Obituaries Obituaries (September 01, 2004)

Eleanore Elizabeth Wilkins
Librarian at USGS; conservation stalwart

Eleanore E. Wilkins of Menlo Park, librarian at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park for more than 30 years, and a pillar of the Peninsula conservation movement, died August 24, the day after her 86th birthday, after a long illness.

From 1954 until she retired in 1987, Ms. Wilkins built the library at USGS from a small collection to more than 100,000 volumes. In 1984, she received a Meritorious Service Award from the Department of the Interior stating that the USGS library in Menlo Park was "nationally recognized as a significant repository of geoscience literature."

"She was so clever and so smart; she was top-notch," said Bill Sanders of San Mateo, who worked for her as a reference librarian for 22 years. "She really should have been head of all the USGS libraries."

Meanwhile, Ms. Wilkins became involved in conservation when a grove of eucalyptus trees in San Mateo was sacrificed to the El Camino underpass at the Hillsdale Shopping Center. "I was so incensed I became involved with ecology," she told the Almanac in a 1991 interview.

Soon Ms. Wilkins was involved in the Sierra Club. With Claire and Kent Dedrick, also of Menlo Park, she helped found the club's Peninsula Regional Group for San Mateo County, and soon found herself publishing its monthly newspaper, the "Black Mountain Gazette."

For almost 10 years starting in 1967, Ms. Wilkins planned the paper, recruited writers, wrote and edited articles, and laid out the lively and irreverent voice of conservation in San Mateo County. "Eleanore did everything," said Ms. Dedrick, a conservation leader now living in Sacramento. "For conservation to be fun, interesting and gossipy was unheard of in the movement."

Ms. Wilkins also set up the library at the new Peninsula Conservation Center -- now Acterra -- founded in Menlo Park around 1970, and built it over several moves. "You could count on Eleanore to do what needed to be done," said Ms. Dedrick.

After retiring, Ms. Wilkins became active in the League of Women Voters of South San Mateo County. She managed the office and served as president from 1991 to 1993. "She was very efficient and very well-organized," said Mary Kneip, who was league president after Ms. Wilkins. "She put in long hours."

Ms. Wilkins was born in Kansas City, Missouri. She received a degree in education from Washington University in St. Louis, and a degree in library science from Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie-Mellon University, in 1942.

During World War II, Ms. Wilkins worked for the Air Force as a technical librarian at Eglin Field in Florida. After a stint as assistant librarian at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in Cleveland, she joined USGS, which had just opened its Western Regional Headquarters in Menlo Park, in November 1954. "It was a great place to work. They were fun people -- most of them," she said later.

Ms. Wilkins also served as president of the International Geoscience Information Society, and as a member of its nominating committee.

Outside of work and causes, Ms. Wilkins passions were her house in West Menlo Park, her garden, and her cats.

Ms. Wilkins is survived by her sister, Bobette Herbert, and her nephew, Dr. Bruce Herbert, of Florence, Oregon.

The family suggests donations to the Peninsula Humane Society or the Peninsula Open Space Trust.

Mary Martinez
Former Menlo Park resident

Mary Ann Morey Martinez, who grew up in Menlo Park, died at her home in Sunnyvale on August 22. She was 56.

Ms. Martinez, a member of the well-known Morey family, graduated from the Convent of the Sacred Heart (Sacred Heart Preparatory) and attended Foothill College, where she met her husband, Tony. They were married in 1971.

Ms. Martinez worked for 30 years as a medical assistant, and was formerly employed at Stanford Medical Center and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. She enjoyed spending time with her family, gardening, caring for the turtles in her garden pond, and attending San Francisco Giants baseball games, say family members.

In addition to her husband, Tony, she is survived by a son, Jason, of Sunnyvale; her mother, Edna Morey, of Sunnyvale; and a sister, Susan Morey Mein, of Menlo Park.

Services were held August 27 at the Church of the Nativity in Menlo Park, with interment in Holy Cross Cemetery.

The family prefers memorials be made in Ms. Martinez's name to the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford or Ronald McDonald House at Stanford.

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