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Though Bill and Jean Lane of Portola Valley sometimes try to remain anonymous in matters concerning philanthropy, it won’t work this time.
In recognition of the Lanes’ decades of giving in the areas of “community, conservation, American history, government and education,” the Silicon Valley chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals has awarded the couple the Glenn George “Heart of Philanthropy” Award.
A ceremony is scheduled for Nov. 16 at the Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara, said Bev Lenihan, a senior consultant at Essex and Drake, a San Jose-based fundraising consulting firm.
“We are extremely pleased that Bill and Jean have been awarded this prestigious honor,” said Essex and Drake president Sharon Svensson. “They certainly deserve it for their countless acts of philanthropy over the years. We are so fortunate to have them in our lives. They are a wonderful example for us all.”
The award recognizes the couple’s monetary gifts, but also their donations of time over the years. Mr. Lane has served on boards or advisory committees for Colonial Williamsburg, the National Park Foundation, the Yosemite Fund, the California State Park Foundation and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
His public service ranges from the local — as Portola Valley’s first mayor in 1964 — to the international, as ambassador-at-large and commissioner general of Japan in 1975, and ambassador to Australia and Nauru from 1985 to 1989.
Ms. Lane has served on boards for the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, the Filoli garden estate in Woodside and the National Tropical Botanical Garden. She has also volunteered at Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve and the Children’s Health Council.
Recent local gifts from the Lanes include $1 million to the Peninsula Open Space Trust and some $2.5 million for a new Town Center complex in Portola Valley.
Philanthropy with a focus
Recovery from earthquake and wildland fires has been high on the list of priorities in the Lanes’ local giving. Portola Valley straddles the San Andreas fault, and its grassy open spaces and many deciduous trees can become tinder-dry in the summer.
Their gifts to the Town Center project includes $200,000 for the town’s emergency response center — a seismically fortified element of the new Town Hall meant to survive a devastating quake — and two unrestricted $25,000 grants.
One grant is for the Woodside Fire Protection District and the other for the Citizens Emergency Response and Preparedness Program, a group of volunteers in and around Portola Valley and Woodside who organize themselves to deal with local disasters.
The grants might go toward the purchase of more firefighting devices, such as shovels, spades and equipment, Mr. Lane said in an interview.
The Lanes’ gift was rewarded, in a way, on Monday, July 9, when a fire came within shouting distance of the couple’s Westridge Drive home after workmen unwittingly ignited some dry grass with an acetylene torch they were using to cut bolts from an old fire hydrant.
Firefighters, alert to the potential for the fire to spread through the dry vegetation, brought in six engines, two aircraft and a bulldozer and quickly contained the blaze. It helped, Mr. Lane said, that both property owners had hired the crew he had also employed to trim the vegetation.
Mr. Lane said the disaster-oriented focus of their recent gifts to the Town Center left him feeling like a “canary in a coal mine.”
