Soon after I moved to Kings Beach in 2016, I listened to an interview with three local leaders who had been movers and shakers in town and had been instrumental in seeing through enormous improvements over the previous 25 years. One of them was Theresa May Duggan. Later, I became involved with the Friends of the Kings Beach Library and found myself somewhat starstruck by Duggan, a longtime member, who I knew had such a large impact on the place where I now lived, in addition to all her work running events and being a past president of the Friends.
Duggan, known to everyone as Tee May, has been a driving force in many successful projects in the Tahoe Basin, particularly in Kings Beach. But don’t call her a visionary. After I suggested to Duggan that that title might apply to her, there was a thoughtful pause. “My best ideas came from the community,” she said. She prides herself more on being an organizer, in bringing people together to generate ideas about how to improve the community, and in knowing how to frame a project and see it through to completion. She said, “I developed a complete love of the process.” Ken and Terry Yagura, also dedicated community activists, concur. They wrote in an email to the Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation, “One of the great things about her is she didn’t try to take over or take credit for efforts to improve our communities. With few exceptions, she would get community members excited about fixing a problem or solving an issue, let someone take the leadership role, and then move on to work on another challenge.”
Duggan credits her parents for nurturing her activist roots. Their home was a hub for political organizing in the Salinas area including supporting the work of Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Union. At UC Berkeley, Duggan completed a degree in California history. She also went to Paris and became a Le Cordon Bleu-certified chef. That led her, in the summer of 1977, to come to Tahoe for a summer job running breakfast and lunch service at Captain Jon’s restaurant on the water in Tahoe Vista. It was there that she met the love of her life, Geno Duggan, married him, and has lived in Tahoe ever since. Geno just recently passed away (see his obituary in the May edition). Duggan worked with the owner of Captain Jon’s, Jean DuFau, to open restaurants and a gourmet kitchen equipment shop, and she had her own catering business, A Catered Affair, for many years.
In North Lake Tahoe, Duggan saw a lack of representation of the area due to it being an unincorporated part of Placer County. She served on the North Tahoe Regional Advisory Committee and participated in the nascent North Tahoe Business Association (NTBA). At the time, NTBA was a small, membership-supported organization. Duggan said her perspective on how to build up the organization was, “Let’s deliver more and charge more.” She helped to grow NTBA and its programs, and also managed to convince Placer County to help support the organization financially.
After noticing that several energetic young people had moved to the area, Duggan thought that a leadership program would give people the tools to become effective leaders and help their local communities. In 2004, the North Lake Tahoe-Truckee Leadership Program was born, a joint project of the NTBA, NLTRA, and the Truckee Chamber of Commerce. Duggan is still an active supporter of the program, which has graduated over 480 individuals.
Jennifer Merchant is a former neighbor and longtime associate of Duggan’s and was previously the Placer County deputy county executive officer for North Tahoe. She remembers dinner parties hosted by Tee May and Geno. “It was like going to a French bistro … watching them work together in the kitchen,” sje said. “There was an informal group of activists who would gather at their house, they called themselves ‘Meetings Anonymous.’” Merchant said people would report on what meetings they had gone to that week, what was happening, and where they needed to be involved. According to Merchant, “It was great if Tee May decided something needed to happen — it was going to get done. She would say, ‘If you can, you must.’” Merchant described working with Duggan as one of the highlights of her career in North Lake Tahoe. “Tee May loves her garden, making food for friends, just making sure everyone is okay,” she said. “If it’s helping local teenagers or spearheading multi-million-dollar projects to benefit the community that she has given her life’s work to enrich.”
Duggan was an early activist in the push to improve the town of Kings Beach and the lives of its residents. In the early 2000s, a grant from the S.H. Cowell Foundation brought in Dan Burden, a nationally recognized consultant on walkable communities. At that time, Highway 28 through Kings Beach was one of the most dangerous highways in California. Burden recommended reducing four lanes to three, building sidewalks, and adding roundabouts.
That report became one facet of the Kings Beach Central Core Improvement Project. Duggan recalls being in meetings with community members and stakeholders, and the framework that developed to improve water quality in the lake, revitalize downtown Kings Beach, and improve pedestrian safety. The project included highway narrowing, roundabout construction, ADA ramps for businesses along North Lake Boulevard, speed bumps on residential streets, extensive drainage mitigation throughout the town, and new parking lots. Duggan worked for 18 years to push the Kings Beach Commercial Core Improvement Project through; the $50 million project was completed in 2017.
In addition to transportation and safety issues, substandard housing was and is a problem in Kings Beach. Again, a grant from the S.H. Cowell Foundation was utilized to conduct a survey that documented serious housing deficiencies. Duggan recalls taking the Placer County Board of Supervisors and the Tahoe Regional Planning Association Governing Board on a housing tour where one of the members said, “That apartment is smaller than my walk-in closet.” Duggan and others would bring stakeholders and donors on tours, and their activism ultimately resulted in working with the Domus Management Company to construct 77 affordable rental apartments, a $33 million project that was funded by public and private investments.
Another passion project of Duggan’s was the acquisition of the Lake Air Resort Motel on Bear Street that is now Sierra Community House, a shared space for nonprofits. It is a 4000-square-foot campus where four organizations combined to integrate their services, including support for families, food security, and domestic violence. Having one location with multiple services has been helpful to clients, who may need assistance in more than one area.
Duggan, who has had many big wins and a few small losses in her community work, has been an altruistic force for change in North Lake Tahoe. She will be honored with a commendation from the Placer County Board of Supervisors at its meeting at the North Tahoe Event Center in Kings Beach on June 24.
