Editor’s note: This piece is part of Bay Nature’s Community Voices, a new section of our website where Bay Nature readers can contribute tributes, opinions, essays, and other writing. They represent the views of the authors, who are also responsible for the facts in them. To submit an idea for a piece, email editorial@baynature.org.
Jerry Kent, long-time assistant general manager for operations at the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD), passed away on July 14, 2026, at the age of 88. A park employee for 41 years, and an active volunteer in conservation and park activities for more than two decades following his official retirement in 2003, Jerry left an enduring legacy at the Bay Area’s largest park district and beyond.
Jerry Kent and Bay Nature
I first met Jerry in 1999, as Malcolm Margolin and I were soliciting support for the launch of Bay Nature. Malcolm had worked for the park district as a “groundsman” in the early 1970s, but quit in 1972 because the district started requiring employees in the field to wear a uniform; Malcolm—with his rebellious hippie spirit—refused. But while working for the district, he had met Jerry, who had started out as a groundsman himself in 1962 before working his way up to assistant general manager. Jerry made a regular practice of visiting staff in the field and had recognized Malcolm’s love for the parks and his talent as a storyteller. According to Bob Doyle, who later took the top position of general manager of the district but at the time was also field staff under Jerry, Malcolm proposed to Jerry that the district pay him to write a book of stories about the parks. Jerry demurred but offered to have the district purchase a quantity of the books once they were published. That eventually led to the writing and publication of Malcolm’s classic East Bay Out, which led to the birth of Heyday Books and the launch of Malcolm’s half-century-long career as a publisher of books about California.
On the surface, Malcolm and Jerry couldn’t have been more different. Malcolm was a bearded, wiry, garrulous, free-spirited visionary who chafed at rules and convention. Jerry was—at least on the surface—a portly, clean-shaven “organization” guy, who wore a button down shirt and tie and wing tip shoes, and went “by the book” (which he probably helped write). But they had enormous respect for each other and recognized the value that the other brought to his chosen role. And they had an intense shared love for the parks and their history, both natural and cultural.
So when Malcolm and I were casting about for sources of financial support to launch Bay Nature, he set up a lunch meeting with Jerry and EBRPD board member Beverly Lane. It was amusing to watch Jerry and Malcolm needle each other, Malcolm accusing Jerry of being a “tightwad,” and Jerry taking the good-natured abuse with a smile.
Beverly told me later that she had established a friendship with Jerry in the early 1990s, when she had been elected to the district’s board of directors (representing the area in Contra Costa County around Danville and San Ramon). She had wanted to learn more about the parks, and asked Jerry if he could help her. He was deeply appreciative of her eagerness to learn, and agreed to meet with her on a regular basis to share his knowledge of the history of each and every park in the district.
It was this mutual commitment to understanding and sharing the history of the parks that led Jerry and Beverly to agree to bring to the district board a proposal to financially support Bay Nature in return for an article about some aspect of the East Bay’s regional parks in each issue. The board agreed and that was the genesis of a significant and fruitful partnership between the district and Bay Nature.
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Years at the East Bay Regional Park District
Jerry’s long career at the district, starting in the early 1960s, meant that he saw (and in many ways, oversaw) its transition from a small, informal, tightknit but loosely organized agency managing six parks in Alameda County into a large, modern, sprawling, and bureaucratic organization, managing the largest regional park district in the nation, encompassing 63 parks across Alameda and Contra Costa counties. The district’s small staff size back in the early 1960s allowed Jerry to rise quickly from park groundsman at the Tilden Golf Course, to park supervisor, to maintenance supervisor, to assistant to the general manager. He then became the district’s first assistant general manager (AGM) in 1971, a post he held for 32 years, overseeing park operations, public safety, interpretive services, as well as planning, design, and construction for new parks.
Twice during this long career, Jerry was called up to serve as acting general manager while the board looked for a new permanent GM. According to Bob Doyle and Beverly Lane, who were both interviewed for this article, each of those times the board first offered the top job to Jerry, but each time he firmly declined. According to Beverly, “He didn’t like dealing with Sacramento and asserted that politics and finance were not his interest… He became Mr. Operations at the District. He knew the parks intimately and remembered events, equipment and the land in such detail that it was a marvel to behold. An operations guy through and through, he always said he preferred to be in the field. He wanted to get out there and do projects—and work with people who became his friends.”
Even though he didn’t like the limelight, Jerry didn’t shy away from taking on a leadership role when required. One of his stints as acting general manager (1987–1988) coincided with the campaign for Measure AA, a $225 million capital bond to fund both acquisition of new parks and maintenance of existing parks. It was, at the time, the largest park bond measure in state history. Jerry managed the successful campaign, mostly from behind the scenes. A great listener, with a calm demeanor, he was skilled at bringing people together and defusing controversies, all in the service of making sure that the parks served the needs of the people. According to Bob, his general approach was always, “How do we make this happen?”
But Jerry was as much an “ideas” guy as an “organization” guy, whose affability hid his depth of strategic thinking, according to Beverly. “He had his fingers in pies all over the district and always saw the larger picture.”
His colleagues have plenty of stories of Jerry coming to meetings with plans and drawings scribbled on the backs of napkins or envelopes. Bob says that Jerry—who preferred to drive a sedan rather than an SUV for his travels around the district—would sometimes scribble ideas on the windshield that had come to him while he was driving. When he retired, his staff removed the windshield from his car and wrote their notes of appreciation to Jerry on it, to present to him at his retirement party.
The Archives Project
Jerry’s commitment to the district didn’t stop with his retirement in 2003. Now he got to fully indulge his passion for the history of the district, which eventually evolved into his advocacy for, and deep involvement with, the district’s nascent archives program. It catalyzed, initially, around the 70th anniversary of the district in 2004. Up to that point, the preservation of historical documents and photos had been an informal and haphazard affair, with the records scattered in different locations, behind people’s desks or at the homes of former employees or in the basement at the park’s Oakland headquarters building. But Jerry recognized the importance of these materials, particularly the boxes of black and white photos, many from the 1920s and ’30s.
In 2004, the district moved many of its historical documents from the headquarters at Peralta Oaks Drive to its old headquarters building on Skyline Boulevard, newly rechristened as the Richard Trudeau Center (named after the general manager who initially promoted Jerry to AGM and for whom he worked for many years). Brenda Montano, then a new employee at the district’s Public Affairs office, was assigned to begin assisting Jerry in going through the materials. In 2005, Jerry arrived at the Center with a load of “bankers boxes” and a dolly, and so began a period during which Jerry and Brenda would meet for a few hours every couple of weeks to start reviewing and organizing the photos and documents. According to Brenda, Jerry would say, “Let’s try to get through one box today.” She says that “Jerry had this encyclopedic brain, a photographic memory. He could tell you the story—in such a good and kind way—of almost everyone who had worked at the district. And I was his audience.”
Soon after, Jerry began inviting other people, including retired district staff, to come help with the process of sorting through the assembled documents and photos. This was the start of the volunteer program at the archives, which evolved into a regular once-a-week gathering in the basement of the Trudeau Center. Jerry would sit in his chair at the head of the table and go through the materials that Brenda brought him, instructing the volunteers sitting next to him how to label and catalogue them, while frequently breaking into stories related to them. According to Brenda, “A lot of the volunteers came because of Jerry, for the opportunity to spend four hours with him listening to his stories … Jerry loved this history and made us love it too.”
Thanks to Jerry’s and Brenda’s efforts, the archives eventually became a full-fledged department within the district, in 2021, with Brenda as program supervisor. In early 2026, the archives volunteers received the award for Outstanding Community Group from the California Association of Recreation and Park Districts (CARPD). According to Brenda, the original idea from members of the park district board was to nominate Jerry himself for Outstanding Volunteer, but “he never wanted to be the one to get recognition,” so the award went instead to the group as a whole. Work is now underway to make the archives more accessible to the public.
A week before he passed away unexpectedly, Jerry brought Brenda a thumb drive containing his writings on the history of the park at Lake Temescal, which is now undergoing major renovations. He told her, “You guys need to know the history,” and he was hoping to work with her on writing it up. “Jerry was always working on something,” she says.
Fire in the Hills
Indeed, he was usually working on more than one thing. Another major focus of Jerry’s attention in retirement was the fire-prone forestlands of the East Bay Hills. The hills had gotten many people’s attention following the devastating Oakland Hills fire in 1991, including the residents of Claremont Canyon in Oakland, many of whose homes had been threatened in the fire. In the aftermath of the fire, some of these residents formed the Claremont Canyon Conservancy, dedicated to stewarding the natural landscape of the canyon while enhancing its wildfire resilience.
After Jerry retired he was invited to join the board of the Conservancy—even though he didn’t live in Claremont Canyon—because of his many years working in the park lands in and above the canyon. He dove into research on the history of fires in the area, becoming a recognized and respected expert on this topic. He produced several exhaustively researched, in-depth authoritative reports and slide shows on the history of wildfire in the East Bay Hills and became an informed advocate for coordinated action to reduce the risk of future fires through large scale and sustained management of the area’s eucalyptus and pine forests. (See “Diablo Winds, Wildfires, and Flammable Vegetation in the East Bay Hills,” from 2017, available on the Conservancy’s website.) Conservancy board member Marilyn Goldhaber said that Jerry “was our knowledge base for fire issues,” and was instrumental in mentoring land managers at both the park district and UC Berkeley, emphasizing the risks of inaction. Jerry also played a key role in the formation of the East Bay Wildfire Coalition of Governments and the Alliance of FireSafe Councils to promote coordinated action and oversight of the woodlands at the wildland-urban interface.
For a man with such a depth and breadth of knowledge about the East Bay region and such a passion for sharing that knowledge, Jerry was quite humble and approachable. When I ran into him at meetings or events, he would never fail to offer a compliment about a recent article in the magazine or suggest a possible topic for a future article. As I‘ve worked on this article about his life, I’ve been struck by the contrast between how well-loved and admired Jerry was by the people who knew him and worked with him, and how little known he was by others in the Bay Area, including those who use the East Bay parks on a regular basis. Perhaps not surprising, as all the colleagues I interviewed commented on how he preferred to stay in the background. And yet, his work and accomplishments have had a major beneficial impact on so many of our lives in the Bay Area and left a lasting legacy for the benefit of generations to come. I hope Jerry finally gets the recognition he didn’t want but so richly deserves.
