Belvedere's Jeanne Price spent nearly four decades reporting for Ark, championed historic landmarks

Jeanne Price was a member of the Belvedere Historic Preservation Committee and one of the earliest members of the Belvedere-Tiburon Landmarks Society.

Longtime Belvedere resident Jeanne Price, who spent 37 years reporting for The Ark and was involved in local preservation efforts with the Belvedere-Tiburon Landmarks Society, died at an assisted-living facility in San Francisco on Dec. 26. She was 93.

Price joined The Ark in June 1975 as the newspaper’s bird columnist and went on to cover Redwood High School, Strawberry and Belvedere, along with features and environmental issues. By her retirement in 2012, Price had worked under six executive editors, five publishers and two ownership changes.

“Her work was especially important in raising public consciousness and awareness about the downtown marsh, a freshwater pond that could have, at the time, been easily filled in and turned into another parking lot,” former Ark editor and publisher Brad Breithaupt said in a 2012 article on Price’s retirement. “But because people had been reading for years about the bounty of birds found in the marsh, the area was protected during the 1980s redevelopment.”

Price won a second-place award for in-depth reporting from the California News Publishers Association in 1985 for her coverage of Strawberry’s history and the issues facing the unincorporated community. She also received a Herbert Bayard Swope Memorial Award honorable mention in 1982 for 10 feature articles she wrote the prior year.

When Price retired, she was The Ark’s longest tenured reporter, and her service to the paper has only been surpassed by art critic Carol Benet, who celebrated 50 years writing for the paper in 2025.

Price’s final year with the paper was Executive Editor Kevin Hessel’s first.

“Jeanne was deeply connected to the community, her institutional knowledge was invaluable and she never hesitated to share it with colleagues or use it to add context that made stories better,” he said last week. “She helped me find my footing as a newcomer. I tried to trick her into staying, suggesting she shoot for an even 40 years.”

Price was also a member of the Belvedere Historic Preservation Committee, which reviews property owners’ applications to have their buildings designated as historic, and she was one of the earliest members of the Belvedere-Tiburon Landmarks Society, joining months after it was formed in 1959.

She wrote various articles for the society’s newsletter, The Landmark, served on its board for nine years and was its representative for the Art & Garden Center’s cottage restoration. She also served as the center’s head docent.

Price was born Jeannette Hodge on March 3, 1932, in San Francisco to stockbroker Robert Russell “Russ” Hodge and onetime actor Hope Drown, whose lone credit was a starring role in the 1923 silent comedy “Hollywood.” She had one younger brother, Robert Anthony “Tony” Hodge.

She grew up in Aldercroft Heights in Santa Clara County and attended Palo Alto High School. She attended Principia College in Illinois for two years before transferring to Pomona College, where she graduated in 1953 with a bachelor’s in English literature.

She married Tom Price in 1954. He served as Belvedere mayor, Reed Union School District board member and Marin County supervisor and is the namesake of Belvedere’s Tom Price Park along the southern Old Rail Trail, which is popular with dog owners.

The Prices moved to Belvedere in 1956, living on San Rafael Avenue near City Hall before moving to West Shore Road about 1962.

They had two children, award-winning stage actor Steven Price, who’s performed with the Ross Valley Players and Marin Shakespeare Co., among others, and daughter Amanda Weitman, a financial adviser with Wells Fargo.

Jeanne and Tom Price were married until his death in 1988. Price never remarried and later moved back to San Rafael Avenue, where she remained until about 2023, when she moved to the San Francisco assisted-living facility.

Weitman said her parents were avid birdwatchers and longtime docents at All Hands Ecology, which was founded by late Belvedere conservationist Marty Griffin as Audubon Canyon Ranch, taking part in Audubon’s annual Christmas Bird Count.

“They just had this love of birds, which is probably a reason why they ended up in Belvedere,” Weitman said, adding that her mother had an affinity for the egrets and blue herons that appeared outside her home overlooking Richardson Bay.

Weitman said Price’s work as a reporter joined her love of writing with her desire to contribute to the community.

“Both my dad and my mom very much wanted to be of service to their community, and I think that was her talent, was writing,” Weitman said. “And that was a way she could give back to the community and bring community together through writing.”

Belvedere resident Mel Owen met Price at Principia College in 1949 and said he talked her into joining the Historic Preservation Committee.

“She was a great friend and always willing to contribute,” Owen said, adding that she was always supportive of her husband’s efforts in local politics and she herself was a “very conservation-minded contributor.”

Outside of civic and community contributions, Price was a longtime member of the Tiburon Peninsula Club alongside her husband, an avid tennis player and a University of California-certified master gardener, Weitman said. Price was also a keen photographer, even setting up a darkroom in a pantry at the family’s West Shore home so she could develop film.

Price set an expectation that her children and grandchildren would be college-educated, with Weitman noting education was “really, really important to” Price.

Weitman said above all else, Price loved being a mother, attending her volleyball, basketball and softball games and her brother’s plays at Redwood High School.

Weitman said her mother “was a good friend to whoever she was friends with.”

“She was always willing to help,” she said. “She wanted to make the world better, and not in a big way, right? But in her own way, make her community better.”

Price is survived by daughter Amanda Weitman and son Steven Price and his wife, Tracy Price, all of San Rafael; and grandchildren Cameron, Dylan and Alexandra. She was preceded in death by husband Tom Price, brother Tony Hodge, who died in 2023, and her parents.

The family is planning a private memorial service. Donations can be made to the SF-Marin Food Bank at sfmfoodbank.org and the Belvedere-Tiburon Landmarks Society at landmarkssociety.com.

Reach Francisco Martinez at 415-944-4634.