Date: 06/29/2010

The Santa Clara County Open Space Authority has agreed to acquire 229 acres in the Los Gatos Hills donated by an alumnus to San Jose State University. After considering several possible uses for the property, San Jose State decided to offer the site to the open space authority. The purchase price is $572,450.

"We would like to posthumously thank the donor, Richard Olin Pea, and his family," SJSU President Jon Whitmore said. "This transaction will not only support students aspiring to follow in Mr. Pea's footsteps, but it also gives San Jose State the means to collaborate with the Santa Clara Open Space Authority to open the property for all to enjoy."

Born in 1925 in Oklahoma, Pea migrated with his family to the Bay Area to escape the Dust Bowl. He served in the U.S. Coast Guard in World War II and the Naval Reserves in Korea. In 1954, he graduated from San Jose State College (now SJSU) with a bachelor's in electrical engineering. Pea went on to work for NASA for over three decades, retiring in 1989. He died in May 2009 at age 84.

Pea valued education and the outdoors, priorities reflected in the way he lived and the way he died. He owned two pieces of real estate - a home in San Jose, and the acreage in the Los Gatos Hills, where he had a small cabin with a wood stove and bee hives. In his will, Olin donated both properties to his alma maters. The home went to the Chowchilla High School District, and the Los Gatos property to SJSU.

For more information, please call Director of Planned Giving Tina Daniels at 408-924-1123 or tina.daniels@sjsu.edu.

Also read the Open Space Authority press release.