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The attraction, however, was fleeting. Strollingalong Fulton Street in the south campus area,Delacour passed the two-story frame house thatserved as headquarters for the Vietnam DayCommittee (VDC), noticed “a pretty girl in thewindow,” and eagerly volunteered. His fervor forthe cause was quickly doused by the assignmentof “shit work,” such as setting up microphonesfor speeches to be made by VDC leaders and slavingover mailing lists. Later, in 1968, he workedzealously in the Peace and Freedom Party’s registrationdrive. In October of that year, GovernorRonald Reagan and the UC Board of Regents prohibitedthe Peace and Freedom Party presidentialcandidate and Black Panther leader, EldridgeCleaver, from presenting a series of guest lectureson campus. Delacour was arrested duringthe ensuing campus protest on charges of disturbingthe peace, malicious mischief, and trespassfor his role in the seizure of Moses Hall. Heserved a ten-day jail sentence and, by the end ofthe election, was once again profoundly distrustfulof the radicals’ schismatic, internally dividedpolitics: “We suddenly had gained some power,but then we started dividing the spoils—formingorganizations and bureaucracies—and everyonebecame ego-involved in endless hassles.” 11The idea of building a park upon the university’svacant lot occurred to Delacour while organizinga community rock concert: “I contacted this bandcalled the Joy of Cooking to see if they’d play andthey said ‘Yeah.’ So we went up and looked atthe lot. The property was a mess—lots of brokenglass, mud holes, and abandoned cars. It wastoo ugly, so we called off the concert. We neededa park there.” He called for an organizationalmeeting at his dress shop, and the first gatheringof the park’s developers was held on Tuesday,April 15, 1969. It attracted five volunteers: WendySchlesinger, John Angelo, Paul Glusman, StewAlbert, and a carpenter named Curtis. 12Schlesinger, a stunningly beautiful blonde andthe only female among those credited with conceptualizingthe park, became the project’s primaryfundraiser, collecting nearly $2,000 fromlocal merchants, churches, and residents. Shehad graduated from college at the age of nineteen,taught English for six months in Long Island,New York, and then headed for Berkeley withthe ostensible—but easily diverted—intention ofattending graduate school. In a New York TimesMagazine article, Winthrop Griffith describedher as “both feminine and forceful . . . a girl whospeaks with a vocabulary almost equally devotedto four-letter words and such gentle concepts as‘love . . . freedom . . . justice . . . beauty.’” 13As a member of the People’s Park Committee, WendySchlesinger (second from left) negotiated continuouslyon behalf of park advocates. She was one ofeleven committee members who met on May 14 inhopes of reaching a last-minute settlement on the fateof the park. People’s Park, she contends, “marked thebeginning of the modern-day communitarian ecologymovement.”Photographer unknown1California History • volume 88 number 1 2010