Community Corner

Trailblazer Wins Unsung Hero Award

Green award to be presented at October San Anselmo council meeting.

Brian Crawford, who was instrumental in building trails at and , has been named a winner of the Quality of Life Commission’s Green Award.

The award, which stems from a recent unanimous vote of the panel, is aimed at “unsung heroes” who volunteer in San Anselmo without expectation of recognition or reward.

It will be presented at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 11 at the Town Council meeting.

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According to Jonathan Braun, chair of San Anselmo’s Open Space Committee, of which Crawford is a longtime member, the award-winner “has single-handedly pulled more broom at Sorich than a small army.”

Crawford also helped design and build that park’s Dean Nyberg Trail (with the assistance of some Eagle Scouts), and has been a regular at workdays for years.

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In addition, he’s taken a leadership role in implementing a trail that would connect with Sorich and Marin County’s open space.

Crawford also led the formation of a crew that now works at Faudé Park “eradicating the dense invasive and flammable massive broom patches,” says Braun.

Furthermore, the award-winner helped that crew complete a new trail that bypasses the old steep, slippery and erosive former route — installing bars to divert water, putting in new steps, and clearing ditches to prevent flooding across the street.

Braun, who nominated Crawford for the award, maintains, “Brian is the kind of volunteer that, when accepting a task, jumps in willingly and often produces results almost immediately.”

The 64-year-old Crawford, who’s lived in San Anselmo since 1986, is a computer programmer, hiker, kayaker, sailor and geocacher (outdoor treasure hunter), who’s “always considered myself an environmentalist.”

He’s also a guy who’s “always been disturbed by the loss of open space — I grew up in Ohio and hated to see new housing developments put into a forest that hadn’t been cut before.”

He joined the town’s Open Space Committee in 2003, a year after he began working with SPAR, a volunteer organization of Sorich Park Area Residents that wanted to expand the park.

He’s been SPAR’s co-chair and spokesman for more than six years.

Crawford, who has also pulled invasive species in the Marin Headlands, says he loves hiking in the county and that his volunteer work is “my way of preserving the trails and of giving back.”

A graying ex-hippie who’d traveled for half a dozen years “hitch-hiking around the country” and who’d spent time in San Francisco during the Summer of Love, he now spends some of his non-work, non-volunteer time writing. He’s published memoirs and two novels.

He and his wife of 37 years, Linda, who met in Tonga in the South Pacific when he was sailing and she was serving in the Peace Corps, have devoted an entire room in their home to another of his hobbies — “early music, Renaissance and Medieval.”

Still, his “main thing is pulling broom in the parks," he says. "It’s really making a difference. They were covered with broom once but now there are meadows with wild flowers.”

Crawford will become the 20th winner of the Green Award. Earlier citations were given the team of , , Dick Miner, Conn Rusche, , the team of Steve Reinertsen and Scott Weeks, Sita Khufu, Rohana McLaughlin, Joyce Brown, Larry Nilsen, Matt Eakle, Ted Bakkila, Christine Dietrich Cragg, Bob Mellin, H.G. Von Dallwitz, Denali Gillaspie, Jonathan Braun, Dan Goltz and the husband-wife team of Janet Byrum and Bob Fleming.

Nominations can be hand-delivered or mailed to: Quality of Life Commission, c/o Town of San Anselmo, 525 San Anselmo Ave., or e-mailed to voodee@sbcglobal.net or townclerk@ci.san-anselmo.ca.us.


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