Park Renamed for Man Dedicated to It

Los Angeles recreation commissioners have agreed to rename Harbor Regional Park after the late Ken Malloy, a longtime San Pedro environmentalist credited with transforming the one-time pasture into the city’s third-largest park.

While the official rededication of the 231-acre park is weeks away, commissioners agreed with Harbor-area Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores and various community groups that the park straddling the Harbor City/Wilmington border should be renamed Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park in honor of Malloy, who died last January at the age of 79.

A retired longshoreman and early member of the California Conservation Corps, Malloy was instrumental in pushing the city of Los Angeles 20 years ago to buy and dedicate the park. Today, with its 45-acre lake, the park is the city’s third-largest after Griffith and Elysian parks.

Malloy often described how he first saw the property while he was driving on a foggy night in 1937 and his car bumped into some cows grazing in a pasture.

Malloy continued his commitment to the park after it was dedicated in 1971. He led efforts to provide bird and wildlife sanctuaries, spearheaded development of a 62-acre youth campground and spent hours every day for two decades tending the park’s trees, shrubs and flowers.

“That was his baby,” his widow, Mary, said this week.

“We couldn’t go anywhere for more than three days without him wanting to get back” to the park, she said. “He’d say, ‘How’s my park? We better get home. The trees may need watering.’ ”

Councilwoman Flores said the renaming of the park was an apt, and long overdue, acknowledgment of Malloy’s contribution to its purchase and improvement. The delay in renaming the park, she said, arose from debate over whether its new name should include a reference to its old name.

Ultimately, however, commissioners agreed that the park’s new name would reflect not only their thanks to Malloy but also his interest in preserving the park’s heritage as a facility for the harbor area.

“The name is something that not only Ken would be enthusiastic over, but his family is as well,” Flores said.

Malloy’s widow agreed. “I’m thrilled. In fact, the whole family is pleased,” she said. “It is an honor.”