Sally White; Her Legacy of 7,000 Trees Shades Anaheim

Sally White, whose group Community ReLeaf Anaheim planted 7,000 trees throughout Orange County’s largest city, died Wednesday night. She was 87.

White underwent quadruple bypass surgery Saturday at Anaheim Memorial Medical Center and “it didn’t work,” said her daughter, Sue White. She said her mother had experienced some shortness of breath recently, but otherwise had been healthy.

White’s passing was mourned by workers at Anaheim City Hall and the California Department of Forestry, as well as by legions of self-described tree-huggers. All said she exemplified how one person can make a lasting difference in a community.

A modern-day Johnny Appleseed, she posited the idea that trees not only breathe life into a neighborhood by providing oxygen and counteracting pollution, but also signal trouble if they are neglected or don’t exist at all, ReLeaf colleague and TV producer Jaide said.

“She got the police chief to be our partner . . . by convincing him that neighborhoods that aren’t green are neighborhoods where people either don’t care or don’t have time to care. . . . And so they should pay attention because they will ultimately be spending more time there.”

Among her roles: city parks commissioner, the longest-serving county parks and recreation commissioner, founder of Anaheim Beautiful and later, Community ReLeaf Anaheim.

She changed her environment, admirers said. In 1998, the city’s first “water-wise” garden was planted in her honor at the Amtrak station outside Edison International Field of Anaheim.

But trees were her biggest mark.

“It’s an incredible legacy that will benefit this community for many years and years,” Anaheim City Manager Jim Ruth said.

It all started a decade ago when the city cut down an aging Colorado ash towering over White’s home.

Sally and Joe White had moved to the house on West Broadway almost 40 years earlier specifically because the street was lined with shade trees. The city said it was removing 70-year-old oaks, palms, ash and huckleberries from the public parkway because some were diseased or would be damaged by street widening. White dug up a city report that showed others were healthy and worth saving.

She piled up logs on her lawn, where she placed an “R.I.P.” headstone, creating “a real stink,” Jaide recalled with a laugh. “She was a feisty broad with a big heart, and people found her charming. She was a catalyst.”

When the city agreed to leave trees on one side of Broadway, the seeds of Community ReLeaf Anaheim were planted. The nonprofit group aggressively sought federal and state grants to buy trees, then rallied hundreds of volunteers, including school-age children, at-risk youth and the Kiwanis Club’s teen group, to do the planting.

ReLeaf also attracted an eclectic group of volunteer planters and diggers from the community, such as the owner of Linda’s Doll Hut nightclub and punk bands that played there, including Social Distortion. Members of the rock band Lit, whose members have known the ReLeaf group since they were children, also pitched in.

By the 1990s, White, who with her husband, Joe, ran White Realty, already had started Anaheim Beautiful, a group that honors folks who fix up their business or home. White was credited with helping the city build several parks and community and senior centers.

In 1990, the Orange County Board of Supervisors declared Nov. 16 Sally White Day.

Born in Scotland, she and her family moved to Clinton, Ind., after World War I. When she was in eighth grade, she had to quit school to raise five younger siblings after their mother died. While working at a dime store she met her future husband.

When he was overseas during World War II, she moved in with his sister in Los Angeles. She got a job at Lockheed because she was so short she could climb into the wings to work on rivets. A fellow Scot saw her potential and directed her toward drafting and other classes, and White became the first female inspector of bombers, her daughter said. The Whites settled in Anaheim in the early 1950s, and many years later Sally White got her real estate license. A sign of her personal effect: She got a job with the real estate agent who sold the Whites their house.

She is survived by her husband, three daughters, a son, eight grandchildren and two sisters.

A funeral Mass will be at 3:30 p.m. Monday at St. Boniface Church Anaheim, 120 N. Janss St. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Anaheim Beautiful Honorary/Memorial Tree Program.