Frances Beven Ryan, Chronicler of Escondido History, Dies at 88

Frances Beven Ryan, Escondido’s historian and a feisty fighter for preservation, died Monday on the land on which she was born. She was 88.

Ryan for 30 years taught home economics in Escondido schools, then turned to writing and traveling the world to quench her unbounded energy for life and people.

Her death came after a short illness, which she told friends on Friday was a touch of stomach flu. She was found dead at her cottage on the outskirts of the city that she has chronicled in several books and hundreds of newspaper articles. Most of the history she gained as a girl by listening to stories told to her by her relatives, who were among the founders of the town and the first settlers in the inland valley where Escondido is located.

Within recent weeks, Ryan had continued work on her most recent project, preservation of rare Engelmann oaks, with planting ceremonies at local grade schools during the “Year of the Oak.” She had also pursued fund-raising activities to pay for a videotape on local history, to go with a historical map on display at Escondido City Library.

Glenn Adams, a friend who had been helping her with the history project, said that he had videotaped several segments of a promotional film for the fund-raising drive with Ryan shortly before her death. He said she ultimately planned to raise funds to create a special room at the library to hold the many pieces of historical memorabilia she had collected from her family and other early Escondido families.

In 1975, Ryan and her late husband, Lewis, dedicated a 15-acre tract of virgin land on which her home was located to the University of California for inclusion in the university’s system of natural land and water reserves, with the proviso that the couple could live out their lives on the property. In 1988, the university sold the Ryan Oak Glen Reserve to Ryan’s niece and her husband, Bill and Ethel Norman, sending Ryan on a crusade to expose the institution’s perfidy.

Ryan claimed that the deed of trust she and her husband signed allowed the university to dispose of the donated property “only after termination of our life interests,” and, she said, “I’m still alive.”

She painted out the “Ryan” on the entry sign to the reserve and called her gift to the UC system, “the most colossal mistake of my life.” Ryan, a graduate of UCLA, with a master’s degree from USC, said she thought that, “if you can’t trust your own alma mater, then whom can you trust?” A blow to her crusade to save the remaining Engelmann oaks on the property came last November when a fast-moving brush fire swept over Bottle Peak and on to the land she had deeded to the University of California as a nature preserve. Her cottage and a giant Engelmann oak that shaded it were saved, partly because of clearing done by the Normans to remove weeds and brush from the land.

Ryan conceded that the Normans had done the right thing in clearing the underbrush from the property.

“I probably would have been killed,” she said after the fire, “except for the grading they did.”

Ryan was ill and asleep in her cottage when the fire swept down the hillside and nearly consumed her home.

She has received many honors for her historical work and for her part in creating the natural reserve. She also was named a Headliner of the Year by the San Diego Press Club for her part in Escondido’s 1988 Centennial celebration.

Ryan is survived by a brother, Benjamin Beven; a nephew, John Wilson, and her niece, Ethel Norman, all of Escondido.

Roberta Adams, a close friend of Ryan, said that she had asked that there be no funeral services. Cremation is planned.