Members of the Olmsted Society of Riverside took to the Scout Cabin this past weekend to memorialize one of their own.
From 9 a.m. to noon, volunteers dug holes, removed weeds and shoveled wood chips in memory of Tom Guardi, a member of the group for more than two decades and an active board member. Guardi, 78, died July 13 from pancreatic cancer.
Cindy Kellogg, one of the co-chairs of the Olmsted Society’s landscape committee, described Guardi as a quietly devoted member of the group.
“He came to all of our workdays, and I told you he loved digging up buckthorn,” Kellogg told the Landmark. “He was quiet, an accountant, so there you go. But he was so kind to everybody. He would just do things. If you said, ‘Oh, I need to think about taking that tree out,’ [he would say], ‘Well, you want it out? I’ll take it out,’ and it was out.”
Holly Machina, Kellogg’s co-chair, said she knew Guardi for about 20 years, as long as she’s been part of the Olmsted Society.
“He was really instrumental in anything that Cindy and I have ever done because we came in very green. Cindy came in a few years after me, but we were both like we don’t know what’s going on,” Machina said, pausing from digging up weeds on the Scout Cabin’s north side. “Every workday that he was in town, he came to. He came to some of the planning meetings. Once a year, in February, March, we plan with the forester … Tom has come to a lot of those meetings. He’s a financial guy, so he would help us with the finances.”
Kellogg said Guardi was instrumental in helping her clean out part of the green space at the intersection of Longcommon and Evelyn roads.
“It took us about two years to do it. When we were almost done, he’s standing there, saying, ‘Oh my God, you can see the street!’ He was really good at things like that. He would just help. If I say, ‘Tom, can you help?’ ‘Sure. When?’ He never said no. That’s Tom to me,” she said. “I miss him every day. Every day I drive by that triangle, I miss him.”
Machina said she felt Guardi’s impact on Riverside “everywhere.”
“Go to any green space. I mean, any green space, any triangle, anywhere we’ve ever had a workday, and we’ve had workdays pretty much everywhere,” she said. “If you look at Riverside Road, he was a big part of all that … You could not see the river. It took us, I don’t know, 10 years, little by little. Mostly, it was buckthorn. Tom was there for all of that.”
Constance Guardi described her husband as a thoughtful, orderly man, “but his passion was for gardening,” she said. She shared a story about a cardinal that flew in during the ceremony at his funeral but remained calm, which she said she took as a sign from him. On the banner for the workday, an image of a cardinal could be seen at the bottom to pay homage.
“They were trying to get it out because the ceremony was going on. The service was going on,” she said. “The bird was just there to give the message that he was in a good place.”
Guardi said a workday felt like the right way to honor her husband’s memory.
“I feel like I had to do this for him to honor his commitment all these years. This program, Holly and Cindy have been running since around 2009, and he retired at that time,” she said.
She said she saw his impact in Harrington Park, where a special group comprised of Guardi, Kellogg, Fred Kitch and Bob Finn, all Olmsted Society members, improved the areas along Harlem Avenue.
“That was a project that was the last couple of years. They would meet on a Monday; they didn’t meet on a Saturday, and the landscape group was always on Saturdays. That group was a special group, and he was part of that,” she said. “At Harrington Park, definitely, he’s visible … He had participated in [the Olmsted Society] for so many years. He was a stalwart.”
