Lucretia Edwards has a new park in Richmond named after her. The 2-acre park in the Marina Bay neighborhood is opening this month. It’s a fitting honor for Lucretia. As Richmond legend has it, she started and led the crusade to turn many acres of the City’s industrial areas into waterfront parks for the public. Her efforts are said to have influenced the formation of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) and Save the Bay.
Published: October, 2003
Childhood summers spent at the New Jersey shore fostered in her a love of the water. It’s no surprise that she married a man who worked for Standard Oil, now called Chevron, as an oil tanker docking pilot. Fifty-five years ago, they bought a house in Point Richmond with a panoramic view of the Bay. Lucretia raised three children in that house, and she lives there still. Her oldest son is carrying on the family tradition by working as an aircraft carrier docking pilot. "It’s like he knows how to dock a small city," says Lucretia.
She credits her mother, a "perfect Quaker lady" from Philadelphia, with instilling in her a sense of equality and fairness, as well as civic mindedness.
Lucretia, however, is much more than civic minded. She has vision. From the day she arrived in Richmond in 1948, she knew it was "ridiculous" that Richmond’s 32 miles of shoreline offered only 67 feet of public access. "I was enraged by what I saw," says Lucretia. "You hardly knew that the Bay was there." Lucretia’s refined manner and soft voice belie the strength of her opinions.
In addition to all of her good ideas, she knew what she had to do to get the parks built, and her commitment never wavered. "I joined the League of Women Voters and started finding buddies who agreed with me. Then we just went to meeting after meeting talking about how badly the City needed waterfront parks." She took federal, state, regional, and local officials—any officials who would listen—out to the Bay front to see the possibilities firsthand. "We took them out one at a time, so we could divide and conquer. We did a lot of walking."
Creating the Miller-Knox Regional Shoreline Park is one of her proudest achievements. She lobbied heavily for the park, and just as plans were solidifying, the owner of a key parcel called Knob Hill decided to sell to a developer who planned high-rise apartment buildings. Lucretia wept at the news. Her husband, Tom, distraught at seeing Lucretia this way, bought the land for her as a surprise gift. The Edwards kept ownership of the land until the East Bay Regional Park District could buy it.
Other notable achievements of Lucretia’s include helping to save the East Brother Light Station from demolition, establishing the Home Health Hospice in West County, placing Point Richmond on the National Registry of Historic Places, and starting Friends of Richmond, an environmental watchdog group. To ensure that the transformation of the former Kaiser Shipyards would include public access, she served on the Marina Bay Citizens Advisory Committee. Recently she worked with a task force to develop plans for the reuse of Point Molate Naval Station.
Most of all, she is proud of the many miles of parkland that now grace the City’s shoreline. "I just love to look out and see all the people at the parks," says Lucretia. Of all the battles she fought and won to make the parks a reality, she says with a good-natured smile, "They were kind of fun. And I made friends with my opponents in the end."
