Ryan Park

Leo J. Ryan Memorial Park is at the heart of Foster City. The recreational center hosts large gatherings, and the outdoor amphitheatre is used for activities such as school graduations, concerts, and exercise classes.

During the mid-1970's Leo Ryan was the House Representative for the district that included much of San Mateo County. He was killed during one of the most infamous events in Bay Area history--the murder-suicide of 909 members of the People's Temple in Guyana.

The Reverend Jim Jones founded the People's Temple, which had thousands of members in Mendocino County, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. To escape scrutiny for abusive and cult-like practices, Jim Jones created Jonestown, Guyana. In 1978 Leo Ryan flew to Jonestown with staffers, reporters, and relatives of Temple members on a fact-finding tour. Jones ordered the congressman killed after he uncovered damaging evidence; Leo Ryan and three other members of the entourage died, and the rest were wounded by gunfire on a Guyana airstrip.

That evening Jim Jones instructed every Temple member to commit suicide by drinking Flavor Aid laced with cyanide. Parents administered the poison to their children before ingesting it themselves and lying down beside them. Jim Jones also committed suicide, but from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

"Drinking the Kool-Aid" (although the actual drink was Flavor Aid) has passed into the popular lexicon. The phrase has lost its original horrific connotation (killing oneself because a speaker orders it) and has come to mean blind obedience to a leader, ignoring weaknesses in his arguments.

In 2003, 25 years after his death, Foster City rededicated Central Park, one of the most beautiful parks in the Bay Area, to Leo J, Ryan, who died horribly and tragically.