Clayton and his good friend, Charles Schultz. Photo from Remembering a Good Friend, Charles M. Schultz Museum.
Our beloved founder, Clayton Anderson, passed peacefully on June 5, 2015. A 30-year resident, Clayton was known in Carmel for his civic enthusiasm and passion for the environment. His legacy endures through the community institutions he founded and nurtured—Friends of Carmel Forest, the Carmel Beach Cleanup, CRA Dines Out, Fiesta in the Forest and the annual Citizen of the Year Celebration.
A founding member of the Carmel Residents Association, he served as president and was named Citizen of the Year in 1993.
"Clayton has enlivened and enlightened every aspect of our community life,
from political campaigns to environmental causes, from fundraising to publications,
from public service to social activities."
- JS Holliday, Author
Clayton's lifelong friendships brought joy to him as well as to his community. The late cartoonist Charles Schulz came to Carmel at Clayton's invitation to describe how he created his magic and to support the Carmel Public Library Foundation. Earlier, again as a favor to Clayton, the beloved Burl Ives came to sing to a capacity audience for Carmel's forest.
Born in Tacoma, Washington in 1923, Anderson earned bachelor and postgraduate degrees at the University of Puget Sound, where he was student body president, and the University of Oregon. He taught and lectured at those institutions as well as Oregon State College, University of Washington and Washington State. In the summertime, he was a guide and chief horse wrangler in Mount Rainier National Park. World War II inevitably found him volunteering for the famed 10th Mountain Division, training high in the Rockies of Colorado. Combat followed against German troops in Italy's mountains. Service as Oregon's director of outdoor recreation was followed as director of Washington State Parks. Then he went to Washington, D.C. with the Department of the Interior, where he received the Superior Service Award.