Los Liones State Park was the perfect backdrop for Betty Lou Young’s 85th birthday picnic last week. Not only was the setting Betty Lou’s dream come true conceived over a decade ago, but the field stone amphitheater proved to be ideal for the gathering of over 100 friends and admirers. Organized by the Will Rogers Cooperative Association, the event became an occasion to honor Betty Lou and to thank the staff of California State Parks and myriad volunteers for establishing and maintaining the 10-acre pristine gateway to Topanga State Park. Betty Lou was the first to imagine that the canyon, which had been written off as surplus land by the state for years, could be restored. ‘This plan is what started it off and Betty Lou was the first domino,’ said her son Randy, referring to the landscape plan sketched in 1992 as part of the Los Liones Botanical Garden Association proposal to plan and develop a botancial garden in Los Liones. Realizing that if those who were fighting to keep Los Liones from being developed had a proposal, it would show that they were in earnest, Betty Lou underwrote the plan developed by landscape designers Burton and Spitz. When the state decided to turn Los Liones into a gateway park in 1994, Betty Lou joined the hearty cadre of volunteers, who spent weekends ridding the canyon of years of discarded debris and rampant ‘exotic’ plants. ‘We removed 10 feet of debris and trash, with the help of Dale Skinner and his front-end loader and the glamazons, [referring to a diligent group of women] who whacked out every weed they could find within an inch of their lives,’ Randy said. ‘Three hundred tons’that’s 30 dumpster loads’were hauled out of this canyon.’ A woman of many talents and interests, Betty Lou was honored by friends from many chapters of her life. The UCLA and Smith graduate has established a career for herself as a historian, focusing on the history of Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica Canyon and Rustic Canyon. She recently completed a history of the Chautauqua movement. But Betty Lou was also a busy mom’she and her late husband Thomas raised three children who attended three different elementary schools, and she was active as a Girl Scout leader. As her son joked at the outset, he invited the country-club types and the activists to the party, ‘to see whether a fight would break out.’ It didn’t. Members of The Whiff N’Quaffs, a group of eight doctors and their wives who socialized and enjoyed golfing trips together, joined the afternoon birthday party. Margaret Pollock, whose father Telford Work was the first editor of the Palisadian-Post, and retired pediatrician George Cobley reminisced with Betty about one memorable trip to the British Isles in 1969. Meanwhile, Temescal Canyon Association members, many of whom not only worked to shape up the canyon but keep up the maintenance, bestowed their appreciation. Shirley Haggstrom formally inducted Betty Lou into the Glamazons and presented her with a set of miniature garden tools in keeping with the day’s theme. ‘God Almighty first planted a garden, And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man…’ Randy quoted from the essays of Francis Bacon as he presented a 24-in. boxed California oak to the park in his mom’s name. Betty Lou tossed in the first shovelful. Part of the charm of the canyon are the native trees, including oaks, sycamores and black walnut, 75 percent of which were purchased by the Will Rogers Cooperative Association. Joining in the birthday fete were several State Park rangers, including Topanga Sector Superintendent Kathleen Franklin. ‘It’s wonderful to recognize someone who has been so vital to the community and at the forefront in preserving history and nature,’ she said. ‘Betty Lou is an activist who fought to keep Los Liones within Topanga State Park as a place of natural beauty to be restored for current and future generations.’
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