball whether it was Jack Buck early on or John Rooney in recent years.

She was always  on the go, and is shown  at the World Bird Sanctuary in St. Louis with Liberty, the famous bald eagle who recently died.

“We’d ride motorcycles all over and when we went to Kansas, she’d see these sunflower fields and always want to pull over and look at them,” said Tom.

They taught their daughters, Wendy Brannaker and Tammy Kroner, the importance of exercise, being physically fit, and wellness.

Along with watching or listening to baseball, Marian felt the importance of getting physical fitness by being outside.

That is why Tom Rollins started the sunflower fields and according to Chris he has other ideas in the works that would provide outdoor activity for kids or anyone.

Tom and his business partner George Foster donated the 300 acres that is attached to the sunflower field area to the County for Cliff Cave Park. Then Tom  set up a 501 (c) 3 corporation for Marian’s Place which he still owns and operates as a non-profit. Foster and his wife, Linda have been very supportive of  the sunflower field, which is part of Marian’s Place Wellness and Nature Sanctuary. The plans his nephew alluded to include adding more healthy areas including a playground, a memorial site for veterans and an exercise facility because being active is so important to him.

The whole Rollins family is active as is Chris, who played hockey in his younger days.

“I love going to ballgames, and besides just watching, I love trying to figure out hits and runs, steals, bunts, and so on,” said Chris. “Dad loved the Cardinals, too. He had a way with pronouncing some of their names.”

Though Chris and his family are big Cardinals fans, and Marian did enjoy the games on radio, his aunt also enjoyed other types of birds– especially the eagles and wild birds she would encounter at the Wild Bird Sanctuary.

“They were fans of the Cardinals but the birds they really liked were at the world bird sanctuary,” said Chris Rollins of his aunt and uncle. “Marian volunteered her time with the eagles.”

She put in nine years volunteer service to the World Bird Sanctuary. She loved the outdoors, riding horses, sunflowers, and taking care of birds and wildlife.

There is a statue at the World Bird Sanctuary of Marian Rollins feeding an eagle. The photo, right shows Tom looking at the statue he donated.

Tom and Marian Rollins were high school sweethearts at Mehlville High School in St. Louis. They shared many common interests and enjoyed adventures throughout their lives. Along with the motorcycle riding, they enjoyed horseback riding, and she did a lot of volunteering.

When she got sick, her adventurous spirit was threatened by the Dementia, but Tom was determined if she could not ride the motorcycles to see the sunflowers, he would bring them to her. He planted 300,000 sunflowers in Cliff Cave Park and he would take her there.

“She never completely lost her memory and she did maintain her wonderful cognitive abilities,” he said. “I would load her up in my pick-up truck and take her there. She loved the peace.”

The photo shows them at what is now known as “Marian’s Place.” There are some things that are so familiar they can bring peace and a sense of normalcy in a time of uncertainty.

It’s why you can hear Cardinals baseball coming through rooms throughout the halls of many hospitals; it’s a diversion. Beauty such as the sunflowers is the diversion they needed to bring peace into their lives.

“A sunflower field is full of bees getting their nectar from the flowers,” Tom said. “The nectar for the people visiting the field is the peace they get from it.”

Marian loved bird watching at the sunflower field.

“Her favorites were Yellow Finches, Indigo Buntings, and of course Cardinals.”

There’s another connection to a sunflower field and Cardinals. Cardinal birds eat sunflower seeds as do Cardinals players.

After she passed away in 2023 Tom continues with the sunflower field and planning future ideas for the scenic, inspirational and healing space.

There are sunflowers at Missouri Bottoms field in North County, but this is the first large field in South County. It has a sign with a Bible verse on it which adds to the peacefulness of the area. Tom sees beyond the peacefulness; he sees it as a place where people can come and walk and get exercise while feeding their soul with the beauty.

The sunflowers have passed their peak right now, but are still out and the field is a great place to walk and ride bikes.Tom Rollins plans to  plant again next year and add a whole new area of wildflowers and native grasses..

Bringing it back to baseball, memories of familiar family times are started at a young age.

“The Cardinals bring the community together,” he said. “The sunflower field does the same thing. We are so divided in so many ways these days but there are some things that bring us together and making memories with your family is special.”

Memories can stay with us all our lives, unless, like Marian, they are taken away. But the thing is, while memories can fade, feelings will stay with us.

When he would bring her to the sunflower field, there would be a familiar feeling. In her last days when she could not remember people or events, she could feel the love of her family, and the familiarity of nature. That’s what Tom wants to achieve with the sunflower field.

“The idea of Marian’s Place was a thought before she was diagnosed ,” said Chris Rollins. “Sixty years of marriage. True love.”

Visits to the sunflower field served as a respite from the realities of her battles with Dementia.

On those visits when he took her to the field, he could tell she felt peaceful just as she had in those earlier times, the motorcycle riding, the trips to the cabin. And who knows, maybe in the silence the outside world thought she was in, she could hear Jack Buck’s voice and Cardinals baseball, because it was always the familiar sound in the background.

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Check out “Marian’s Place” at Cliff Cave Park, 806 Cliff Cave Rd, St. Louis, MO 63129. Marian’s Place is a 501 (c)3 charity. If interested in the focus Marian’s Place is moving to, including building a play area for children, and exercise facility and a memorial site for veterans contact Tom Rollins through mariansplace.org.

Sign at Marian’s Place.

Tonight Wednesday, August 13 starting at  6:30, St. Louis County will have a free music concert at the pavilion near the sunflower field.

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