W.E. Foster, Ex-Chief of Huntington Beach Co., Dies

William E. Foster, who oversaw land development by the Huntington Beach Co., died of a heart attack Sunday at his home in San Francisco. He was 61.

Foster was president of Chevron Land and Development Co., the unit of the Chevron Corp. that controls the Huntington Beach Co., a major player in Huntington Beach business and politics since the city’s founding.

A former president and general manager of the Huntington Beach Co., Foster described in a 1990 interview how the city of Huntington Beach got its name.

In 1903, Foster said, a land company formed and tried to persuade electric-railroad czar Henry E. Huntington to extend his red car line into the tiny community then known as “Pacific City.”

“The company offered Huntington a lot of stock and promised to change the name of the city to Huntington Beach,” Foster said. “We don’t know which impressed him most. . . . We jokingly like to remind the city that it was named for the Huntington Beach Co.--not the other way around.”

Foster was born Oct. 31, 1930, in St. Louis. He earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Washington University, St. Louis, in 1952.

He joined Chevron in 1955 after a stint with the Army Corps of Engineers.

In 1962, Foster became an engineering supervisor at the Huntington Beach Co. and rose to the presidency in 1979. He was named president of Chevron Land and Development in 1985.

Foster was a member of the National Assn. of Corporate Real Estate Executives and the Urban Land Institute.

Private services will be held Wednesday.

He is survived by his son, Mathieu, of Santa Rosa and a sister, Patricia Heinecke of St. Louis.

The family has requested donations to the United Way in lieu of flowers.