Russell Knott, 86; Former Partner in Berry Farm

Russell H. Knott, a former general partner of the Buena Park amusement park that bears a family name that is synonymous with Orange County, has died. He was 86.

Knott, one of four children of Knott’s Berry Farm founders Walter and Cordelia Knott and a longtime philanthropist and community supporter, died Tuesday in a Santa Ana hospital after a stroke.

Knott’s Berry Farm is the oldest theme amusement park in the nation, drawing 3.7 million visitors a year. It was valued at $300 million when the family sold it in 1997 to Ohio-based Cedar Fair.

Knott served as a general partner of Knott’s Berry Farm, along with his sisters--Virginia Knott Bender, Rachel “Toni” Knott Oliphant and Marion Knott Montapert--until the park changed hands.

The tightknit Knotts always worked together. As children growing up in Buena Park in the 1920s, they sold the berries and vegetables grown on the family farm to motorists on the dirt road that became Beach Boulevard.

And, friends say, Russell Knott never lost that down-on-the-farm quality. “He was a very quiet, private, unassuming man who contributed greatly to the city of Buena Park, not only as a general partner at Knott’s Berry Farm but as a generous contributor to a variety of organizations and charitable causes,” said Buena Park Mayor Patsy Marshall.

The list of philanthropic contributions Russell Knott and his wife, Mildred “Milly” Knott, have made over the years is wide-ranging. Most recently, in March, they made a $1.3-million donation to St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton to help finance an endoscopy center.

Marshall, a longtime family friend who managed community relations for Knott’s Berry Farm for many years, recalled that during the holidays, Knott “would give me the money and I’d shop and buy shoes, clothes, toys and food for 20 needy kids at a local day-care center. They never knew where the money came from.”

When the Women’s Club in Buena Park needed new specially made windows for its historic building, Knott donated the money to buy them. Knott also gave to the Boy Scouts of America, Goodwill Industries of Orange County, the Salvation Army and the Boys & Girls Club of Buena Park.

“He just felt you should give something back to the community,” said Marshall, adding that Knott typically would turn down offers of commemorative plaques and ceremonies honoring his and his wife’s charitable contributions,

“He didn’t like to take credit for anything that he did,” she said. “He just didn’t like publicity.”

To illustrate how unassuming Knott was, Marshall recalled that he always joined paying customers in line at Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant rather than duck in the back to get priority seating.

“You could never tell he owned the place,” said Marshall. “Everybody always called Walter Knott Mr. Knott, but Russell was always Russell. If people called him Mr. Knott, he’d say, ‘That’s my dad. Just call me Russell.’”

Unlike Walter Knott, who was known as “Mr. Republican” throughout Orange County and whose blessing--and financial support--was often crucial to potential Republican candidates, Russell Knott had a more politically independent streak.

“In later years, he registered as an independent,” Marshall said. “I think he probably voted mostly Republican, but he did vote for a Democrat or two.”

Walter Knott, said Dean Davisson, the park’s first public relations director, “was really an extreme conservative and Russell tried to balance the scale because so many people in the public would say, ‘We’re not going out to that Republican place.’ He bent over backward to maintain a persona of an independent.”

Davisson remembers his former boss being “well-read and well-informed, but you would not get a sense of that unless you asked not one question but two or three questions and he would determine, yes, you really want to know about this and we’ll talk about it.”

Knott’s area of responsibility at the amusement park was administration, including personnel and security. Even after he and his sisters were no longer involved in the park’s day-to-day operation, beginning in the early ‘80s, Knott continued to put in a few hours a week in his unpretentious office where he’d open mail, return phone calls and chat with employees.

Knott was born in Pomona in 1916, when his parents were attempting to homestead in the Mojave Desert. In 1920, after three years of farming near San Luis Obispo, Walter Knott and a cousin in Buena Park formed a partnership on a rented berry farm.

In 1927, the landowner decided to sell. Knott’s cousin left the partnership and Knott managed to buy his 10-acre share.

In 1932, with the family barely surviving the Depression, Walter Knott learned that a local farmer named Ralph Boysen had crossed a loganberry, a blackberry and a raspberry to produce a new kind of berry. Knott convinced Boysen to have his six abandoned, scraggly hybrids replanted on Knott’s land. The new strain of berries, which Knott dubbed the boysenberry, flourished on Knott’s farm.

To make extra money for the family, Knott’s wife began using the boysenberries for jams, jellies and pies, which she and her daughters sold from a roadside stand.

Cordelia Knott’s pies were such a hit that customers began trying to persuade her to cook full meals. In 1934, she served her first homemade chicken dinners--at 65 cents a plate--to eight guests who ate off her wedding china.

By 1940, the Knotts were serving 400,000 chicken dinners a year, and to keep customers occupied while waiting in line at the roadside restaurant, Walter Knott built the Calico Ghost Town attraction.

Russell Knott met his wife when she worked as a waitress in the family’s restaurant one summer while attending Fullerton Junior College. They were married in 1937 and had two sons.

Knott is survived by his wife; sons Kenneth of Cove, Ore., and Stephen of Fullerton; his sisters, all of Newport Beach; five grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren. Funeral services are private.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Americanism Education League, P.O. Box 5986, Buena Park, CA 90621; the Buena Park Boys & Girls Club; or the St. Jude Medical Center Memorial Foundation, 101 E. Valencia Drive, Fullerton, CA 92835.