Weaver, Harriett

Biography

Harriett Sherwood Weaver was born in Haigler, Nebraska, October 29, 1913; graduated Phi Beta Kappa, University of Kansas (1934); contributed book reviews and feature articles to the Kansas City star (1936); married John Downing Weaver (1937); moved to Los Angeles ca. 1940; the 1961 Bel-Air fire prompted her crusade for both effective management of native brush in the Santa Monica Mountains and brush clearance legislation; headed the fire committee of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Associations; served on Los Angeles Countywide Citizens' Planning Council (1972-79); died November 23, 1988.

Biographical Narrative

Harriett Sherwood Weaver was born in Haigler, Nebraska, October 29,1913 and reared by her widowed mother in Kansas City, Missouri, where her Central High School classmates included the screenwriter, John Paxton (Cf. Collection No. 2082). At the University of Kansas she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa in the class of 1934. Two years later, when she began contributing book reviews and feature articles to the Kansas City Star, she caught the eye of a young reporter, John D. Weaver (Cf. Collection No. 1206).

“Liberal Virginian, swell person - drinks & talk & books all evening, “she noted in her diary June 18, 1936, the night a K. U. classmate introduced her to John. They repaired to the roof of his Kansas City apartment building to enjoy the cool evening air and the lights of the Plaza. “Someday,” she said, “I want to live on a mountaintop and look out at the lights of a great city.”

They were married the following year and, as John pointed out in dedicating Los Angeles: The Enormous Village to Harriett, they “crossed the plains in a covered Chevrolet to homestead in the Hollywood Hills” (circa 1940). As the decade ended Harriett was refurbishing a mountaintop house above the Sunset Strip commanding a ISO-degree view of the city.

The devastating Bel-Air fire of 1961 triggered her 25-year crusade for more effective management of native brush in the Santa Monica Mountains. On March 16, 1989, four months after her death, Harriett's friends and fellow-workers in the Federation of Hillside & Cañon Associations joined Fire Department officials and members of the local firefighters' union for the unveiling of a memorial plaque at Station 99 on Mulholland Drive, overlooking the great city she had come to cherish and to serve so well.

“There is an old adage that goes: 'You can't beat City Hall,'” recalled Jerry Fields, a former president of the Board of Fire Commissioners. “That saying is very popular because very few of us can fight City Hall and win. But Harriett Weaver did fight City Hall, and did win, and in doing it she taught us a better and safer way to protect the hillsides of our city. She did it without rancor or bitterness, but with warmth and understanding, as she pleaded and argued with great persistence, until she won her victory on hillside safety and protection.

“As she relentlessly fought on one front, she battled a treacherous and fatal disease on another front. She never retreated. She never gave up. And she never complained. One major battle is usually more than enough for most of us, but this very special woman had an inordinate amount of courage, fortitude and just plain guts.”

“Her long ordeal ended gently,” John wrote friends back east when Harriett died November 23,1988. “She was asleep in a Burbank hospital room, where her heart was being monitored, and I was sitting beside her, reading a book. Suddenly a dozen nurses descended on us. She had finally been granted her wish to go to sleep and not wake up. I dismissed the nurses and kissed her good-bye. In her last conscious moment, when I bathed her forehead and held a glass of water to her lips, there was no indication of pain or fear in her eyes, only an unspeakable weariness. It was the eve of Thanksgiving.”

“She made a difference in this city,” John told Jack Jones when he was preparing Harriett's obituary for the Los Angeles Times . “In a huge megalopolis it's hard for one person to make an impact. She did.”

The text of the bronze plaque at Station 99 reads:

“EVERY ONE WHO EVER LIVES IN THE SANTA MONICA MOUNTAINS WILL BE SAFER IN THEIR HOMES BECAUSE OF HARRIETT'S SUPPORT AND COMMITMENT TO BRUSH CLEARANCE LEGISLATION.”

From the guide to the Harriett Weaver Collection about Residential Development and Fire, Flood, and Landslide Management in the Santa Monica Mountains, 1960-1986, (University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Dept. of Special Collections.)