Local Art Historian Brings Far Eastern Treasures West

Marion Card has helped shape the city for 50 years

An art historian, a person fascinated with Japanese culture, a lifelong community leader--sounds like someone who would be responsible for founding a city treasure like Hakone Gardens. Sounds like and is. She's Marion Card, and "if it's good for Saratoga," she says, "I want it."

Fortunately for Saratoga, she has found plenty of things to be good for Saratoga in her 50-plus years here, and she's worked untiringly to get them established. "I guess I'm proudest of things [that she was part of in the beginning] continuing and flourishing in such capable hands."

Hakone is the only program in which she is still quite active. She is the founder of Saratoga's Sister City, program which grew out of the presence of Hakone Gardens here. She started the docent program for the gardens and will teach a one-day class there on Oct. 11, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., called "History and Philosophy of the Japanese Garden." It may be the last one she gives. The Cards are considering leaving Saratoga in early 1998.

If anyone knows Hakone it's Marion Card. She and her husband, Bud, were named "ambassadors" to Muko-Shi when Saratoga first began to investigate the idea of a sister city. When a meeting of interested parties was held and the talk turned to someone going to Muko-Shi, "All eyes turned to us," Card says. Saratogans were aware that the Cards were avid travelers and of Marion Card's community leadership and art and history enthusiasms.

On their return from Japan, Card submitted a 20-page report on the city and their reception there. "We were treated like distinguished guests, visiting hospitals, schools, gardens," she says. The match-up was appropriate, because both cities are cultural centers and bedroom communities, though Muko-Shi is considerably bigger, 52,000 to Saratoga's 32,000 population.

Since the idea was embraced some 12 years ago, an exchange of citizens has taken place every other year. Between 45 and 70 Saratogans make the journey, and a like number come here from Muko-Shi.

"They show us their best--we can visit with a philosopher or go to a cooking school. And we do the same thing when they're over here. We take them to Yosemite, the Monterey aquarium, a balloon ride to the Gilroy Garlic Festival."

"It's the joy of the personal relationship established that is the heart of the exchange program," Card says. The Cards have been to Japan 10 times and have traveled to more than 10 other countries in their extensive travels.

It's easy for her to remember how old Hakone is: "The garden and I are the same age--82." It was developed by the Stine family, San Franciscans who built a summer home in Saratoga and carefully recreated an authentic Japanese garden here. A Stine granddaughter, Jacqueline, still comes to Hakone events, Card says.

The Pan Pacific Exposition brought Japanese gardeners to the Bay Area, and the Stines also kept a watchful eye on the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park when they were creating their own. Hakone is thoroughly authentic, decreed Yasui, a visitor from Muko-Shi who tried through various service clubs to get an exchange going between the two cities. When those attempts failed, the city sent out notices to some 35 interested citizens, and thus did the Cards get into the act and the Sister Cities born, with the garden as impetus.

Besides Hakone, Card was active in the beginnings of the Friends of the Saratoga Library. She was its third president. "People at conventions I attended couldn't believe how big our base was," she says. Membership is about 2,000, though only about 35 of that number are active volunteers.

And she taught at the California History Center at De Anza College for 10 years and was president of its docent board. She offered classes in her particular interests, such as "Japanese Gardens in the Bay Area." Or she created classes to complement exhibits there, such as "Ships That Sail No More," "Steinbeck Country," and "The Japanese in Santa Clara County."

Marion Card worked for Montalvo for 30 years, and one of her legacies to that institution is a 20-minute documentary on the history of Montalvo. She learned how to produce a documentary by taking an Elderhostel course in San Francisco. The film is shown as part of the tour given there, as well as for docent training.

She was also on the Montalvo board, but was its secretary, not the president. That's hard to believe, because Card has more presidential gavels in her collection than Baskin-Robbins has flavors. Like cream, Marion Card seems to rise to the top.

When the four Card girls (Ashley, Carol, Janice and Melinda) were growing up, she was president of the PTA and head of all the Girl Scouts in Saratoga. She founded the Saratoga Nursery School. She started the practice of taking eighth-grade Scouts to Sacramento to study the Legislature, and she started the American Field Service, the student exchange program at the high school.

"Marion Card is a total resource for Saratoga--socially, historically and culturally," says Olga MacFarlane, director of Saratoga's Senior Center. "Whatever the question, she's able to give an answer."

Card was the first woman elder in the Saratoga Federated Church and taught Sunday school there. One former student recently recalled how teacher Card hid the Bible in a loaf of French bread, to illustrate how secretive early church meetings had to be because of opposition to their teachings.

"If you're a mother and you're not a teacher, you're a thief" is a quote she lives by. Source unknown, but it's part of her psyche. Now there are two grandsons in Napa to share that wisdom. But sharing knowledge works both ways.

When the older grandson was 2, Card came to help out with the new arrival. "Aren't you thrilled about having a brother?" she asked Derek. "Yeah, that's OK, but don't you want to know about Igor Sikorsky?" Derek replied, hauling out a book about the inventor of the helicopter. Infinitely more interesting than the arrival of a new brother.

The progenitors of this genius met one summer when both were college students. Marion was working at a camp on an island in Puget Sound; Bud's family had a summer home there. On first sighting her crossing the bridge, he turned to a friend and said, "That's the girl I'm asking to the dance tonight."

Her reaction? "Of course I said yes. He was going to school at Columbia; his father was Judge Card (the youngest and longest-seated judge in Oregon) and he was the best dancer on the island."

They've been dancing ever since. (Except for the war and the "jillions of beaus" she had to dance through first.

"Oh, Marion, get a dog," advised a friend when her girls began to leave home and she felt compelled to fill the empty rooms. But the Indefatigable One didn't take that advice. Instead, she dived into the student exchange program. Daughter Ashley had been an exchange student in Yokohama, and so it was only natural that the Cards would host students in return.

Wanting to learn more about other cultures is Marion Card's main impetus for hosting foreign visitors. The Cards take several trips a year and did even before Bud retired as a chemical engineer for FMC. They're soon off to Williamsburg, Va., in October, a time-share arrangement. Their time share is in Palm Desert.

After they returned from a trip to Egypt some years ago, they started getting requests to give travel talks at clubs and service groups, and they've been on the local lecture circuit ever since.

"Whatever she does, she does extremely well," says longtime friend Gladys Armstrong, herself a one-time Saratoga Citizen of the Year. "She's contributed so much to Saratoga. Anything she's asked to do she does willingly."

Marion Card was named Saratoga's Citizen of the Year in 1986 and Volunteer of the Year in 1989. Japan has people designated as National Treasures. Saratoga has Marion Card.

--Mary Ann Cook, Metro , September 24, 1997