An Environmentalist’s Disarming Grace

By all rights, Carla Bard should have lived to be 100.

Instead, admirers from around the state will memorialize her today as one of a kind--a citizen-warrior who for 50 years was a powerful champion for good.

Reflecting Carla herself, the service at an Ojai church will be one of real emotion as friends describe a pioneer of the local environmental movement and a community volunteer with few peers.

In a world of pontificating puffer fish, Carla Bard was the real thing: full of life, smart as heck and fearless.

And did she have style.

At 69, Carla would sweep into a room and take it over. Elegant in silk scarves or woven wraps or black capes, the London- born woman charmed all she met. But she was not a gadfly. In a single sentence she could sparklingly summarize the most complex issue. And her mind seemed sharper every day.

“I don’t know how old she was, but she was young,” recalled Ventura farmer and friend Paul Leavens on Sunday, the day after Carla died in a car crash.

“You couldn’t help but fall in love with her,” said Alisse Weston, who worked with Carla at the Environmental Defense Center in Ventura for only 10 months, but was taken with her from the start. “She would lay her hand on your arm, bantering in that kind of physical way, making that connection.”

“So you’ve discovered the princess?” chuckled Bay Institute of San Francisco founder William Daveron in an interview early this year. “She’s all grit and glamour. She’s very bright and aggressive in a nice way.”

Daveron was speaking from a statewide perspective. Carla, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board under Gov. Jerry Brown, lectured widely as an expert on water issues.

But it was here, in Ventura County, that she made her most lasting mark. And not only because of her long list of involvements--defending orphans and the poor, water quality and farmland, endangered species and the coastline.

Carla was a lesson in how to live a life. Hers was an unbridled vitality and a righteous anger--the kind that comes when God is on your side.

But, speaking with a hint of her native England, she was a genius for delivering tough, clearly reasoned arguments in such a low key that she got into opponents’ heads, not their faces.

“No one ever got mad at Carla, because you just couldn’t,” said Russ Baggerly, president of Citizens to Preserve the Ojai. “She embodied a caring spirit. And she would just envelop you in that wonderful smile and those sparkling eyes. She was never a grumpy person. Always positive.”

Not long before her death, Carla said she looked forward to every day.

“I’ve been blessed all of my adult life,” she said. Her principal blessings, she said, were her four children and her husband, Archie Bard, whom she met on a blind date when both were students at UC Berkeley.

“His best friend and my best friend thought we’d do nicely together,” Carla said, “and we did.”

Yet, Archie laughed loudly last weekend when told of the comment of a state official who in recent years watched as Carla swept through meetings.

“I would have hated to see her at age 40,” the official said. “I bet she was dangerous.”

“That’s true,” Archie said. “We were both what you might call strong personalities.”

Journalists who worked with Carla were not immune. She lured them with knowledge and charm. And even when she disagreed with their perspectives, she would correct them with a gentle, “Well, my dear.” And unfailingly, she would ask one reporter to pass along her greetings to another: “Tell that darling hello, will you?”

A week ago, in what turned out to be a final act on behalf of the environment, Carla dropped an analysis of ground water contamination into a reporter’s lap.

“This is my magnum opus,” she declared grandly, dressed in what for her was casual garb--a lavender scarf, a flowing black skirt and white, pink-trimmed tennis shoes.

“They want to open up a vein of the Earth and pour poison into it” is how she described a proposal to deepen a gravel pit along the Santa Clara River.

Now, that unwavering voice is gone.

“God, we’ll miss her,” Baggerly said.