Parks protector passing the torch

Living green: Isabel Wade grew up near Buena Vista Park, although she didn’t go in until she was grown. (Examiner file photo)

SAN FRANCISCO — Legendary parks advocate Isabel Wade lived most of her life across the street from one of San Francisco’s oldest parks before she ever actually went in it.

The house she grew up in was across from Buena Vista Park, the green, forested hills above the Haight district, but her parents forbade her from entering it as a child. As an adult, even after she received her Ph.D in environmental planning and established her career by creating the state’s urban forestry program under then-governor Jerry Brown, she was busy enough that she never really bothered to explore it.

That changed one day when found a flier on her door inviting her to check out the newly built trails through the park. Out of curiosity, the lifelong San Francisco resident attended the tour, as did a couple dozen of her neighbors.

The event wound up changing the course of her life. Wade helped create a neighborhood park group and then, more than a decade later, she founded the Neighborhood Parks Council, a small nonprofit organization that over the years grew into The City’s most powerful parks advocacy group.

Last week, after 13 years at the helm of the NPC and a lifetime of starting up environmental organizations and shaping urban environmental policy, Wade retired.

Wade got her real start in parks advocacy working under Jerry Brown and helping write urban forestry legislation — and then ensuring it was implemented by creating a nonprofit to oversee a pilot project in Oakland. That would be the first of five environmental groups she helped spearhead, including California ReLeaf, Friends of the Urban Forest and the National AIDS Memorial Grove project.

In 1996, she helped found the NPC, a coalition of smaller neighborhood parks organizations. The group was able to place a neighborhood parks bond on the ballot in 2000, the largest in 50 years.

Wade’s colleagues credit her with ushering in a change in how parks are seen by civic leaders.

“Before Neighborhood Parks Council, there just wasn’t a lot of discussion on the civic level about parks. It wasn’t seen as a priority,” said Meredith Thomas, who has replaced Wade as the organization’s executive director.

Wade’s reputation has spread far beyond San Francisco, said Karen Kidwell, executive director of nonprofit organization San Francisco Parks Trust.

Wade said she’s not sure her activist days are over but that she needs a break from the endless rounds of fundraising and organizing.

“I really am tired now, I just feel like I need a recharge,” she said. “But I don’t see myself just sitting around and doing nothing, either — especially considering the dire situation of the planet right now.”

kworth@sfexaminer.com