Ensuring the safe operation and public enjoyment of the 25 parks, 500 miles of paved and off-road trails and seven miles of beaches comprising the OC Parks system is up to a team of 52 park rangers along with ancillary staffers and volunteers.

But 60 years ago,  Mike Curran, OC Parks’ first ever park ranger, was a team of one.

Curran, a longtime resident of Santa Ana, died last month at age 94, leaving behind a family legacy of five children, 14 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren, along with a legacy of completed park projects still enjoyed today. Curran’s wife, Mary, died in 2020.

“He was a mentor for dozens of people who put a career together in the county of Orange,” said retired OC Parks Superintendent Thomas Klems, who worked with Curran for about 11 years.

Curran was hired as a maintenance supervisor in 1964 by the County of Orange Environmental Management Agency, Harbors, Beaches and Parks, which later became OC Parks.

The county’s park system at that time consisted only of the O’Neil and Irvine regional parks.

His first official day on the job was Labor Day at Irvine Regional Park.

“This park was full to the brim,” Curran recalled in a series of recorded interviews he did with Klems which are now posted on Klem’s Facebook group, “We Were Park Rangers Once.” “There were big trucks of people coming down from L.A.”

While Curran essentially performed the duties of a park ranger, the position of park ranger didn’t become an official title until around 1970.

Curran advanced up the ranks from maintenance supervisor to supervising park ranger at the time of his retirement in 1990.

Over the years, Curran constructed rock walls, performed routine maintenance, managed animal control and sanitation, patrolled the parks and issued citations.

One of his main responsibilities was picking up 25 to 30 inmates from the Orange County Jail and dropping them off at O’Neil and Irvine parks where they would pick up trash, split wood and perform other tasks.

For that reason, park rangers had to be deputized at the time by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department

“I guess nobody else wanted to do it at the time,” Curan recalled in one of the recorded interviews. “I enjoyed it.”

Curran took his work seriously, said his oldest son, Michael, who is 66.

Sometimes Michael Curran would tag along with his father at work and remembered one day when Curran had to confront a group of Hell’s Angels whose motorcycles were parked on the lawn.

“I was 10,” Michael Curran recalled. “They parked their bikes on the turf. He didn’t really have a lot of fear, and he just went up to them. He just said, ‘Get your bikes off the lawn. I’m under the full authority of the government.’”

They complied without incident.

Curran and his wife embraced their Catholic faith, attending church as a family and sending all five children to Catholic grammar school and then Mater Dei High.

Curran raised finches and enjoyed gardening and cooking, his son said.

There were also regular camping trips to the Sierras, June Lake, Mammoth Lake and other regions.

“He loved fishing and he loved teaching us how to fish,” Michael Curran said. “It was just what he lived for in the early days.”

As the family grew to include his sons’ wives, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Curran’s home was the hub for holidays and family gatherings.

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And Curran did the cooking, his son said.

To their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Mike and Mary were Daddo and Mammo, said Priscilla Finlayson, the Currans’ sixth oldest grandchild.

While he could be stern at times, his grandchildren were the “key to his heart,” Finlayson said.

“Daddo and Mammo created some of the best childhood memories for us all,” she said. “Their door was always open, and home always welcoming. This Thanksgiving was the first holiday without him present, and it didn’t feel right. It was quite odd without his presence in the kitchen and around the table. He is greatly missed.”