You might know Ray Gamma’s name from Santa Clara’s Ray Gamma dog park. In the course of his 92 years, the lifelong Santa Clara resident put his mark, if not his name, on much of Santa Clara. Although he’s been professionally retired since 2011, he’s been anything but “retired.”
He served on the Santa Clara Parks and Recreation Commission and the Santa Clara PAL board, and he was a founder of the Santa Clara Veterans Memorial Committee. The monument, with its unique memorial bricks, draws visitors and veterans groups from all over.
Gamma was an early member of the Wutzit Club, forerunner of the Walter E. Schmidt Youth Activity Center, and continues to lead the Wutzit Club Alumni and raise money to support the youth center.
For almost 20 years, he was an active member of American Legion Post 419 and worked the bi-weekly bingo games. He’s active in the Reclaiming Our Downtown committee and continues to maintain an active interest in the city.
Gamma grew up on Monroe Street in the Old Quad, and his memories recall a very different Santa Clara — an agricultural small town where everyone knew everyone else.
“I’ll never forget that neighborhood,” he said. “We were all kind of tied together; it was always just awesome. I had so many friends going to grammar school at Fremont Elementary School from kindergarten. That was the best school, and one of the best teachers was Mrs. Rogers, the dentist’s wife.”
After serving in the military in the Korean War, Gamma returned to Santa Clara, where he got his first job as a firefighter in the Santa Clara Fire Department in 1953 and remembers his first day on the job.
“I drove a 1952 GMC truck the first day I came to work,” said Gamma. “They got me my helmet, and the captain said, ‘You’re driving that truck.’ We had three calls that day.”
He was soon hired away by the San Francisco Fire Department.
“They hired me right on the spot, and I started working as an air pollution inspector,” said Gamma.
His first assignment was banning open fire pits, something that’s hard to imagine in cities today.
“Air pollution was terrible,” he recalled. “We had to go down and stop all the open barrels and backyard fire pits. We stopped all the open burning.”
Gamma worked in several Bay Area fire departments — Santa Clara County, Fremont, City of Santa Clara — but served for many years in Daly City. Then, in 1985, three days after bypass surgery, Gamma had a massive heart attack.
“[I was told] I was gonna die in two years,” he said. “So I bought a treadmill. I was on that treadmill every morning. Then I’d go walk with my dog and my wife. And I kept doing that every day.”
Gamma found himself back at work when Stanford University offered him a part-time job in its fire department. Two years later, when the university’s fire marshal died suddenly, Gamma was offered that job.
“Stanford was awesome, just awesome people,” he said. “You couldn’t believe the support I got there. But in 1980, when I was 65, I decided I better quit. That’s when I got involved with the city.”
Gamma became friends with former mayor Patricia Mahan and her husband John Boyles.
“John was a retired police officer in San Jose, and he had military experience,” said Gamma. “So, I got him to join American Legion Post 419. Him and Patty, the three of us, cooked in the kitchen on Friday nights. I had so much fun with those two. Patty was a jewel.”
In 2006, he applied to join the Parks & Recreation Commission, at Mahan’s suggestion, and was appointed — beginning the journey to Santa Clara’s Central Park Veterans Memorial and the city’s first dog park.
Once on the commission, Gamma — himself a dog lover — shepherded the dog park project through its many fits and starts. The first challenge was finding an unobjectionable place for it, as some people didn’t regard a dog park as a neighborhood amenity. The project covered Gamma’s entire tenure on the commission.
To resolve a final conflict about turf, Gamma donated the money for synthetic turf.
“I knew right off the bat the grass would wear out in three months,” said Gamma. “The space was too small. And I kept [telling] them, ‘We got to go to Canine turbo.’ I kept needling them. Finally, when my time ran out on the Parks Commission, I gave them $1,000 for turf.”
Having the park named for him came as a surprise to Gamma. He was at a barbeque when then-parks director Larry Wolfe told him that the Parks and Recreation Commission wanted to name the new dog park after Gamma.
“I said, ‘[are] you kidding me?’” Gamma recalled. “‘No, no,’ they told me. ‘You have to be at the council meeting.’ So I went to the council meeting and made a presentation about the park. I was just completely blown away.”
These days, Gamma is an active member of the Reclaiming Downtown committee, meeting weekly with the downtown boosters to review city plans and urge the project forward.
“They’ve created the specific plan,” he said. “It’s all ready to go, and all they need is somebody to step in and do it. And nobody steps forward. I don’t know why.”
In a final note, Gamma wants to set one thing straight for the record about the 1960 demolition of Santa Clara’s downtown.
“They [people] say Jimmy [Viso] did it. Jimmy did not destroy the downtown. There were five other votes,” he said.
Gamma is confident that Santa Clara is in good hands with the current council.
“Now we really have good people,” he said. “The ‘five,’ they stand out. I see that they have Santa Clara in their heart.”
