Saving the Marsh

More recently, developers have unfurled blueprints for several housing and light-industrial tracts in the marsh. The Parchester Village Neighborhood Council--where Whitney serves as president, just like his dad did--urged the East Bay Regional Park District to buy the land and add it to the Point Pinole Regional Shoreline. The developers declined the offer.

But in March, the neighborhood council got the word that it has been seeking for half a century: The park district board voted to acquire by eminent domain 218 of the 238 acres of the marsh.

Whitney is especially proud--and relieved. After living in Louisiana for 13 years, he had moved back to Parchester in 1996 to take care of his father, who died two years ago. A public health consultant with a master's degree from UC Berkeley, he's now helping to care for Mary Lee.

"My whole early life experience has been on the shoreline," he says, his gaze turned toward a great blue heron's stillness. "Everyone should have a place like this to go."

Now it looks as if they'll have the chance to.