Lasting Memories

Edward P. Ames
1908-April 30, 2007
Palo Alto, California

Edward P. Ames, who began his business career selling 5-cent bags of Planters' Peanuts and became wealthy through timely investments in Palo Alto real estate, died peacefully at his modest home on Newell Road April 30.

Ames was known for his gentle friendliness and often self-effacing sense of humor during his more than half century watching Palo Alto grow and change. In earlier decades, Ames was active in the business community, but in recent years he became a major financial supporter biomedical research. He was a recipient of the Lifetimes of Achievement award of the Avenidas senior services agency.

The Edward P. and Dorothy Ames Research Building at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation is named in honor of Ames and his first wife, recognizing a multi-million-dollar gift Ames made to help build it in the early 1990s.

"He never said a bad word about anybody," his second wife, Willeta, said of Ames, citing his many friendships. She and Ames were married in 1998 after being friends of Ames and his wife for more than 50 years. Willeta is a retired teacher and human resources manager, who became one of the first women in management for the Penney's department stores.

Ames took personal care of Dorothy during a lengthy illness.

"He genuinely was one of the nicest people who ever walked the face of the earth," David Druker, M.D., president and CEO of the medical foundation, said of Ames. He said in addition to being a major donor to help build the research building at the foundation's new campus, Ames donated several homes to the foundation, and "the tenants were all his personal friends."

His philanthropy, Ames said in an early 1990s interview, was a way of "putting back into the community" some of the good fortune he derived from it.

"I made it in Palo Alto and I want to leave it in Palo Alto," he said.

He chose biomedical and health-related research because of a college friendship with Marcus Krupp, M.D., longtime head of the Palo Alto Medical Research Foundation, which became part of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation in 1981, and a close friendship with the late Robert W. Jamplis, M.D., former president and CEO of the foundation. He served on the foundation's board of trustees for years.

But his interest was also general: Ames said his support for health research "will take care of a lot of people in the future that might not otherwise be able to have the health care they need."

Ames' wit and humor bubbled forth even during difficult times. When asked about a mountain lion loose in his neighborhood several years ago, he replied: "Oh, it wouldn't take a mountain lion to take me out. Any good-sized house cat could do that."

At the time it was a vicious dog that took him out, knocking him down, breaking a hip and biting him on a leg. A lengthy recovery was set back by a second fall at home that re-broke the hip, and he never recovered his mobility.

But he looked back on his life and roots philosophically and appreciatively.

He was born in San Angelo, Texas, in 1908, the same year William Cranston (father of the late U.S. Senator Alan Cranston) opened a real estate office in Palo Alto. But it wasn't until 42 years later that the two came together in a conjunction that did much to shape Palo Alto's business future as Ames, Brophy & Cranston, a real estate development and management firm.

His life was one of unexpected turns and opportunities, many due to his ability to make good friends. At age 11, his family -- including six brothers and sisters -- relocated from Texas to Phoenix, Ariz., where he later attended high school and junior college. He studied liberal arts because "I had no idea what I might end up doing." He took a circulation job at the Arizona Republic newspaper and became friends with the circulation manager, who encouraged him to study journalism and advertising.

After two years, he enrolled in Stanford University backed by letters from the manager. After graduation, he worked as a journalist for the Oroville Mercury-Register.

In 1932, he married Dorothy, whom he had met in high school.

After two years in Oroville, a man Ames' had befriended at Stanford -- who sold peanuts at games "until it became too much of a nuisance to clean up the shells" -- offered him a job as a specialty salesman at the Planters Nut and Chocolate Company, the original name for Planters Peanuts of San Francisco.

After eight months in Los Angeles, Ames was transferred to Portland, Ore., in 1934 and began selling the Planters' staple product, the 5-cent bag of peanuts, to wholesalers and jobbers throughout Oregon, Idaho and Utah.

"I did too much driving -- about 55,000 miles a year," he recalled.

"Later, the boss took pity on me and gave me Washington, and knocked off Utah and Idaho,"reducing the miles.

"The 5-cent bag of peanuts was the backbone of the business. It wasn't until the '40s that they came out with the vacuum can," he recalled. In World War II, Ames was put in charge of production, manufacturing and shipping services in San Francisco to meet the demand of the military for peanuts.

In 1950, another past friendship changed his life again. Shortly after graduating from Stanford, Ames went to William Cranston's office to have a document notarized. Asking about his career plans, Cranston asked if he had ever considered real estate.

"I told him I had no knowledge of the business at all, and subsequently went to Oroville," Ames said.

But he and Cranston stayed in contact as Cranston's son, Alan, decided on a political career. When Ames dropped on to visit in 1950, Cranston, then in his 70s, told him he was ready to retire and convinced Ames to join the firm as a real estate salesman. He later became a broker. After Cranston retired, Ames kept his name on the firm because "I was a stranger in town and, just using my name, I couldn't get advertising without paying for it in advance." He later brought in William Brophy to handle the insurance side and the firm became Ames, Brophy & Cranston.

At a time when houses were selling for $14,000-$24,000, Ames scraped together enough money to buy a lot and have a house built. In the 1960s, he began buying up properties and just rode the property values into the 1980s and beyond.

Ames, who had no children of his own, is survived by a brother, Ernest O'Dell of Redondo Beach, and a sister, Marie Grammar of Sunnyvale, and by stepdaughters Tammy Cox (husband Bill) of Newport Beach and Sheralee Keowen (husband Andrew) of Simi Valley, as well as by numerous nieces and nephews.