GILROY
– Dennis DeBell finally got his day – and Mother Nature, whose
work he dedicated a sizable part of his life’s savings to help
protect, granted him a nearly perfect one.
GILROY – Dennis DeBell finally got his day – and Mother Nature, whose work he dedicated a sizable part of his life’s savings to help protect, granted him a nearly perfect one.
Nearly 17 years after he bequeathed $1 million to the city of Gilroy to help establish a nature preserve at Uvas Creek, perfect spring weather helped to grace a ceremony to formally recognize DeBell’s contribution Wednesday – and it made even more stunning the nature preserve that his gift helped create.
With the burbling creek and forested hills in the background, over 100 dignitaries, relatives and friends of the late City Councilman and community leader attended the morning ceremony atop a Miller Avenue levee to watch the formal renaming of the preserve in his honor.
The words “DeBell Uvas Creek Park Preserve” now grace four entrance signs around the park, and a plaque with those words now sits on a stone pedestal along the pathway at Miller. DeBell was also honored this week with formal proclamations before the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors and the Gilroy City Council.
On Wednesday, family and friends remembered why it all happened. They praised the lasting gift DeBell left Gilroy, the example that his generosity has set for others and his deep love for the community.
“It’s been almost 18 years since Dennis has died, and you’ve all come back,” DeBell’s friend Bernie Habing told the crowd. “It shows how many friends he had. He had many friends in Gilroy.”
DeBell, a local builder who learned the trade from his father, had already compiled an extensive record of community service before his big gift to the city became public after he succumbed to cancer in 1985.
DeBell served as a city councilman, planning commissioner and a director of the Santa Clara Valley Water District. He was also a member of the city’s Chamber of Commerce, the Gilroy Foundation board and Gilroy High School Advisory Board.
Officials said his company lent free general contractor and labor services for the expansion of St. Mary’s school and built the old Gilroy Chamber of Commerce building – now the city’s Visitors Center – as a gift to the city. It also constructed the Ochoa Migrant Housing complex at reduced cost.
But the size of his bequest – one million dollars, to be used as a park preserve – still stunned the city when it was made public upon his death.
“Dennis came forward with this million bucks, and no one could believe it,” said DeBell friend and former city parks director Bill Ayer.
Before DeBell’s gift, sand and gravel pits marked the area where the preserve is today, and it was studded with the rusted-out hulks of old cars, appliances and other rubbish.
His bequest helped the city restore the topography of the creek channel, install trails and remove harmful non-native plants in the mid-1990s.
“It made all the difference in the world in getting that area restored,” said Bill Headley, the city’s parks and facilities development manager. “It’s a great legacy.”
Although flooding later washed away a portion of the city’s work, the 125-acre preserve stretching from Santa Teresa Boulevard south to West Luchessa is still seen by many observers as one of Gilroy’s treasures. It offers walkers, joggers, cyclists and nature enthusiasts an opportunity to enjoy the riparian habitat and is reportedly Gilroy’s largest publicly owned piece of parkland.
But besides its size, the preserve is a significant element in Gilroy’s park chain because of its unique role as passive open space, said Community Services Director Bob Connelly.
“As opposed to active things that go on at Christmas Hill Park or the sports park that will occur in the future, the preserve leaves it in a natural state where (people) can get away from the organized kinds of things,” he said.
DeBell’s friend Phil Buchanan, a member of the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission, helped organize Tuesday’s memorial with Ayer, Habing, Sig Sanchez and parks staffers Chris Orr and Karen Akin.”It was a very special, special gift from a man who had, on his own doings, done a lot for Gilroy,” Buchanan said of DeBell’s bequest.
DeBell’s wife Marlys and four living children – Kenneth, Michael, David and Tracey – came from around the West Coast to remember him.
Marlys said DeBell was “the epitome of a humble man, and his children noted the lessons to be learned in their father’s actions. Son Michael DeBell said it would be hard to live up to his dad’s accomplishments – but while not everybody could make such a gift, all could be inspired by his example.
“Any little thing that you do counts,” he said.
Son David DeBell joked that while he and his dad never seemed to catch many fish, he’d talked to someone who had snagged three from the creek recently.
“I think the preserve is working,” he said to laughs.
Many others at the Wednesday event noted Dennis DeBell’s generosity and humbleness.
Former Mayor Roberta Hughan called DeBell “a man of integrity.”
“How many times do you get the chance to give a gift that will last forever?” she said. “That’s what he did.”
Sanchez, a friend of DeBell’s and former Gilroy mayor and county supervisor, noted that DeBell would not have clamored for recognition.
“He’s looking down on us saying, ‘What are those silly people doing?’ Sanchez said. ” He was not the type of person to look for accolades.”
Bernie Habing noted his friend’s generosity in other ways. He recalled how during a trip DeBell made to Israel with a Gilroy religious group, a woman on the trip couldn’t physically make the climb up a hill to visit an important cultural site.
“He picked her up and carried her up that hill,” Habing said. “I’ll never forget that.”
DeBell also left $100,000 to be held in a trust to become a scholarship fund for Gilroy youth.
After Wednesday’s ceremony, friends and family members took a walk down the preserve’s pathways and gathered for a picnic lunch and to share memories and funny stories of DeBell.
His grandson Samuel DeBell, a 19-year-old environmental engineering student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, reflected as he listened in.
“I’m sure I’ll be thinking back to my grandfather (about) how to live my life and positively affect people,” he said.
