Curtis Anderson, 86, Landscape Architect

Former Pacific Palisades resident Curtis Dixon Anderson passed away from natural causes on February 17 at his home in Santa Rosa, California. He was 86. Born and raised in West Los Angeles, Anderson was employed at North American Aviation during World War II. He also had a strong creative spirit which drew him toward music, writing and composing. An accomplished pianist and author of a number of songs, he played with small dance bands in the early 1940s while a student at UCLA. Anderson and his wife, Mary Sue, moved to the Palisades in 1952. His community spirit reached out to the local Christian Science church, where he served as First Reader for three years, board chairman and Sunday School teacher (where he frequently played piano). With his three sons, Anderson was also active in Little League, Indian Guides and Boy Scouts. A letterman in cricket at UCLA, he later built on his love of athletics and the out of doors, and involved his family in sailing to Catalina Island, hiking in the Sierras, biking and photographing nature. This love actively enriched two of his sons–Craig, who is director of LandPaths, a conservation nonprofit in Sonoma County, and Brooks, a painter of land and seascapes. Son Scott, a freelance author and editor, inherited his father’s love of good writing. Anderson was an active landscape architect, whose design work still stands in homes, churches, commercial spaces and schools throughout Los Angeles County. He was equally at home with celebrities and plain folk as clients, and was a great aficionado of Los Angeles’ diverse cultural landscape. For a time, he was International President of the American Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) and was also a president of Palisades Beautiful. After moving to a home above Mandeville Canyon in 1964, he became the first chairman of Brentwood Hills Property Owners Association, where he was credited for initiating the movement for open-space preservation in that part of the Santa Monica Mountains. He moved to Santa Rosa in 2004. He is survived by his wife of 60 years, Mary Sue Anderson; his sons, Scott of Kingston, New York, and Brooks and Craig Anderson (wife Lee Hackeling), both of Santa Rosa; and grandchildren Emily Tokheim, Jenner and Barrett Anderson, and Kai and Iris Anderson, all of Santa Rosa.