SANTA CRUZ SENTINEL
Martins Beach battle gets personal as public submits moving stories about the beach
By Paul Rogers
progers@mercurynews.com
Posted: 08/10/2014 05:25:18 PM PDT2 Comments
1/5
Bill Farac, 86, a retired San Francisco police department sergeant, holds a picture of him and his wife, Rosemary, taken in 1951, (before they were married) at Martins Beach, at his home in Burlingame, Calif., on Sunday, Aug. 10, 2014. They were married about a year after the picture was taken. Rosemary died in 2008 after they were married for 56 years. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
Bill Farac, 86, a retired San Francisco police department sergeant, holds a picture of him and his wife, Rosemary, taken in 1951, (before they were married) at Martins Beach, at his home in Burlingame, Calif., on Sunday, Aug. 10, 2014. They were married about a year after the picture was taken. …
Bill Farac, 86, a retired San Francisco police department sergeant, holds the back of a picture of him and his wife, Rosemary, taken in 1951 at Martins Beach, at his home in Burlingame, Calif., on Sunday, Aug. 10, 2014. They were married about a year after the picture was taken. Rosemary died in 2008 after they were married for 56 years. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
Bill Farac, 86, a retired San Francisco police department sergeant, holds a painting of his wife, Rosemary, painted by his son Bill, at his home in Burlingame, Calif., on Sunday, Aug. 10, 2014. . Rosemary died in 2008 after they were married for 56 years. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
Bill Farac, 86, a retired San Francisco police department sergeant, holds a picture of him and his wife, Rosemary, (before they were married) taken in 1951 at Martins Beach, at his home in Burlingame, Calif., on Sunday, Aug. 10, 2014. They were married about a year after the picture was taken. Rosemary died in 2008 after they were married for 56 years. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
Bill Farac, 86, a retired San Francisco police department sergeant, in his home in Burlingame, Calif., on Sunday, Aug. 10, 2014. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
In 1951, Bill Farac, then a rookie San Francisco cop, was visiting Martins Beach in San Mateo County with family and friends when he saved a young woman from drowning.
“A wave pushed us up against the cliff. She started to slip into the water,” said Farac, now 86. “I picked her up in my arms and ran as hard as I could to safety.”
A year later, the two were married.
Two weeks after the California Coastal Commission asked the public to submit details about their visits to the beach as part of a legal strategy to increase pressure on Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla — who bought land nearby and put up “no trespassing” signs to the shoreline — dozens of people like Farac have submitted stories, photos, diary entries and other evidence dating back more than 100 years.
A photograph of Bill Farac, 86, a retired San Francisco police department sergeant, at Seal Rock. Photographed at his home in Burlingame, Calif., on
A photograph of Bill Farac, 86, a retired San Francisco police department sergeant, at Seal Rock. Photographed at his home in Burlingame, Calif., on Sunday, Aug. 10, 2014. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
The accounts are expected to be used by Coastal Commission lawyers to build a case that the beach south of Half Moon Bay was public for generations and that Khosla cannot legally block access now.
Yet as the accounts have come in — many handwritten by people in their 70s, 80s and 90s — the stories are turning out to be less a list of legal facts and more a deeply personal narrative of California’s long love affair with Martins Beach and the coastline.
“We couldn’t have anticipated this,” said Sarah Christie, a spokeswoman for the Coastal Commission. “We’re very touched by these heartwarming stories. They are going to help us build a great case.”
So far, more than 60 accounts have been submitted, she said. The commission is still collecting more via a survey on its website at www.coastal.ca.gov.
The co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Khosla had purchased the 56-acre coastal property along Highway 1 in 2008 for $32.5 million. His staff closed a gate and a private road that the previous owners had used to allow public access the beach for many years, sometimes for a fee.
Please upgrade your browser to view HTML 5 content
Khosla, 59, has said that he is entitled under his constitutional rights to close the gate, that he didn’t need a permit from the Coastal Commission to do it and that the public didn’t previously have free access to the remote beach, as it does other similar beaches.
But many of the people who have submitted survey information said they visited the beach for years with no fee and no problems.
“It’s been used for so many generations,” said Joan Meacham, who began going as a child in the 1940s. “Just because he has a billion dollars, he shouldn’t close it off. It hasn’t always been private. It’s not fair.”
Meacham, 72, is a retired pharmacy clerk who lives in Santa Clara. She said her family, including her parents and grandparents, used the beach as far back to the late 1800s.
“We were always going to that beach,” she said of her childhood in Half Moon Bay. “We used to get up early in the morning and catch crabs there. When my husband and I were dating in the 1960s, we went on dates to Martins Beach.”
Khosla is embroiled in two lawsuits over the property, the most recent from the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation.
In an interview with this newspaper last month, he accused his opponents of “blackmailing” him into giving up his property rights.
“If the story was right and people thought I was doing something wrong, I’d live with that — it wouldn’t bother me,” Khosla said. “But there are massive lies and misrepresentation on the issues here.”
The commission, which sent a “Notice of Violation” to Khosla in 2011, has been privately negotiating with him to reopen access.
Under a law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown this summer, the commission now has the power to fine property owners up to $11,500 a day for illegally blocking public beaches or violating coastal environmental laws. In theory, if the commission pressed its case and won, Khosla could face more than $20 million in fines.
“I don’t know the reasons he closed it,” said Bob Norona, 94, of San Jose. “If the public behaves, what is the advantage? If I owned it, it would make me feel good to see families enjoying it.”
Norona, a World War II Navy veteran, said he visited Martins Beach twice a month during the summer from 1928 to 1934 as a child with his parents, brother, three sisters and cousins. The family would pile into several cars, including a 1925 bright red Jordan touring car, he said, and drive to the beach from San Jose.
They were never charged an entry fee, he said. Families would picnic and men would catch smelt with nets in the surf.
“You could always find somebody on that beach who had a big bucket full of batter,” he said. “They would cut the heads off the fish and throw them in the batter, then put them into hot oil and cook them on the beach. We’d eat them like french fries. They tasted great. I only wish more people could enjoy the lifestyle we were so fortunate to enjoy. I’ve had a good life.”
Paul Rogers covers resources and environmental issues. Contact him at 408-920-5045. Follow him at Twitter.com/PaulRogersSJMN
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_26312044/martins-beach-battle-gets-personal-public-submits-moving