(Editor’s note: The following remarks were delivered by Ann Braude, daughter of the late City Councilman Marvin Braude, at Monday’s dedication of the Marvin Braude Bicycle Trail at Will Rogers State Beach, a path that travels 22 miles south to Redondo Beach. Her talk has been edited for space considerations.) By ANN BRAUDE Few of us are fortunate enough to see our dreams come true in our own lifetime. This bicycle path was my father’s dream. He lived not only to see it, but to ride on it thousands of times, virtually every Sunday morning over more than three decades between the construction of the first segment and his death two years ago. The first inklings of the dream began in the late 1950s, in those innocent and awful days before seatbelts, bicycle helmets or handicap-access curb-cuts when I balanced on the cross-bar of my dad’s bike on the Santa Monica boardwalk. I suspect the dream took shape when he taught my sister and me how to ride bicycles in the deserted beach parking lots of January in Ocean Park. Marvin must not have been the first to get the bug, because both L.A. and Santa Monica had ordinances prohibiting riding bicycles on the board walk after 9 a.m. except in the winter months. This time restriction shaped our family life–Sunday morning breakfasts at the beach became a routine so we could reach our destination by 9, and then ride home on the street. Any of you who remember my dad know that his special genius lay in his combination of commitment to public service, a trust in the voice of the people and a firm conviction that if he really enjoyed something, everybody in Los Angeles should be able to enjoy it too. He combined all these impulses in 1968, when he issued an open invitation to cyclists to join our usual Sunday morning ride to help demonstrate the need for a beach bicycle path. Nearly 400 people turned out for the 21-mile round-trip from Venice to Playa Del Rey. At one point Daddy grabbed a bullhorn. ‘You look beautiful–just beautiful!’ he told the riders. Later he explained to the crowd what was needed to create a beach bicycle path. ‘Are you with me?’ he asked. The crowd roared in response. Bicycling embodied everything my father believed in. More bicycles meant less smog, less asphalt for roads, fewer parking structures, better land use, conservation of nature, personal health for those who got out of their cars and onto their bicycles, and a more beautiful and healthful city. But perhaps more importantly, it meant an active and engaged citizenry who would see from their bicycle seats what kind of city Los Angeles could be, who would join him in working toward a different kind of city from those who wanted the beach to be lined with high-rise apartment buildings and oil derricks. Remarkably, Marvin had to wait only four years between that first ride and cutting the ribbon on the Venice Beach Bike Path in 1972. Once that first leg of the path was open, things really began to change on the beach. In 1976, a local resident riding down the bike path looked at one of the historic Venice buildings that had been shuttered for 20 years and decided to buy it. He helped open the Sidewalk Caf’, which contributed to the transformation of the Venice Beach in ways that would ultimately make it a symbol to the world of the California dream. I now live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Nobody in Cambridge has ever heard of Marvin Braude. But when I told friends last week that I was coming to L.A. for the dedication of the Marvin Braude Bicycle Trail, everyone I spoke to knew about the bike path. They’ve seen it on television, they’ve ridden on it on vacation and it has become part of their dreams. Since his retirement in 1997 after 32 years on the City Council, my father has been graciously honored by having his name bestowed on permanent features of the city and county he loved. The Marvin Braude Mulholland Gateway Park commemorates his lifelong effort to preserve the Santa Monica Mountains and to make wilderness accessible in the midst of a great urban area. The Marvin Braude San Fernando Valley Constituent Services Center commemorates a commitment that may seem less glamorous but about which he was also extremely passionate–his belief that government agencies should be user-friendly and accessible to the people they serve. But this bicycle path will always be the most fitting tribute to my father’s life of public service. He loved this bicycle path. I’d like to personally thank Senator Sheila Kuehl for sponsoring the legislation naming the path, and to all the other legislators, especially Supervisor Yaroslavsky but also Councilmembers Wendy Gruehl and Bill Rosendahl for permanently fixing my father’s name to something that was so precious to him. Some of you may remember when he had the rear seat of his city car removed to make it easier for him to get his bicycle in and out of the car. When he left City Hall in the afternoon, he would drive down the Santa Monica Freeway past the exit for our home in Brentwood and head straight for the beach. He often told me that no day was ever wasted if you saw the sun set over the ocean. Of course, what he really meant is that no day was ever wasted if you saw the sun set over the ocean from the bicycle path. Although we unveiled headstones for both my parents yesterday at Forest Lawn, I feel as if my dad could ride down the bike path at any moment, free as the wind, free as you can only be on a bicycle on the beach. (The author is director of the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. Her sister, Liza, is an artist.)
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