
Plaque dedicated to Emmy Lou Packard
Excerpt of From Maidens to Mavericks: Mendocino’s Women by Molly Dwyer
Emmy Lou Packard’s life brought together two passions: art and a commitment to social activism. Were it not for her devotion to these two enterprises, Mendocino might be very different today− dotted with development instead of the quaint village and beautiful expanse of Mendocino Headlands State Park. Emmy Lou was born in El Centro, California to a father who was an internationally known agronomist. When she was 13, her family spent some time in Mexico while her father worked on a project there. Since Emmy was already interested in art, her mother introduced her to the Mexican muralist, Diego Rivera, and his legendary wife, Frida Kahlo.
Emmy eloped in 1934 with an architect, Burton Cairns, a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, from which she matriculated two years later. In 1939 Cairns was killed in an auto accident and she returned to Mexico to work as an assistant to Rivera and Kahlo in their studio. When a mural project brought Rivera to San Francisco in 1940, Emmy accompanied him, assisting in the execution of “Pan American Unity.” She became increasingly well-known for her painting, printmaking, and murals. By 1952, she was producing wood and linoleum prints of local crab fishermen, net menders, artichoke pickers, and other workers. On another trip to Mexico, she studied new developments in mural techniques and returned to do many murals for schools. She invited children to help make their mosaics with assemblages of seashells, pebbles, broken ceramic tiles and other found objects.
Nearly 20 years passed before she married Byron Randall, an expressionist painter and printmaker. In 1960 the couple moved to Mendocino, perhaps because they knew artist Bill Zacha, who had just broken ground on the Mendocino Art Center. He was recruiting artist friends to come to Mendocino. Emmy and Randall purchased property on Main Street across from the Presbyterian Church and built studios and a guesthouse.
Already a neighborhood activist in San Francisco, Emmy got involved in community issues in Mendocino, working against the Vietnam War and for environmental preservation. In 1968, word spread around town that Boise Cascade, which had purchased the headlands, intended to develop it. Emmy organized a “citizens’ campaign” and petition drive to obtain the property and turn it into a state park. The movement was covered in the local press, in the San Francisco Chronicle, and in the Sacramento Bee. The Director of California State Parks, William Penn Mott, had an interest in the proposition, but had no funds to purchase the property from Boise Cascade. He did, however, appoint an official Mendocino Headlands State Park Committee, made up largely of local activists, to continue exploring ways to accomplish their goal.
This is where Emmy Lou’s path crossed that of Mildred Benioff, who became chair of the committee, a woman with impressive political expertise that complemented Emmy’s visionary passion and moved the project forward. Emmy credited the community, but her tireless efforts kept everyone inspired in the face of heavy odds against them. Emmy later wrote: “I saw this marvelous headland and the beach and the quaint little town and I knew it would be ruined sooner or later by commercial development, and I felt it had to be saved.”
Hear about Emmy Lou Packard on our Historic District Walking Tour. Visit the Kelley House Event Calendar for a Walking Tour schedule. From Maidens to Mavericks is available in our online store. On Tap at the Kelley House: The History of Brewing on the Mendocino Coast is open now until September 29th. The Kelley House Museum is open Thursday-Monday, 11am-3pm.