In a way, the rise of Hitler led to preventing tract housing, mini-malls and industrial parks from sprouting up on 32,000 acres of prime Marin farmland.
That’s because Ellen Straus — whose family escaped Holland in 1940 a few steps ahead of the German army — saw firsthand what happens when people fail to stand up for what they believe in.
“If there was one thing the Second World War brought home to me,” she told an environmental group upon being presented an award, “it was that we, as individuals, are responsible for what is happening in our communities, and we must become activists.”
Straus, the matriarch of Marin’s Straus Family Creamery and an active participant in dozens of environmental endeavors, died Saturday in her Marshall home after a short battle with cancer. She was 75.
She was born Ellen Tirza Lotte Prins in Amsterdam, and her father was able to obtain visas for his family after straightforwardly telling the U.S. consul general that he no longer felt it was safe for Jews to live in the Netherlands. Straus’ family and friends say she shared her father’s honest and straightforward manner.
“The word ‘genuine’ comes to mind. She was just as genuine as the farmland that we are all determined to preserve. She was as honest and genuine as you can be,” said Michael Hayes, the capital fund-raising director for the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, which Straus co-founded with friend Phyllis Faber in 1980.
“When you went with Ellen to visit a donor or potential donor, people immediately made the connection between this completely real human being and the cause of preserving farmland. It just made sense. And she had true wit and grace. Once people met her they felt they were among her closest friends. She just made you feel that way.”
Shortly after the war, Ellen was introduced to German Jewish immigrant Bill Straus, who was visiting New York from his Marin home. The two were married within a few months, and they moved back to his dairy in the microscopic West Marin town of Marshall.
The Straus Family Creamery is now a multimillion dollar operation, and three of Bill and Ellen’s four children are actively involved in the family business. The dairy produces a number of certified-kosher products and, in 1994, became the first organic dairy west of the Mississippi.
Other than the Straus family dairy products, which can be found at hundreds of stores statewide, Straus was most recognized for her work with the Marin Agricultural Land Trust. Through the use of agricultural easements, the land trust has ensured that 30 percent of the privately held land in Marin County will never be developed.
“She was a person who was very determined to do whatever she could to make agriculture persist,” said Faber, a longtime friend.
“She had a great love of the landscape. I remember her taking me up on the hills behind her ranch in Marshall and showing me the fantastic sunsets over Tomales Bay. She had a real feeling for where she lived. She loved the bay, loved West Marin and really wanted the bay to stay pure and pristine.”
Straus’ friends and family remembered her as an energetic, optimistic woman who never lost her Dutch accent and somehow brought conflicting groups together in her pursuit for environmental responsibility and agricultural preservation.
But she was also a fun grandma.
“She would play with the kids, I mean really have fun with them and not just watch them play. She really enjoyed playing with them,” said Alan Berkowitz, her son-in-law and father of three of her four grandsons.
“There was a youthfulness in her up to the very end.”
Ellen Tirza Lotte Straus is survived by Bill, her husband of 52 years; sister Anneke Prins Simons; children Albert, Vivien, Miriam and Michael; and grandsons Isaac, Jonah, Reuben and Eli — and, adds Michael Straus, 270 milking cows.
The family requests any donations in Straus’ memory be made to MALT, P.O. Box 809, Point Reyes, CA 94956.