Portola Valley artist and naturalist Herb Dengler dies Portola Valley artist and naturalist Herb Dengler dies (September 25, 2002)

By Marion Softky

Almanac Staff Writer

With the death of Herbert J. Dengler, Portola Valley and the Midpeninsula have lost a great and gentle spirit.

Mr. Dengler -- artist, naturalist, and environmental conscience of the community -- died September 15 in his sleep at his Portola Valley home after a recent stroke. He was 90.

"Herb was the patron saint of kindness," says Philippe Cohen, director of Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, where Mr. Dengler has inspired generations of researchers and docents for 40 years. "He knew it more intimately than anyone. Every tree had a story."

Mr. Dengler also helped shape Portola Valley to preserve open space for native plants and animals, and provide trails that were not too steep, but easy and pleasant to walk on. Long-time Town Planner George Mader remembers "Herb laying out trails in his moccasins, crawling though brush and trees, to get the proper route and slope."

"He worked so hard," says former mayor and present councilman Richard Merk of Portola Valley. "He was our trail system, our conservation committee, and the whole concept of clustering development to protect as much open space as possible for other living things.

"He used to say he was the voice of inarticulate invertebrates."

Herb Dengler was born and raised in Palo Alto, where he attended Palo Alto schools, and graduated from Stanford with a degree in zoology.

Nature, art, and teaching overlapped creatively in Mr. Dengler's life. For many years, he was a dealer and restorer of old prints, specializing in 19th century Western and California paintings and prints. He closed his shop in Palo Alto's Town and Country Village in 1982, and continued doing the restoring and painting he loved in a workshop behind his Portola Valley home. His historical vignettes and his elegant drawings of local plants and animals have graced many local publications. Some can be seen on the Jasper Ridge Web site, www.jasper1.stanford.edu.

Mr. Dengler bonded with nature starting at age 5, as he roamed Jasper Ridge and the Peninsula hills with his father and brothers. He loved to describe building a cabin -- with Stanford's permission -- when he was 13, and roasting cattails by San Francisquito Creek.

Over the next 80 years, Mr. Dengler became the spirit of Jasper Ridge. With his encyclopedic knowledge of every rock and tree and insect, and his unfailing enthusiasm, he was a key player in establishing the 1,200-acre Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, which he continued visiting almost until his death last week.

Unfailingly warm and utterly unpretentious, Mr. Dengler loved to share his love and knowledge of Peninsula nature. From 1976 to 1985, he taught a course at Stanford on the natural history of San Francisco Bay, and taught the first docent class at Jasper Ridge. "He was my mentor all those years; he inspired me," says senior docent Jean Lane of Portola Valley. "He had such a sense of place."

Mr. Dengler has been widely appreciated and honored. He was honored as a "gentle advocate for nature" by the Palo Alto Senior Coordinating Council (now Avenidas) in 1992, and by Portola Valley at its Blues and Barbecue community party in 1998.

Mr. Dengler is survived by Jane Dengler, his wife of 52 years; sister Char Hull of Coupeville, Washington; son Ronald Dengler of Toronto, Canada; daughters Sally Murphy of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Joanne Tonessen of Mokelumne Hill, California; five grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

A private gathering has been held.

Memorial donations may be made to the Sempervirens Fund, 2483 Old Middlefield Way, Suite 10, Mt. View, CA 94043.