Jacaranda tree dedicated to the memory of San Pedro’s Chuck Hart

About 25 community members, including those who knew him through the environmental causes he helped champion surrounding the China Shipping debates, turned out on Tuesday, Oct. 29, to honor the late Chuck Hart, one of San Pedro’s most-respected community voices, with a tree dedication.

The program for te event dubbed him the “champion of the Gaffey Street Greenbelt.”

Hart died March 24, at the age of 88.

A jacaranda tree was planted and dedicated on what is now the Gaffey Street Greenbelt on Port of L.A. property on Tuesday. The plaque will be embedded in a stone and permanently set at the base of the tree later.

A retired Los Angeles police detective, Hart became one of the most listened to voices on the issues of the Port of Los Angeles and related environmental concerns. He was the longtime president of the San Pedro Peninsula Homeowners United Association in San Pedro.

Hart was also instrumental in creating the greenbelt on Port of Los Angeles property using an aesthetics mitigation fund after homeowners won a lawsuit against the port in 2003. He lobbied to get a portion of that mitigation fund used for a greenbelt. With a few million dollars from the fund, the Port of Los Angeles developed the Gaffey Street Greenbelt.

Supporters of the greenbelt said the change has resulted in a “dramatic visual improvement” of the area, which they described as unsightly before the landscaping was added by the port.

Among those attending the tree dedication were those who got to know him during the China Shipping battles and mitigation efforts that followed, along with family members and friends from the neighborhood where he lived.

Speakers included Janet Gunter, a close friend who organized the tree dedication; Hart’s daughter, Stacey Hart of Colorado; June Smith, Point Fermin Homeowners; and Frank Anderson, San Pedro Homeowners Coalition.

“We had people from USC, environmental groups, some old-timers in the neighborhood,” Gunter said.

“He would have been amazed,” she added about the gesture. “He always took a back seat, it was never about the ‘stage’ for him.”

She recalled the pandemic-era Zoom calls about the China Shipping litigation — a lawsuit won by the community and environmental activists —  as details continued to be worked out over the mitigation measures.

“We’d have probably eight people on the line and he’d always listen,” Gunter said, noting he always called into the meetings and didn’t use the computer with a camera. “At the very end, he’d finally say, ‘This is Chuck.’”

Then, Gunter said, Hart would quietly bring up a point “that nobody had ever thought about and we’d all go, ‘Oh yeah.’ You realized something that was really important had escaped us, but it was something very critical. That was Chuck. When he spoke, which was rare, everybody listened.”

The tree stands now on the greenbelt on the east side of North Gaffey Street, approximately 2100 N. Gaffey St., just south of Westmont Drive in San Pedro.

In her remarks at the ceremony, Gunter noted that jacaranda is a word stemming from Brazil — meaning “entering a new phase.”

“He was so easy, gentle and mild-mannered,” Gunter said.

The tree, she and other supporters hope, will remind people about Hart’s commitment to the community and the contributions he made to the Harbor Area.

“Chuck was such a humble man,” Gunter said. “He would never ‘think’ that he was deserving of this.  And that is exactly why it is such a wonderful thing.”