Oral History: Dr. Gloria Duffy — May 10th, 2021

Summary:

Dr. Gloria Duffy was invited to speak at the May 10, 2021 meeting of the Lafayette Youth Services Commission. She described how she and two other high school seniors had combined their efforts to create the Youth Commission, which was at that time celebrating its 50th anniversary. While members of the founding group had been active in community affairs as individuals, they saw a need for an ongoing organization that would both offer opportunities for Lafayette’s young people to engage in public service activities and also provide services and resources to them. The new commission was modeled on existing organizations of a similar type which existed in neighboring communities. Thanks to Dr. Duffy, our city soon had its own.

Oral History:

Founding History of the Lafayette Youth Services Commission

Dr. Gloria Duffy’s meeting with the Lafayette Youth Commission, Monday, May 10, 2021, 6 pm, via Zoom

Summary of presentation, written July 10, 2022
Gloria Duffy

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Thank you, Leah, and Commissioners.

I am honored to be with you. This is my first, ever, Lafayette Youth Commission meeting.

Special compliments on continuing your effectiveness through this most recent, very challenging pandemic year.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Lafayette Youth Commission. Congratulations on a half-century as a Lafayette City Commission!

Thank you to your advisor Steve Heinsma (Lafayette Parks and Recreation Department), for asking me to join you today, to share the history of how the Lafayette Youth Services Commission began. It was founded by students, just like you. I was one of three high school seniors – two at Acalanes High School and one at Campolindo High School – who proposed the Commission to the Lafayette City Council, wrote its founding ordinance and took the proposal through the approval process by the Council.

I would like to take you back 50 years, to the founding of the Commission and the reasons for its establishment.

A New City, Need for Infrastructure

In 1971, when the LYC was established, Lafayette was still a new city, just three years old. It had incorporated and become a city in 1968.

As you know, Lafayette is in an area, in Contra Costa County, which is physically beautiful. Now it is more suburban, but then it was semi-rural. There were, as there are today, many outdoor recreation possibilities for young people. There were opportunities for after-school sports and music, the “Dramateurs” theater group with programs for kids, churches, school activities like clubs and homecoming and class field trips.

But in 1970, with Lafayette being such a new city, there was not a lot in the way of public, community physical or social infrastructure. For young people, there were two issues. There were not what we, as high school students at the time, felt to be enough organized services or resources for youth. And, equally important to us, there were few organized ways to engage young people in service to the community.

There was a public library in Lafayette, on Moraga Road where, as students, we sometimes went to study after school. But the library building was old and the collection was limited, and we had to go to the Pleasant Hill branch of the County library to access the main collections for research. There was nothing like the magnificent Library and Learning Center that exists today.

There was no city-wide recreation program, and there were no public hiking or biking trails, as there are today. The tennis courts were at schools and were generally full, or else they were private, at clubs to which many kids didn’t have access. There wasn’t a community pool. Retail stores were not youth-oriented, and restaurants were somewhat expensive.

The Park Theater was operating, but the films shown there were not youth- oriented and seemed to stay forever. There was a curfew for those under 18, of 10 pm on weeknights and midnight on weekends. Some issues were arising with students, including drinking, drugs, and engaging in vandalism, which we felt could be related to the lack of community activities to serve or engage them.

And there was an ongoing issue about building a community center in Lafayette. Land on St. Mary’s Road had been purchased by a citizens’ group, who were willing to donate the site to the city. But over several years, no study or report had been produced by a recreation commission to which the project had been referred, and the effort was not moving forward.

Youth Community Service Mostly Ad-Hoc

As a young person, I came to community service primarily through my mom and through our church. My mom, Gloria Duffy, Sr., who was very community oriented, often “volunteered me” for projects, in which I was happy to engage. For example, I was a basketball player as a junior high school student at Stanley School, and so she arranged for me to teach developmentally challenged kids to play basketball, at Futures Explored in Lafayette. I believe this volunteer opportunity was organized through a program for youth service at our church, the Lafayette United Methodist Church.

My mom also “volunteered me,” when I was a freshman or sophomore at Acalanes, to serve as the student representative on a Lafayette School District Drug Education Committee, composed otherwise of administrators, teachers and parents. This was around 1968. The committee had been formed because with the 1960s drug experimentation taking place in communities near Lafayette, in the late 1960s some kids in Lafayette were using marijuana and some stronger drugs like LSD. Perhaps reflecting the stresses of their family situations or other problems, some kids had gotten into trouble with drugs. Through my service on this committee, I became aware of some of the needs in our community, for our younger residents.

But these opportunities to serve were through family, personal and church connections, not through any organized youth engagement activities in Lafayette.

Stimulated by the news coverage and discussion about Lafayette becoming a city, some of my Acalanes friends and I began to look around and see projects that needed to be done in Lafayette. And we just organized ourselves, plunged in and took action on our own.

“Dustbowl Park”

One activity we organized in 1970-71 was a cleanup of a vacant lot on Mt. Diablo Blvd, owned by an out-of-town proprietor, which was unmaintained, dusty, wind-blown, and littered with trash. It was between what is now Citibank and Metro restaurant, on Mt. Diablo Blvd. We gathered together a team from among our friends at Acalanes. Through the City of Lafayette, we located the property owner and got their permission, raised some funds for tools, soil, fertilizer and plants from local businesses and family donors, and had weekend workdays where we cleared, weeded, dug and planted, creating a pocket park.

There were many hard workers in this group. One of them was classmate Jon Gilbert, who later became President of Warner Brothers Studios.

The project was a success. Then-Lafayette Mayor Bob Fisher joking called it “Dustbowl Park,” which described its condition before we started the beautification. It existed as a park for many years, until the restaurant Metro began using it as their outside dining patio, which it is today.

The “Mayor’s Class”

Given our interest in community issues, we also created a class at Acalanes for the Lafayette mayor to talk and answer questions about local issues and decision-making. We got permission from the school administration to make it an official elective class, informally calling it “the Mayor’s class.” Mayor Fisher taught the class. It was a unique effort, offering high school students an opportunity to learn about local government, including the intricacies of city planning, zoning and budgeting.

As editor-in-chief of the Acalanes Blueprint student newspaper in 1970-71, I wrote an editorial in the Blueprint about the need for more organized youth-oriented activities in the community, especially a community center. My editorial was reprinted on the front page by the local paper, the Lafayette Sun. After this article appeared, a Lafayette resident and businessman, Gavin N. High of Far Western Mercantile, stepped up to support the community center project. He wrote a letter to the editor published in the Lafayette Sun, made a $100 donation and challenged others in the community to add their support.

After these experiences of being able to shape some positive outcomes through our engagement in the community, my friends and I were all about to graduate and go to college away from Lafayette. So, a few of our group at Acalanes thought it would be great if advocacy for and service by youth could be ongoing in Lafayette. Two of us, in particular, became champions of this idea. The other leader of the effort was my Class of 1971 classmate Don Goff, then student body Vice President at Acalanes. (Don became a psychiatrist, taught psychiatry at Harvard, was the head of the schizophrenia program at Boston General Hospital, and now heads the Nathan Kline Institute at the New York State Department of Public Health.)

Don and I talked with Mayor Fisher, about how we might pursue this idea of building youth engagement into the Lafayette community.

Bob and Lafayette City Manager Ernie Marriner advised us to look at how other cities were handling their youth services and engagement. We did, and found that other cities, in Contra Costa County and elsewhere, often had youth commissions. Lafayette, as a new and small city, did not have one. Don and I concluded that a Lafayette city youth commission would fill an important need for Lafayette.

Mayor Fisher, who supported and encouraged us through this whole process, advised us to talk with any other youth service or engagement groups in the Lafayette community to see if our idea for a Youth Commission would be duplicating what they were doing, which we did. We were especially sure to speak with Barbara Bupp, an engaged Lafayette community volunteer, who was active at my family’s church, the Lafayette United Methodist Church. She founded and led the Lafayette Youth-Adult Council. Don and I felt, and Barbara agreed, that a city commission could bring longevity and impact to all youth-oriented groups in the community, including hers.

We were also advised that, to assure support from throughout the community, we should enlist a student from one of the other high schools in the Acalanes district, that drew students from Lafayette. We settled on Campolindo High School as having a significant student population coming from Lafayette. We identified the student body president there, Joe Fanelli, and enlisted him in our effort.

Together, the three of us wrote an ordinance for a Lafayette Youth Commission, based on ordinances we obtained from other cities. We then met individually with each member of the Lafayette City Council (Donn Black, Ned Robinson and others), and asked for their support. Every member of the City Council agreed to support the project.

The ordinance was then submitted to the City for review, noticed and placed on the agenda for a hearing at a City Council meeting, and the ordinance establishing the Youth Commission passed unanimously in May of 1971.

Don Goff, I and the others who were involved were surprised and honored when Mayor Fisher spoke at our Acalanes graduation ceremony, thanking us for our involvement in the community and our work to establish the Youth Commission.

None of the organizers of the Youth Commission effort ever served on the Commission or even attended a meeting, since we all graduated from high school in June of 1971, and left for college before the Commission was composed or held any meetings.

In early 2021, I realized that it was 50 years since the Youth Commission – now the Lafayette Youth Services Commission – was established. It is a great pleasure – indeed, a dream come true – to see that the LYSC is going strong, after 50 years!

Here is some of what has been accomplished, since the Commission was newly established 50 years ago:

• The much-desired Community Center was created – at the repurposed Burton School. It has sports including basketball, pickleball, skating and hockey; a playground; summer camps, classes and activities for kids, and more.
• The LYSC is very active today, with your mission of engaging Lafayette youth in community projects, as well as serving the needs of youth.
• You give youth input to the Council on important issues like housing and the Lafayette general plan
• You do a toy drive at Christmas
• You raise funds for schools
• You have a teen job and internship board
• You promote health and well-being
• You have movie nights and other safe social events, and
• You participate in equity and justice work with the City of Lafayette.

The LYSC is doing today just what a group of Acalanes seniors hoped you would do, and many things we didn’t dream you would do, when we brought the proposal to the Lafayette City Council in 1971. I have shared some of what you’ve accomplished with Dr. Goff and other Acalanes friends, and we are all so proud of you!

Congratulations on 50 years of outstanding work, by the Lafayette Youth Services Commission! And good luck to you for your next 50 years!