“My mother liked making good trouble.' Here's how a trio of women who formed the Save Glen Park Committee in the fall of 1965 successfully fended off multiple attempts by The City to build a freeway through Glen Park.
It was an otherwise ordinary day when Zoanne Theriault Nordstrom first noticed a group of men driving heavy equipment into the dirt near her home.
The trio formed the Save Glen Park Committee in the fall of 1965, writing letters, penning op-eds and rallying others in nearby neighborhoods to their cause. Eventually, their issue made it on the Board of Supervisors, where it was met with passive indifference, often getting pushed to subsequent meetings after the women sat waiting through hours of bureaucratic discussion.
They also didn’t want the wives of teachers and longshoremen standing in the way of unfettered progress, noted Rose. And in those days, progress possessed four wheels. “When they say it takes a village, it takes a playground,” said Theriault. “It brought dozens of kids together. You woke up; you didn't have a plan; you just went to Park. Like, oh, are we playing basketball today? Or football? Or just searching the canyon? Trying to build a tree fort? You know, just being a kid and going home when the street lights came on.”
The Gum Tree Girls were not the first to stop a freeway in Glen Park. Before their efforts, another strong-willed woman successfully kept it clear of cars. Minnie Straub Baxter, a Glen Park native, had grown up steeped in the feminist energy of the local suffragists of the early 1900s.
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