Sebastopol Citizens of the year: Dan Smith and Joan Marler

[Barry]

[I'd like to congratulate our members and loyal sponsors (French Garden), Dan Smith and Joan Marler on their well deserved honor as Citizens of the Year!

The following article is reprinted with the gracious permission of the Sonoma West Times & News.

- Barry]


Citizens of the year, hospital's best friends

Couple to be honored at annual Community Awards ceremony on Jan. 23

by George Snyder - Sonoma West Staff Writer

TERRIFIC TANDEM — Dan Smith and wife Joan Marler are being recognized by the Sebastopol Area Chamber of Commerce for their many years of financial support of Palm Drive Hospital and their many other civic and cultural contributions to the Sebastopol community. - Photo by George Snyder

SEBASTOPOL - The city's annual celebration of the best and the brightest - the Sebastopol Area Chamber of Commerce's Community Awards - is scheduled to be held next week, with the Chamber honoring the husband and wife team of Dan Smith and Joan Marler with the 2008 Citizens of the Year Award.

The award ceremony is scheduled to be held from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Community Church of Sebastopol, 1000 Gravenstein Highway.

Smith, 61, and Marler, the owners of the upscale French Garden Restaurant, have been instrumental, in addition to other civic involvement, in keeping the city's beleaguered Palm Drive Hospital afloat both administratively and financially.
“The Chamber is pleased to recognize Dan Smith and Joan Marler for their time, energy and resources in their commitment to the community through their efforts to keep Palm Drive Hospital open and viable,” said Sebastopol Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Teresa Ramondo, “as well as supporting many other local community organizations and causes.”

Some of the other organizations that have benefited from the couple's attention include the Laguna de Santa Rosa and the Sebastopol Rotary Club.

Other community award winners include Balletto Vineyards as Business of the Year; Laguna Farms, for Environmental Consciousness; Kiwanis Club, Service to Youth; Wilbur Roberts as Volunteer of the Year; Rev. Rick Hahn and Gayle Brownell, both for the “Skip Gehrett,” Humanitarian of the Year; Dave White for Outstanding Public Service, and Mark De Rutte for Youth Volunteer of the Year.
Smith and Marler, meanwhile, said their selection as honorees was much appreciated.

“I feel very honored, we both do,” said Smith, “when you look back at who has been selected, it puts you in a very illustrious crowd.”

Smith added that he and his wife have “always been part of the community. We believe that we must be, mostly because of having such a wonderful community to live in.”

Marler, who insisted she has done most of the “behind the scenes” work for the two, like her husband insisted “it was a pleasant surprise.”

“It is an honor,” she continued, “to be of service to the community and at this stage of our lives be honored for our work by the chamber for our passion, our love and combined experience to our community.”

Sebastopol Hardware co-owner Mark Sell, last year's Citizen of the Year, is scheduled to pass on the award.
“Both Joan and Dan are being honored,” said Sell. “Their contributions through the years while working on the Laguna and Palm Drive Hospital coupled with the huge donations of time, material and money, would alone qualify them for this recognition.”

But in addition, he said, he also saw within them “a deep seated concern for their fellow man along with compassion for the impoverished,” adding, “I think Dan and Joan spend a lot of time dwelling on ‘how can we help today?'”

Sell added that it was Sebastopol's community health care crisis that introduced him to Smith and Marler.

“I met Dan Smith just after Columbia Health Care decided it wanted to close Palm Drive Hospital in November of 1998,” he said, “Dan was a member of a group of thirty five folks that thought it was time to take local control of our health care system and was one of several that made that happen.”

Sell said Smith has also remained “steadfast in his desire to make the health care system conform to general business guidelines through the tumultuous seven years that followed.”

He said his favorite story about Smith has to do with the restaurant, where Sell said his business has held a Christmas party for the past few years.
“Dan dresses up with a nice coat and tie and is a perfect host,” Sell related. “I watched over his shoulder and saw that Joan Marler was standing in the shadows behind him had a firm handle on the entire restaurant operation and acted as a silent conductor. This only goes to bear out that behind every good man is a great woman.”

A Petaluma native and a dropout from Sonoma State University, Smith became a successful contractor and creating the Master Builder software program for builders sold to Intuit in 2001. He has been a Sebastopol businessman for the past 35 years.

Marler, who met her husband more than 40 years ago while he worked in a Mendocino County lumber mill, is a graduate of Mills College, is a former Santa Rosa Junior College dance teacher, produced radio programs for KPFA FM in Berkeley, edited works on archaeologist and has a Master in Archaeomythology from SSU.

She is also the founder and executive director of the Institute of Archaeomythology.

Both are active in their restaurant, much of the produce for which they grow on a 30-acre farm off Cherry Ridge Road they bought more than 20 years ago.

The couple is also expected to break ground in spring on a next-door, 18-room inn, also to be named the French Garden.
Both the restaurant, the farm and Marler's Institute, which examines sustainable Neolithic agricultural practices born in the mists of European prehistory, are all part of a piece, according to the couple.

“We're looking at mature cultures and working to see how to be sustainable, and do it on our farm,” said Marler. “In my view the best thing to do is manufacture what we want to see and not wait for it. You have to work hard.”

“What Dan and I are doing to the best of our ability,” she added, “is to construct what we can to celebrate community, family and what's important for a community, which is life.”