Bob Barnes told the dramatic story of the purchase of the Cobb Estate Monday night -- and has a surprise reunion with the student who made it possible.
by Laura Monteros
Maggie Stratton has impeccable timing and a flair for the dramatic.
She had it on Oct. 1, 1971, when she led a band of students in claiming the Cobb Estate for the people in an eleventh-hour nail biter of an auction. She had it on Monday night when she stood up at the end of Bob Barnes’ presentation and announced, “I am Maggie Stratton.”
Pictured: "I am Maggie Stratton."
Barnes, a social studies teacher at John Muir High School who was instrumental in organizing students and raising money to purchase the 107-acre estate to keep it out of the hands of developers, had lost track of the girl he had worked with so closely for eight days in 1971. He had no clue that she was sitting in the middle of the audience, listening to make sure the story was told correctly.
And what a story it is.
The call to action
Barnes was the speaker last night at the Altadena Historical Society's presentation on the acquisition of the Cobb Estate, the hiking area behind the gates at the top of Lake Avenue. As Barnes told it, it was a story full of suspense and game-changing events, and at the last minute good prevailed in a way as corny as the ending of a Frank Capra film. But it really happened.
Back in 1971, Barnes was only filling in for a colleague who was the faculty advisor of the Muir Conservation Club when he drove Maggie, the president of the club, to a conservation meeting on a September evening. The topic of the meeting was the impending sale of the Cobb Estate, a former grand estate that had sunk to dereliction and finally disappearance, as the land changed hands many times over the years. Formerly owned by the Marx Brothers, among others, a developer was now eyeing the estate for a housing development, which raised the alarms of the Audobon Club and other conservationists.
“We need help from the community and the young people here tonight,” Barnes remembers the leaders of the Audubon Society saying. He slunk lower in his seat as Maggie sat taller in hers.
“Barnes, we need to do this,” she told him.
“Folks,” Barnes told the audience, “those kids, all of them at each event, were magnificent.”
“Hikers and Bikers for NATURE!!”
The flier, neatly typed and illustrated with cartoons by student Danny Segura, was a clarion: “BE THERE OR BE SQUARE” The “there” was the Pasadena reflecting pools at 3 PM, the day before the auction, to gather as a group and truck up the hill to the estate in a display of unity. They showed up then, and a least a half a dozen showed up Monday night to relive the events.
Jim Stevens, a member of Maggie’s class who was also in the Conservation Club, hauled people who couldn’t make the hike in his pickup. “Bob [Barnes] rode his bike up,” Stevens said after the lecture. “He was the first one there!”
Tim Snider, who had graduated about four years earlier, met “two guys I never saw before and never saw again” and they decided to spend the night.
Local writer Christopher Nyerges, also in Maggie’s class, was there. But, he said, “She was the boss.”
As the evening wore on the night before the auction, Maggie herself was uneasy. She told Barnes that she needed to call home. Her parents were at a party at the Athenaeum, the private club at Caltech, a benefit to raise money for art for the school, and she was worried about her younger sisters.
She phoned home to check on them, and her sister excitedly told her to call their mother immediately. “They’re talking about you!”
It seems the the topic of conversation at the Athenaeum that night was Maggie and her campaign.
Mom comes through
It started because Maggie’s mother wasn’t sure what to talk about when she met socialite and philantropist Virginia Steele Scott at the party, so she fell back on that perennial favorite of moms, her children. That led to Maggie’s exploits, which piqued the interest of one of the richest women in Pasadena.
“I credit my mom,” Maggie said in an interview after the program. “She was the link.”
Mom told Maggie and Barnes to come to Caltech, but by the time they got there, Scott had left. Scott had invited some folks to her house to continue the conversation, and Maggie and Barnes were invited, too.
So they went. She recalled the automatic gates of Scott's estate opening for them, and her reaction. “There was money beyond which we would ever even know,” she said.
Scott spent hours talking about her interests, her home, art, animals, birds. She mentioned she didn’t want to see the beautiful San Gabriel Mountains covered in houses. She wasn’t so sure about giving money to long-haired kids, though, fearing they might convert the land to “one of these love-in places.”
Sometime during the evening, Maggie gave her spiel. After three hours at the estate, Scott got down to brass tacks. She called her attorney and real estate agent, Anne Davis, at midnight. Her conditions? She wanted the land never to be touched. Given that assurance, she asked Barnes how much he needed. It was 1:45 AM, and exhausted, he threw out the figure of $150,000. Scott agreed to provide it.
The auction
The pledge was kept under wraps, and given Scott’s eccentricities, Barnes and Maggie were not entirely sure she would come through. But they needn't have worried -- they drove to her house in the morning, and in the driveway was a black limousine with Scott’s attorney and real estate agent waiting.
Pictured: Maggie Stratton West, Bob Barnes, and Christopher Nyerges, together again.
At the property, the petitions with 4,500 signatures were handed to auctioneer Milton Wershaw. The petitioners had collected less than $10,000, but because the Audubon Society was handling the funds, they didn’t know that, “and it’s good we didn’t,” Barnes said.
When the bid of $150,000 came in, Wershaw stated, “This is the people’s bid.” At $170,000, Wershaw gave the people five minutes to collect another $5,000. He threw in $1,000 himself.
Elaine Simmons, who worked for realtor Dick Feenstra and whose daughter Tracy was in Barnes’ class, was at the auction and chipped in $1,000. She said everyone was giving what they could afford,
Feenstra, who represented the developer, found himself in an uncomfortable position. He was not a developer himself, he was just representing a client who was willing to go up to $300,000 for the land. When he found out he was going against “the little people,” Simmons related, he said, “I don’t want to bid against the people of Altadena.”
Barnes recalls that when the bid was in at $175,000, Feenstra said, “I will bid no more. I, too, am one of the people.”
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Did Bob Barnes get the story right?
Altadenablog asked Barnes afterwards if it was good to see his old students. “It’s wonderful. It’s terrific,” he said. “The students meant everything to me.”
And did his student Maggie think he got the story straight? Now Maggie West of Santa Barbara, she had no quarrel with his telling, but added, “There was a lot more that he doesn’t know about,” ties that he couldn’t have been aware of.
The daughter of Lucie Lowry, the Pasadena Star-News reporter who was covering the story, lived in the Stratton’s back house, for one thing. Maggie’s stepfather was Virginia Steele Scott’s physician. Scott’s ex-husband had painted Maggie’s younger sister in Mexico. And of course, her mother, who couldn’t think of anything to talk about with the grande dame except her children.
Coincidences. Drama. Timing. Passion for a cause. That’s the stuff of great stories, and that’s what happened during those eight days in the early fall of 1971 in Altadena.
Laura Monteros writes about Altadena.
