Walter Cottle Lester dies at 88; farmer held out as Silicon Valley grew

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http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-walter-cottle-lester-20140209,4954514,2860663.story

Walter Cottle Lester dies at 88; farmer held out as Silicon Valley grew
Lester passed up perhaps $500 million by refusing to sell the family farm, instead arranging to donate the land as a historic park.
By Steve Chawkins
February 8, 2014, 5:23 p.m.

Though he lived in a region known worldwide for hyper-enthusiastic, round-the-clock innovating, Walter Cottle Lester wasn't a big fan of change.

As Silicon Valley's subdivisions and office buildings surged around the farm his family had started more than a century before, he refused to sell. Reclusive and soft-spoken, he turned down potential earnings as high as $500 million. Instead, he arranged to donate his spread, the last big farm in the city of San Jose and one of the last in the sprawling Silicon Valley, for public use as a historic park.

Most of his 287 acres will remain in agriculture.

Lester died Jan. 31 in the farmhouse where he, his mother, his sister and several aunts and uncles were born. He was 88 and had been in declining health for several months, said his friend Frank Giordano.