Catherine 'Kay' Kerr - Save the Bay founder - dies

By Carolyn Jones, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, January 3, 2011

Fifty years ago, Catherine "Kay" Kerr and two other UC Berkeley faculty wives did not like what they saw as they gazed out of the windows of their hillside homes. They saw bulldozers filling in San Francisco Bay.

"They feared the bay would turn into a river," Kerr's son Clark E. Kerr of Danville said Sunday. "They thought that wouldn't be good for future generations, and that spurred them into action."

Over almond cookies and tea in their East Bay dining rooms, the women started a movement to protect the bay, ultimately thwarting countless shoreline development projects.

Mrs. Kerr, widow of former UC President Clark Kerr, died Dec. 18 at her home in El Cerrito. She was 99.

"Mrs. Kerr was an extraordinary woman," current UC President Mark Yudof wrote last week in a letter to the UC Board of Regents. "Throughout her long life (she) earned the deep respect and admiration of all who knew her or knew of her."

Mrs. Kerr and her friends, Sylvia McLaughlin [CESP co-founder] and Esther Gulick, founded Save the Bay in 1961. It was the first organization devoted exclusively to protecting San Francisco Bay. Among its greatest victories was helping start the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the first coastal protection agency in the country. Snip...

Today, Save the Bay has 35,000 members and is busy fighting the proposed Salt Works housing development on the Redwood City shore. Snip... "She was like a bulldog. She would not stop," her son said. "She always said that saving the bay was a battle that would never end."

Gulick died in 1995. McLaughlin, 95, of Berkeley, is still active in environmental causes. "Kay Kerr was a good friend and colleague," McLaughlin wrote on the Save the Bay website. "She was totally dedicated to keeping fill out of the Bay and beautifying the shoreline." Snip...

original article at:http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/03/BAOV1H37T3.DTL

This article appeared on page C - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle