Quite a few ingredients went into the mix that produced Marymeade Park in Los Altos. Thrown into the blender of happenstance were: a convent; a vacant lot; a carnival; a gas station; the Vatican; a kind neighbor; and a connection to Agatha Christie. These elements joined to benefit everybody involved – except, perhaps, the carnival – and produced a park near the corner of Fremont Avenue and Grant Road that is irreplaceable today.
But none of it would have happened if the neighbor, Dick Foley, had not provided the spark. In 1972, he was living at 1232 Lisa Lane, off Fremont. The future park, around the corner from his house, was then a weed-filled lot, a vacant eyesore most of the year, rented to a traveling carnival one month each summer. Foley wasn’t fond of the carnival.
The property, which filled 2.5 acres, was owned by Catholic medical missionary sisters who lived in an adjacent convent house, property donated to them by a widow who owned the Chevron station then at the corner of Fremont and Grant. Foley discovered the vacant lot was not zoned for commercial development, yet was not deemed suitable for residential use, due to the nearby gas station.
“It seemed to me,” he said, “if the nuns leased the land to the city for a park, our neighborhood would lose an eyesore, the city would gain a park, and the convent would gain financially.”
Foley, an entrepreneur who co-founded the successful Silicon Valley company Ewing-Foley Inc., knocked on the door of the convent in the summer of 1972, spoke to Sister Mary there, and asked if the group would mind if he proposed the park idea to the city. He envisioned tennis courts where he could play, he said, and a safe playground for children. Sister Mary liked the idea, but said it would have to be approved by Rome.
“Somewhere along the way,” Foley said, “I learned the nuns were getting just $1,000 a year renting to the carnival.”
In August 1972, Foley made the proposal to the city manager. Within a year, negotiations were underway, and in 1975 Los Altos dedicated Marymeade Park. I uncovered the terms of the deal in the archives of the Los Altos History Museum, in the April 4, 1979, print edition of the Los Altos Town Crier, not yet available online. The city leased the land for six years – from 1973 to 1979 – at $800 a month and in 1979 purchased the 2.57 acres outright for $250,000.
The sellers were officially Catholic Medical Missionaries Inc., and Catholic orders like that one are often dedicated to Mary of the Meadow (or “meade” in Old English), a reference to Mary as protector of the innocent, similarly recalled in the name of the fictional English village St. Mary Mead, invented by writer Agatha Christie as the home of amateur sleuth Miss Marple. Thus, the name Marymeade Park evokes the land’s history and reminds us of the green meadow it has become.
“We went from playing kick the can in the streets to running and playing on real grass,” recalled Foley’s daughter Kris. “It is a neighborhood treasure.”
Foley lives in Portola Valley today and can certainly say he has done a lot with his life, including donating a couple of sample toggle switches to a young man named Steve Jobs, who wandered into his office one day when he was building one of his early computers. Yet Foley thinks helping create Marymeade Park may be one of the best things he’s ever done.
Take a picnic there (when the weather warms up) and see if you don’t agree.
Robin Chapman, author of the book “The Valley of Heart’s Delight,” is scheduled to speak May 20 at the Winchester Mystery House to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Sarah Winchester. For more information, visit winchestermysteryhouse.com.
