Valley activist Gerald Silver, 88, dies
Encino resident took on City Hall and developers over quality-of-life issues
Gerald “Jerry” Silver was a longtime community activist and a needle in the side of developers and politicians who wanted to put their mark on the San Fernando Valley with projects he felt were unsuitable.
Silver, 88, who was known at City Hall for his community activism, died May 30 after several months of cancer and palliative care.
The father of three sons and one daughter leaves behind his second wife, Myrna, to whom he was married for four decades.
In 1983, Silver founded Homeowners of Encino, a watchdog group that monitors elected officials. He was also a member of the Encino Neighborhood Council, the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council and the Ventura Blvd. Plan Review Board.
His mission was to preserve the quality of life for Valley residents, centering his attention on traffic congestion, aircraft noise, development, sign blight, air pollution and other causes, especially in Encino.
Before Silver retired about 25 years ago, he got involved in social activism when he moved to Encino and bought a home in the flight pattern of Van Nuys Airport. He saw that and other general living condi
Gerald Silver kept copious amounts of development documents, board meeting minutes and news clippings of activities in and around his neighborhood of Encino. Silver, who died May 30 at the age of 88, has bequeathed his collection to Cal State Northridge’s University Library for storage and public access.
tions as issues of concern.
Over the past 40years, Silver, an author and retired professor at LosAngeles City College, was storing documents pertinent to proposed projects and other issues that are expected to be handed over to Cal State Northridge for safe storage and future public access.
“Our condolences go out to Gerald Silver’s family,” said Mark Stover, dean of the University Library at Cal State Northridge. “Gerald Silver was a mainstay of the San Fernando Valley for a number of years, and his archives chronicle key points in the Valley’s history. They would be a welcomed addition to the university’s archives.”
Eliot Cohen, president of Homeowners of Encino and a member of the Encino Neighborhood Council and the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, learned about Silver’s archives a few months ago.
“When I saw this library that he assembled of all the goings on, I went nuts and I called all the different Valley historical societies … I was lucky to know a professor of planning at Cal State Northridge who helped me contact the right people at the library and I’m grateful for them for preserving (his collection),” Cohen said.
Silver was specific that he didn’t want any memorial or attributions after he died, which Cohen found ironic.
“Jerry documented basically everything that went on in the Valley,” Cohen said. “Every political fight he was involved in, every article he wrote, all the minutes of all the boards he sat on … all his fights with developers, all his fights with City Hall, all his fights with the Ventura Boulevard Planning Review Board, his 15-year battle with the FAA to get Stage 2 jets basically outlawed from municipal airports, and on and on.”
Over the past few months, Cohen has replaced Silver on several boards and committees.
He has acknowledged he has some pretty big shoes to fill to continue in Silver’s footsteps as Cohen grasps Silver’s political will, wisdom and push to keep a high quality of life in the Valley.
“He was literally the Dutch boy with the finger in the dyke preventing the developers from running roughshod over all of us,” Cohen said. “For instance, they put up the Wells Fargo building and that big white building across the street from the Range Rover … and he put a stop to all these high rises in Encino on Ventura Boulevard. He was very well-known in City Hall because he was so effective. He stopped the double-decking of the 101 Freeway. He led the fight.”
Silver was born in Omaha, Nebraska, but moved to Hollywood at a young age.
Raised by a single mother, a Russian immigrant, he got interested in printing as a teen and eventually opened a print shop on Santa Monica Boulevard near LosAngeles City College.
“He started teaching graphic arts in the early to mid-’60s to late ’60s,” said his son, Steve Silver, an attorney in Porterville. “Then, data processing became readily available and he became interested in data processing and started teaching it and sold the print shop.”
In the early ’70s, Jerry Silver and his first wife, Joan, who was mother of their four children, began writing college textbooks about data processing.
“That’s significant because it was at the beginning of that field,” Silver said. “He had one of the earliest textbooks.”
Silver divorced in the mid 1970s. He married Myrna, and they had two daughters. Myrna became his writing partner and they continued to publish books on data processing.
“He also wrote a few books about unfair treatment of divorced fathers,” Silver said. “He was not happy about the process.”
Silver had no interest in outdoor activities when his children were growing up. He found many of the sports his sons enjoyed, including skiing, boating and motor car racing, as dangerous.
“He used a risk-benefit analysis to (deem) them as being dangerous,” Steve Silver said. “He also liked to debate with anyone about anything. He often played the devil’s advocate. He would do his research. If he didn’t approve of something, he was not shy about that.”