Joe Loved Women for Grace and Strength - Page 2

She later designed landscaping for some of his subdivisions, including Channing Park in Palo Alto.

She was also brought in that same year, 1954, to landscape a very special Eichler home, the Art About the House home. This was a project, publicized with an article in Life magazine, to show how art could enhance domestic life.

Artists Matt Kahn, Anne Knorr, Bryan Wilson, Ernie Kim, Virginia Davidson, and others provided the art.

Joe  adored his wife, Lillian, in part because of her beauty, Ned said. She led a good life, enjoying social activities and community affairs, and stopping by the office rarely.

She dressed well and expensively. In a memoir, Ned wrote about an encounter between Joe and the owner of the high-end department store Joseph Magnin.

“At a large party he sardonically said to Cyril Magnin, ‘I could ruin your store by stopping my wife from shopping there.’ ”

Lillian was as strong willed a person as her husband. Ned recalled what happened when she tried to enroll her two young sons in Hillsborough’s public schools, even though the Eichler home was half a block away, in the less pretentious town of San Mateo.

“The principal said, “No, you’re living on wrong side of the line, and there’s nothing I can do.’ I could have crawled under a table and disappeared,” Ned said, recounting his embarrassment.

“I never saw my mother embarrassed in my life. We got in.”

By far the most important woman with Eichler Homes, though, was Catherine Munson, a former researcher for the Atomic Energy Commission and young mother who became Eichler’s top salesperson back in the day when few women did much in home sales beyond greeting customers at model homes.

She was Eichler’s first woman salesperson, and continued selling Eichlers for decades after Joe died as one of Marin’s leading real estate brokers and business women. Munson helped develop homes, offices, the McInnis Park Golf Center in San Rafael, and more. She was also one of the leaders in civic affairs in Marin County and beyond.

Munson considered Joe one of her mentors.

“I learned of his gruffness and his clear communication, which I loved,” she wrote. “He didn’t intimidate me. I don’t think he intended to intimidate anybody, but he had a deep bass, gruff voice, and he was a short man, but very well dressed and he was just to the point. That’s all there was to it.”