For decades, San Francisco's Kezar Stadium has hosted numerous sporting events and witnessed too many memories to count. But the name of the stadium remains a bit of a mystery. Who was its namesake, Mary Kezar?
The Doe Family
Bartlett and Mary Doe raised eight children in Parsonsfield, Main. He was never wealthy and often struggled to feed his growing brood. When they came of age, two of his sons, Bartlett and John moved across the country to San Francisco, leaving behind their three younger siblings including Nancy and Charles. There they opened up a sash, door and blind business called B. J. & J.S. Doe. Years after the business opened, Nancy met and married Samuel Kezar and bore him a daughter, Mary.
Things took a turn for the better for the young enterprise when the youngest sibling, Charles moved to the city in 1857 and added a lumber branch to the firm. Together, the three brothers prospered as the business grew in stature within the growing community.
When John died in 1894, Bartlett and Charles renamed their company Charles F. Do & Co. It continued to thrive in the city and became one of the leading lumber and door manufacturing companies in the state.
By the turn of the century, the deaths began to mount for the Doe family. Charles went first in 1904 and was remembered fondly in obituary's throughout the area for being extremely generous and even donating the funds to build the University of California, Berkeley's Library. The Doe Library still stands to this very day. Bartlett passed away on the same day that his adopted hometown buckled under the weight of a massive earthquake in 1906.
By the time Nancy died 11 years later, Mary was starting to think about her family's legacy. Of those three uncles, only John had ever married or had a child. Since Mary herself had never married, she knew that her family was dwindling. So what could they leave behind as a lasting legacy?
When she died in 1922, Mary bequeathed $100,000 for San Francisco Polytechnic High School to build a playground in her family's honor. After a probate judge ruled that a stadium was more appropriate, ground was broken across the street from Poly in 1924 and the city of San Francisco contributed an additional $200,000.
Kezar Stadium opened on May 2, 1925 with a capacity of nearly 60,000. In the years to come, it would hold numerous events such as track and field and boxing matches, but one sport was particularly drawn to it: football. High schools often played there and continue to do so, years after it was demolished and reduced to a high school football field and public track. Of course, when people first come there, the first thing that they think of is the 49ers, who played there from 1946 through 1971. Few if any, think of Mary Kezar and the legacy of the Doe family.
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