BERKELEY — Sylvia McLaughlin feared in the early 1960s that San Francisco Bay might become little more than a river to the Golden Gate.
Developers were filling it for land to make condos, offices and garbage dumps, and those landfills often glowed orange at night with trash fires.
Spurred to act, McLaughlin and two East Bay friends launched a pioneering environmental movement that would protect the Bay, provide public access to the shoreline, and help awaken conservation movements across urban America.
McLaughlin, the last living founder of Save the Bay, died Tuesday at her Berkeley home. She was 99.
“We have a cleaner, healthier and more vibrant Bay because of Sylvia’s efforts,” said David Lewis, executive director of Save the Bay.
Responding to the movement, the California Legislature in 1965 created a commission called the Bay Conservation and Development Commission to regulate development and shoreline access.
“This is a national treasure, and yet we’re losing it,” she told this newspaper in 2005.
More recently, state and federal government have invested hundreds of millions of dollars restoring Bay wetlands important to protecting water quality and providing habitat for fish and wildlife.
But it was an uphill — if not unlikely — campaign for McLaughlin and her friends Kay Kerr and Esther Gulick from the time when the shoreline and shallow water areas were considered low-lying swamps worthy of dumping trash. Environmental groups were focused on protecting places like the Grand Canyon and the California redwoods.
“Before Sylvia and Kay and Esther, the environmental movement was all about protecting wilderness,” said Will Travis, the former executive director for the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. “This was the first regional initiative in an urban area. They brought the environmental ethic into people’s backyards.”
McLaughlin, the wife of a mining company executive on the UC Board of Regents, used her charm, passion and determination — and tea parties — to make her case to protect the Bay.
“She had this power of conviction but she expressed it in such a gracious way that you felt you would disappoint her if you didn’t do what she wanted,” Travis recalled.
He said she once had tea with a with millionaire developer and influenced him not to chop down part of San Bruno Mountain to fill part of the Bay.
In January 2007 when she was in her late 80s, McLaughlin climbed a tree in a UC Berkeley oak grove to join tree sitters in an effort to save three dozen trees.
McLaughlin had many environmental causes. She served on the boards of the National Audubon Society, Citizens for East Shore Parks, Save the Redwoods League, the Trust for Public Lands, Greenbelt Alliance and East Bay Conservation Corps. The McLaughlin Eastshore State Park was named after her by the East Bay Regional Park District.
McLaughlin as born Dec. 24, 1916, in Denver. Her father, George Cranmer, was the city official responsible for creating the Red Rocks Theatre, a venue for popular music and cultural events. Her mother, Jean Cranmer, was a violinist.
After graduating from Vassar College in 1939, she married Donald McLaughlin, president of the Homestake Mining Co. and moved with him to Berkeley in 1948. He was later to become a member of the UC Board of Regents.
A memorial for McLaughlin will be held 4 p.m. Feb. 2 at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft Way in Berkeley.
Contact Denis Cuff at 925-943-8267. Follow him at Twitter.com/deniscuff.
