Rockridge's Annalee Allen Named Oakland Mother of the Year

Annalee Allen, a long-time Rockridge resident whose children attended Chabot Elementary and Claremont Middle Schools, has been named Oakland's 2013 Mother of the Year, the city Parks and Recreation Department announced Monday.

Allen has volunteered for decades with the Oakland Heritage Alliance, serving on its board of directors and as the group's president. (The OHA nominated Allen for Mother of the Year.) She is currently the coordinator of the city's Oakland Tours Program.

A dedicated local history buff, Allen views Rockridge through the twin lenses of past and present. And she knows her neighborhood.

Mention a Victorian-era farmhouse a block or two from her Lawton Avenue home and she responds, "Oh, yes, it's painted light blue, isn't it?" Then she tosses in tidbits of information about other houses nearby, such as one once owned by a family that also owned the Royal Hawaiian Hotel at Waikiki. Oakland and Piedmont were popular part-time residences for many families who spent part of the year here, the rest on sugar plantations in Hawaii, she explains.

She's equally delighted by newer additions to Rockridge.

"I can't get over all the young families at the DMV Farmers Market and Frog Park," she says. "When my children were young, there was nothing like Frog Park is today." 

Allen grew up in Berkeley, in the Uplands area, and recalls speeding down Roanoke Road to Chabot Road on her bike.

After graduating from Berkeley High School and UCLA, she married her long-time sweetheart — attorney Jim Allen, who practices law in Walnut Creek — and they moved to rented quarters on Oak Grove Avenue in the summer of 1978. Three years later they bought the home on Lawton, where they raised three sons.

The next decades saw Allen immersed in volunteer work, both at her children's schools and in historic preservation groups, occasionally toting an infant to a board meeting.

She cites Anne Woodell, an Oakland hills resident who has been active with the Alameda County Historical Society, the Oakland Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission, Children's Fairyland and Dunsmuir House, as a mentor.

"She is someone who made volunteering a career," says Allen. "Although now I get paid — a little — for some of the things I do."

In Allen's current paid position with the city, she coordinates the volunteers who lead walking tours of downtown Oakland from spring into autumn. (Find the current Oakland Tours Program schedule here.)

She also writes a weekly column on local history and preservation for the Oakland Tribune (see her most recent article here). She wrote two of Arcadia Publishing's books on Oakland history, Oakland Postcards and Selections from the Oakland Tribune Archives, and co-authored another book, Oakland Landmarks: An Artistic Portrayal of History, with artist Heidi Wyckoff.

Allen will be honored this Saturday, May 11, at a Mother of the Year ceremony at the Morcom Rose Garden, 700 Jean St., Oakland. Attending will be one of her sons, who still lves in Oakland —"not in Rockridge, my sons can't afford to live here!" — and her own mother, Joan McDonough. The public is invited to the ceremony.

Oakland’s Mother of the Year Award is a project of Oakland Parks and Recreation and was initiated in 1954 to publicly honor an Oakland citizen whose contributions to the community symbolize the finest traditions of motherhood, although being a parent is not a requirement. 

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