‘Madam Belvedere’ Connie Wiley dies at 98, leaves legacy of civic dedication
Longtime Belvedere resident Connie Wiley, a former Citizen of the Year and two-time mayor whose dedication to civic volunteerism included a combined 12 years on the City Council and Planning Commission, died of COVID-19 at her lagoon home on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24. She was 98.
Wiley was elected uncontested to the City Council in 1996 after four years on the planning board. She stepped down after serving two full terms, as is customary in Belvedere, and was recognized as Citizen of the Year in 2005. She later joined the Sanitary District No. 5 of Marin board, where she served as an inaugural Belvedere member from 2007 to 2011.
Additionally, she was a member of the Tiburon Peninsula Chamber of Commerce board and the Tiburon Economic Development Committee and co-chaired the inaugural Friday Nights on Main street festival when it debuted in September 2004.
Wiley built an accomplished career as an interior designer and was long considered one of Northern California’s top professionals, said daughter Paige Peterson. She was a member of the American Society of Interior Designers and had her work published in three books. Interior-design magazine House Beautiful featured a kitchen she redesigned on its front cover in 1992, and she co-owned decorative-arts store The Dovecote at The Boardwalk shopping center for a quarter century, beginning about 1969.
Mayor Jane Cooper, who grew up in Belvedere, said Wiley was a neighbor and friend of her parents. She called Wiley a role model because of how she cared for the city, which came through whenever she talked about it.
“She’s always been seen as the elder stateswoman of the city and everyone, including me, respects her for all she’s done,” Cooper said.
Longtime friend and former Mayor Sandy Donnell said Wiley epitomized what was beautiful about Belvedere and noted that “living in Belvedere, you couldn’t help but know Connie.”
“If anyone deserved a title to be Madam Belvedere, it was Connie, and there’s nobody like her right now,” Donnell said. “She’s irreplaceable.”
Wiley was born Corinne Witt on April 30, 1926, in San Francisco to Nelson Witt, an engineer who graduated from Harvard University, and Ruth Witt, who came from a family of Carson City, Nevada, ranchers. She had one older sister, Dree.
Wiley grew up in the St. Francis Wood neighborhood of the city and graduated from the all-girls Katherine Delmar Burke School. She frequented Belvedere in her youth, as her family would sail out to Belvedere Cove, where she would swim, Peterson said.
Wiley’s grandparents built a home on San Rafael Avenue in 1952, Peterson said, and Wiley moved to town about 1960, according to Ark archives. She lived on San Rafael Avenue until about 1977 before moving to Beach Road, where she lived next-door to actor Vivian Vance of “I Love Lucy” fame until Vance’s death in 1979. She then moved into Vance’s former residence, living there until 11 years, when she moved back to San Rafael Avenue and remained there until her death.
Tennis was an integral part of Wiley’s life. She played for the University of California at Berkeley tennis team as its No. 1 singles player, graduating from the university around 1948 with a bachelor’s in design. Wiley then embarked on a brief professional tennis career that was cut short after she faced 14-year-old Maureen “Little Mo” Connolly in 1948, falling 6-4, 6-3.
“And then Mom realized that maybe she was really good, but that was the end of her professional career,” Peterson said. “She knew it was time to move on.”
Connolly in 1953 became the first woman to complete the Grand Slam in a calendar year by winning Wimbledon and the tournaments now known as the Australian Open, French Open and U.S. Open.
Wiley continued to play tennis recreationally all over the world, including on the Great Wall of China. She also once played doubles with famed Italian operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti against a pair that included San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen.
“(Pavarotti) came up to her … and he said, ‘I net, you run,’” Peterson said of the doubles match. “She said he was a really good athlete and a really good tennis player, but she ran her ass off while he stood at the net.”
Following her pro tennis endeavors, Wiley worked in the design department and on the sales floor at Macy’s before earning her design license and beginning her interior-design practice. Though she was active in the field up to her death, Peterson said, her mother’s prime as a designer was in the 1980s and ’90s.
Wiley was able to bring in Italian and French furniture and give the pieces a “bit of modern design,” Peterson said, adding that Wiley’s sense of color and ability to arrange and layer made her a brilliant designer.
“She had the most extraordinary visual ability to see beauty,” Peterson said. “She loved fabrics and painted furniture and lovely paintings. And she had a great sense of style, not only in the way she dressed, but in the way she designed homes.”
Wiley ran her interior-design business out of The Dovecote. Peterson, who helped at the store in her youth, said Wiley brought in the likes of Battersea enamelware, Russian lacquer boxes and Fortuny-branded fabrics.
Wiley married Ted Matthews in 1949, and the couple had two children, Laurie and Paige, before divorcing about 1956. She was later married to John Wiley from 1959 to 1973, but Peterson said her mother’s most important relationship was her six-year relationship with Otto Lang, a film producer and ski instructor, from 1973 to 1979.
Though they never married, Peterson said her mother and Lang were a match because Lang was “very sophisticated and a lover of beauty as a filmmaker.”
“I think they connected in a way that was completely different,” Peterson said.
Wiley first got involved in the city’s civic affairs when she joined the Planning Commission in 1992. In an Ark article about her appointment, she pointed to a recent flurry of demolition-permit requests submitted by homeowners and said Belvedere “must be very careful what kind of homes are built on those properties” and that the city’s character should remain the same.
While she noted at the time that evaluating home proposals could be difficult and that the commission’s work was often thankless, she reiterated how important the board was to the city.
“I think every citizen who loves this city should volunteer in some capacity,” Wiley said in 1992. “We are, after all, working for the common good of the community.”
When she became a councilmember in 1996, Wiley said her priorities were ensuring the Belvedere Lagoon did not become “walled in” by new homes and remodels. She also worked to plan Belvedere’s Venice-themed centennial celebration later that year.
Former Belvedere City Manager Ed San Diego said he first met Wiley around 1987, when the city was working to convert its former fire station into what is now the Belvedere Community Center. He said he reached out to her because of her interior-design expertise, and they talked about what furniture should go in the space.
The pair’s professional relationship blossomed from there, with San Diego offering guidance and answering questions when needed. He noted Wiley would come into his office and ask the questions she needed to on items like the city’s budget, only leaving when she was satisfied with what he said and how it would relate to the city.
He said he last spoke to Wiley Dec. 11 during the city’s annual holiday party, where the two reminisced about their time together. San Diego said he was heartbroken to hear of Wiley’s death, adding that “the interests of Belvedere were first and foremost in her mind.”
“She was like a mother figure and wanted to make sure everything worked collegially in the family, the Belvedere family,” he said.
Following her 2004 departure from the City Council, Wiley remained active in local politics after being elected to the Sanitary District No. 5 of Marin’s board of directors. The city of Belvedere had been annexed into the district in 2005, and the 2007 election was the first time Belvedere residents were able to run for a seat on the board and vote in the election. Wiley became part of Belvedere’s inaugural class on the board alongside Claire McAuliffe, who went on to serve on the City Council.
Donnell noted that one of Wiley’s standout qualities was her confidence in speaking her mind.
“She was smart and sharp until the last minute of her life,” Donnell said. “It was inspiring to see how brilliant her brain still was.”
Belvedere resident Adam Gavzer said he first met Wiley when he and husband James Campbell moved into the city in 2007; she was the first to invite them over for lunch.
He said his favorite memory of Wiley is their shared dances during the city’s free annual Concerts in the Park series, where Gavzer recalled Wiley’s beautiful outfits and how she’d light up whenever he asked her to dance.
“I loved her, and I just think her loss is a great loss to the community,” Gavzer said.
Campbell, a former mayor, said Wiley was a prolific host of luncheons and informal social events. He also remembers Wiley’s love for the animals that roam the city; Wiley would often ask Campbell about where pelicans would go to sleep at night, he said.
“Imagine 98 years of that, and she still felt she was the luckiest person on Earth to be able to live here and enjoy all of this,” Campbell said.
Peterson said that while Wiley could be intimidating as a parent, given her prowess as a tennis player and as a sailor, she loved her and her sister, and the three had a lot of fun together.
Peterson said her own work ethic comes from changing The Dovecote’s window displays every Sunday, saying that as a kid she witnessed her mother “doing extraordinary things and being remarkably successful” at her professional and civic endeavors.
Peterson said Belvedere was her mother’s greatest love.
“She loved her community,” Peterson said. “It was one of the last things she talked about in the last week: ‘I just love my city.’”
Campbell, like Donnell, called Wiley irreplaceable, adding that he was unsure who’d fill in for her role.
“I hope we haven’t moved out of that generation where there’s a person like Connie, who’s the fabric and the glue of the community, but that’s who she was,” Campbell said. “There’s nobody else like Connie, really.”
In addition to daughters Peterson and Laurie Everson, Wiley is survived by grandchildren Heidi Geist, Blake Everson, Haley Schroeder, Alexandra Peterson and Peter Cary Peterson, as well as seven great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her parents, partners and sister, Dree Taylor, who died in 2022 at age 103.
A private memorial service will be held in May.
Reach Tiburon reporter Francisco Martinez at 415-944-4634.
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