Ward Young, the beloved longtime director of the Bolinas Children’s Center, the town’s only preschool, died late last month of an apparent heart attack while riding his bicycle. Mr. Young, an ardent political and environmental activist who moved to California in the ‘70s and loved to ride his bike, had worked at the preschool for 16 years, after his son attended. The school, which is over four decades old, will re-open in a couple of weeks, with grief counseling for students. “He saw his mission as supporting families in the community,” Laura DiStasi, the head teacher, said of Mr. Young. “I was so taken with his relationship with the children. They called him Wardy.” Ms. DiStasi was set to retire, but will help out during the coming year at the school, which closed on July 25 and will reopen Aug. 22—a closure for remodeling that had already been planned. When school reopens, Victoria Maier and Whitney Vest, both current teachers, will take over as head co-teachers for the play-based toddler and preschool programs, which serve about two dozen children and often take them into the outdoors—a particular joy for Mr. Young, who also tended to the preschool’s garden. “He was just a lovely individual and human being with a great sense of humor, whom the children dearly loved,” Ms. Maier said. On a recent Sunday, after a memorial for Mr. Young, adults and children alike took a bike ride in town in his honor. And though the children have been told he is gone, Ms. Distasi said, the school has been offered grief counseling services when it reopens. “They’ll need to talk about it,” she said.