Zeno Swijtink
03-09-2008, 09:27 PM
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Hole-in-the-Head today, where the nuclear power plant was planned to be
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https://www.pressdemocrat.com/EarlyEdition/article_view.cfm?recordID=8811&publishdate=03/07/2008
Hazel Mitchell, 'mainstay of Bodega Bay,' dies at 90
By CHRIS SMITH
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Friday, March 7, 2008
Bodega Bay booster and defender Hazel Mitchell, who was waiting tables at The Tides in 1958 when her outrage over a proposed nuclear power plant at Bodega Head melded her into a community activist, died Tuesday at age 90.
For nearly 30 years, well into the 1980s, Mitchell was such a go-to force in Bodega Bay that many residents regarded her as the unincorporated seaside village's functional mayor.
"She was a mainstay of Bodega Bay," said former west Sonoma County Supervisor Ernie Carpenter, who befriended Mitchell after he was elected to the board in 1980. "If you wanted to know what was going on there, she was the one to call."
A transplanted Texan who didn't finish high school, Mitchell was taking orders at the old Tides cafe when she heard that PG&E was moving to build some sort of power plant on Bodega Head, near the mouth of the harbor.
"I had never heard the word nuclear' or atomic' at the time," Mitchell said in a 2002 interview with The Press Democrat.
She became incensed, and not about the type of energy that would generate the electrical power. What angered her was a sense that the utility company and many supportive Sonoma County officials were out to force on Bodega Bay a huge, industrial development that inevitably would diminish the town's charm and character.
Mitchell's role in the corps of environmentalists, ranchers and other activists opposed to the power plant was that of a grassroots organizer and thorn in the side of the proponents.
"Being there at The Tides gave me an opportunity to talk to people," she said in 2002. "I was never shy."
In 1959, she co-founded the Bodega Bay Chamber of Commerce in order to rally and unite the town's business community in the fight against the mega-project by PG&E.
Ultimately, what doomed the "Bodega Bay Atomic Park" was the foes' argument that the project was so close to the San Andreas Fault that an earthquake could crack it open and spawn a nuclear nightmare. PG&E pulled out in 1964.
The battle was still on when Mitchell achieved another of her many Bodega Bay claims to fame: Most every day while Alfred Hitchcock shot "The Birds" in and around the town in 1962, Mitchell served the famous director his lunch at The Tides.
She would recall that the dieting moviemaker ordered the same thing every day: a piece of sole, a lettuce leaf and a few string beans.
About that same time, she was waiting tables when another patron caught her eye.
"I'd come in after work for a drink or two, and she spotted me," said Wes Mitchell, who was building homes in Bodega Bay back then. They married in 1963.
Though the Battle for Bodega Head was a momentous event in the birth of the environmental movement in California, Hazel Mitchell did not go into it or come out of it as an environmentalist.
She often said that what inspired her activism was the arrogance of power-plant proponents who treated Bodega Bay residents as if they were too stupid to see how they'd benefit from having the project built in their town.
About the time PG&E admitted defeat, Mitchell studied real estate, then left The Tides and became Bodega Bay's first woman real-estate broker - not the sort of work a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist would seek. She made it clear she was not fundamentally opposed to growth and development when she helped sell the land that became the vast Bodega Harbour subdivision.
She once said she didn't care for the extremism either of no-growth conservationists or pave-it-all developers.
"One would have nothing, and the other would have concrete over everything," she said. "I'm always somewhere in the middle."
Though not an environmentalist, she labored from the 1960s into the '80s as an activist and advocate for Bodega Bay and the Sonoma Coast. She championed free access to state beaches, served on the first Sonoma County Parks and Recreation Commission and was a great booster of Bodega Bay's annual Fisherman's Festival.
"She was the original community activist," said longtime friend Donna Freeman, the festival's founder.
Mitchell and her husband moved a few miles inland, to the town of Bodega, in 1982. Tragedy struck three years later while they were visiting Walnut Creek: a traffic collision that broke Hazel Mitchell's back.
She walked with difficulty after that, but kept active. She and Wes moved to a house in west Santa Rosa in 2001.
She was an avid reader and political observer, and a lover of cats, roses, old bottles and interesting rocks. She kept a keen eye on the primaries and caucuses - "She was a Hillary supporter," her husband said - up until about two weeks ago, when she suffered a stroke.
She was out of the hospital and back at home when she died Tuesday, costing her a chance at one of her ambtions: living to age 100.
In addition to her husband, she is survived by a sister, Betty Frank of Pleasanton.
Services are at 11 a.m. Saturday at Pleasant Hills Memorial Park in Sebastopol. Memorial contributions can be made to the Fisherman's Festival Scholarship Fund, P.O. Box 176, Bodega Bay 94923.
Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and [email protected].
--
NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C., section 107, some material is provided without permission from the copyright owner, only for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of federal copyright laws. These materials may not be distributed further, except for "fair use," without permission of the copyright owner. For more information go to: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
Hole-in-the-Head today, where the nuclear power plant was planned to be
********************
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/EarlyEdition/article_view.cfm?recordID=8811&publishdate=03/07/2008
Hazel Mitchell, 'mainstay of Bodega Bay,' dies at 90
By CHRIS SMITH
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Friday, March 7, 2008
Bodega Bay booster and defender Hazel Mitchell, who was waiting tables at The Tides in 1958 when her outrage over a proposed nuclear power plant at Bodega Head melded her into a community activist, died Tuesday at age 90.
For nearly 30 years, well into the 1980s, Mitchell was such a go-to force in Bodega Bay that many residents regarded her as the unincorporated seaside village's functional mayor.
"She was a mainstay of Bodega Bay," said former west Sonoma County Supervisor Ernie Carpenter, who befriended Mitchell after he was elected to the board in 1980. "If you wanted to know what was going on there, she was the one to call."
A transplanted Texan who didn't finish high school, Mitchell was taking orders at the old Tides cafe when she heard that PG&E was moving to build some sort of power plant on Bodega Head, near the mouth of the harbor.
"I had never heard the word nuclear' or atomic' at the time," Mitchell said in a 2002 interview with The Press Democrat.
She became incensed, and not about the type of energy that would generate the electrical power. What angered her was a sense that the utility company and many supportive Sonoma County officials were out to force on Bodega Bay a huge, industrial development that inevitably would diminish the town's charm and character.
Mitchell's role in the corps of environmentalists, ranchers and other activists opposed to the power plant was that of a grassroots organizer and thorn in the side of the proponents.
"Being there at The Tides gave me an opportunity to talk to people," she said in 2002. "I was never shy."
In 1959, she co-founded the Bodega Bay Chamber of Commerce in order to rally and unite the town's business community in the fight against the mega-project by PG&E.
Ultimately, what doomed the "Bodega Bay Atomic Park" was the foes' argument that the project was so close to the San Andreas Fault that an earthquake could crack it open and spawn a nuclear nightmare. PG&E pulled out in 1964.
The battle was still on when Mitchell achieved another of her many Bodega Bay claims to fame: Most every day while Alfred Hitchcock shot "The Birds" in and around the town in 1962, Mitchell served the famous director his lunch at The Tides.
She would recall that the dieting moviemaker ordered the same thing every day: a piece of sole, a lettuce leaf and a few string beans.
About that same time, she was waiting tables when another patron caught her eye.
"I'd come in after work for a drink or two, and she spotted me," said Wes Mitchell, who was building homes in Bodega Bay back then. They married in 1963.
Though the Battle for Bodega Head was a momentous event in the birth of the environmental movement in California, Hazel Mitchell did not go into it or come out of it as an environmentalist.
She often said that what inspired her activism was the arrogance of power-plant proponents who treated Bodega Bay residents as if they were too stupid to see how they'd benefit from having the project built in their town.
About the time PG&E admitted defeat, Mitchell studied real estate, then left The Tides and became Bodega Bay's first woman real-estate broker - not the sort of work a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist would seek. She made it clear she was not fundamentally opposed to growth and development when she helped sell the land that became the vast Bodega Harbour subdivision.
She once said she didn't care for the extremism either of no-growth conservationists or pave-it-all developers.
"One would have nothing, and the other would have concrete over everything," she said. "I'm always somewhere in the middle."
Though not an environmentalist, she labored from the 1960s into the '80s as an activist and advocate for Bodega Bay and the Sonoma Coast. She championed free access to state beaches, served on the first Sonoma County Parks and Recreation Commission and was a great booster of Bodega Bay's annual Fisherman's Festival.
"She was the original community activist," said longtime friend Donna Freeman, the festival's founder.
Mitchell and her husband moved a few miles inland, to the town of Bodega, in 1982. Tragedy struck three years later while they were visiting Walnut Creek: a traffic collision that broke Hazel Mitchell's back.
She walked with difficulty after that, but kept active. She and Wes moved to a house in west Santa Rosa in 2001.
She was an avid reader and political observer, and a lover of cats, roses, old bottles and interesting rocks. She kept a keen eye on the primaries and caucuses - "She was a Hillary supporter," her husband said - up until about two weeks ago, when she suffered a stroke.
She was out of the hospital and back at home when she died Tuesday, costing her a chance at one of her ambtions: living to age 100.
In addition to her husband, she is survived by a sister, Betty Frank of Pleasanton.
Services are at 11 a.m. Saturday at Pleasant Hills Memorial Park in Sebastopol. Memorial contributions can be made to the Fisherman's Festival Scholarship Fund, P.O. Box 176, Bodega Bay 94923.
Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and [email protected].
--
NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C., section 107, some material is provided without permission from the copyright owner, only for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of federal copyright laws. These materials may not be distributed further, except for "fair use," without permission of the copyright owner. For more information go to: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml