“I love the physical exertion,” says Resek, 81, a retired SF State math instructor. “For me it was really exciting to do something with my body that made a difference, and helped people.”
If you’ve walked anywhere in the Berkeley hills, chances are you’ve walked up and down the many foot paths and stairs that criss-cross our winding streets. There are about 140 of these paths in Berkeley, mostly in the hills, a legacy of the city’s early development.
More than three dozen of them were built or improved by the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association, an all-volunteer neighborhood group that has worked with the city since 1998 to build, improve, and maintain the entire network of paths.
When, in 2008, Betty Olds retired from serving District 6 on the Berkeley City Council after 16 years, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the council “will lose its crankiest, wittiest, and often most rational member.” Six years later, the path that connects Sterling and Whitaker avenues in North Berkeley (previously known as Twain Path, #68 on the BPWA map) was renamed the Betty Olds Path in her honor. The children’s room at the North Branch of the Berkeley Public Library also bears her name.
On the easternmost edge of Berkeley, close to the border with Tilden Park, wanderers will find Scott Newhall Path following the contour of Hill Road. To younger walkers, this name will probably mean nothing. But to anyone who was living in the Bay Area in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it will ring a deeply familiar bell.
