Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : City Will Honor ‘Mr. Palmdale’, 99 : History: The 40-acre Palms Park will be renamed after Domenic Massari. He arrived in 1929 and has served the community since.

Since coming to this high desert town in 1929 as an Italian immigrant with a third-grade education, Domenic Massari has done a little bit of everything for his community.

He cut and sold firewood during the Depression, helped form the town’s Chamber of Commerce in the early 1930s, pushed the development of Palmdale’s downtown, led an eight-year campaign to win the city’s 1962 incorporation, and then served on the City Council for the following 10 years.

Now, with Massari approaching his 100th birthday in November, Palmdale officials figured that it was about time that the city did something for its founding father who still is affectionately known as “Mr. Palmdale.” So the city has decided to name a park in his honor.

In a unanimous vote last Thursday, the City Council agreed to rename the 40-acre Palms Park at Avenue R and 55th Street East to Domenic Massari Park, and to include a historical account there of Massari’s 64 years of contributions to the city.

“I cannot think of a more deserving gentleman after whom to name a park,” said Councilman Joe Davies, who proposed the honor for Massari. “He always worked hard at what he did. It wasn’t fluff and nonsense,” said Davies, the longest serving current council member.

Davies had wanted the city to name the park now under construction at Avenue P and 30th Street West after Massari. But a city-appointed youth group recommended naming that facility after Marie Kerr, a longtime resident and foster parent to dozens of children, and the council had agreed.

The Palms Park name change comes in a year when the city is planning to complete the facility, adding 25 acres of fields and facilities to the 15-acre area already developed. The city has budgeted $1.9 million for the coming year to add four soccer fields, two basketball courts and two tennis courts.

Massari and Teresa, his wife of 53 years, live in a mobile home park that Massari developed in 1969. It is located 2 1/2 miles west of the park that will bear his name. Although Massari was hospitalized recently, his wife said Monday that her husband is now back home and feeling better.

“The three rules I have followed in my life are: Love God, love your family and love your neighbors,” Massari wrote in his self-published autobiography. “I have lived by the principle, ‘Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.’ ” Massari is a longtime supporter of Palmdale’s Catholic parish.

Massari was born Nov. 14, 1893, in the Italian town of Pietragalla and followed his father to Canada looking for work in 1910. He later moved to San Francisco in 1920 and then to Los Angeles in 1922, running a market, restaurant and gas station in the ensuing years.

Massari came to Palmdale in April, 1929, for a supposed two-week visit, but ended up staying. He recalled recently how he started out digging ditches at a fig plantation in Littlerock. He later built a house in Palmdale, began cooking Italian food at the local inn and opened the first of several gas stations.

By the early 1930s, he had gained the Wilshire Oil Co. distributorship for the north county and began building motel cabins along Sierra Highway, leading to other business ventures in the following years. Massari already has an area of lilac bushes at the city’s McAdam Park named in his honor.