Passages

Claire Dedrick, 1930-2005

Claire Dedrick died this past April at the age of 74. She originally became interested in environmental activism while fighting against a road expansion project near her home. She related that when a county engineer yelled at her to get back to her kitchen and let him build his road, she became an activist and founded a public relations firm specializing in land-use issues. She was a leader in the 1960s of the Save the Bay Campaign in San Francisco, which resulted in stopping industrial development along San Francisco Bay. She later founded and became the first director of the Peninsula Conservation Center on the San Francisco Bay Peninsula. She served as secretary for the State Resources Agency in Jerry Brown's cabinet overseeing the departments of Conservation, Fish & Game, Parks & Recreation, Water Resources and the State Energy Commission. She became the first woman to serve on California's Public Utilities Commission. She served on the state Air Resources Board, was an executive officer of the California State Lands Commission and a national board member of the Sierra Club.

-Michael Stevenson