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Honoring David R. Roberts
September/October 2020
 Friendship Garden planned for Balboa Park, 1987. David Roberts hopes to get early start on $11.5 million project. San Diego Tribune photo by Bob Redding |
Lois deKock, one of our long-time Marston House docents, has donated an important collection of documents about the development of Balboa Park from the mid-1950s through the 1980s. Her father, David R. Roberts, who passed away in 2019, compiled the collection.
Roberts had a long and impressive career with the City of San Diego's parks department from 1952 through 1986. Starting out as a nurseryman, he rose to deputy park and recreation director by the time he retired. He had overall management responsibility for park maintenance and operations, street tree management, and park forestry, among other things. He was also a horticultural advisor to the San Diego Zoo and a consultant for the New Sunset Western Garden Book.
Among the collection's more unusual items are an instructional memo to hostesses at the Botanical Building for its March 1959 reopening event, with the history of the structure, reconstruction details, and plantings. Another lengthy memo from 1977 outlines restoration of park buildings, including those from the 1915 Panama-California Exposition complete with cost estimates. For example, the Organ Pavilion was in the first priority category with a restoration price tag of $540,00-$655,000. A rare original letter from the Olmsted Brothers firm to the secretary of the board of park commissioners, written on Panama-California Exposition stationery, includes a note to George Marston.
SOHO will digitize the entire collection, making it available to Balboa Park historians, researchers, and enthusiasts. Thank you, Lois, for sharing your father's accomplishments and park history with SOHO and the public. His was a life well-lived.
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