Climate RWC – September 2022

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P u b l i c a t i o n Profile: Chris Duffley’s Blind Ambition Spotlight: Outrunning the Law During Prohibition MicroClimate: Hannig Cup/Union Cemetery

ISSUE EIGHTY FIVE • SEPTEMBER • 2022

Title IX Fifty Years and Counting

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR•

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Title IX, the landmark 1972 legislation that guaranteed

girls and women equal access to education and related activities. It may have done more for women in the U.S. than anything but the right to vote. We asked writer Kimberly Carlisle, a 1980

Olympian and Stanford swimmer who was among Title IX’s first beneficiaries, to investigate the law’s wide-ranging impact, especially on the Peninsula. Kimberly’s story begins on page 8.

The Peninsula’s history is a specialty of longtime journalist Jim Clifford, who pens our monthly

column on that subject. This month, Jim is a double-dipper. His usual intriguing feature appears on page 30. Before, starting on page 16, is his fascinating article about the bootleggers who exploited the rough San Mateo County coast to smuggle illegal liquor during Prohibition.

This month, we also profile an extraordinary young man on the opposite coast. Chris Duffley,

who lives in Manchester N.H., is just 21 years old. He’s blind and has autism. He also has perfect pitch and an incredible story. For the past 11 years, he has toured the country as a singer and

inspirational speaker. He ascends the stage of the Fox Theatre in Redwood City on Sunday, September 11. Our account begins on page 24.

Hungry for something new? Susan Jenkins offers her recipe for grilled nectarine salad topped

with Gorgonzola and mint leaves — along with a brief travelogue about the charming town

of Gorgonzola, Italy. Our other departments bring news of scooter rentals in Redwood City,

renovations at the old Sequoia Hotel, improvements at the Union Cemetery, an attorney who’s

one of our area’s most devoted philanthropists, and a young boy who grew his hair long just so he could cut it off and give it to cancer patients who had lost their own locks during chemotherapy.

Before signing off, I want to salute two tremendous journalists who recently left us. For an

astounding 67 years, Vin Scully, 94, was the voice of the Dodgers in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.

I met him once; he may have been the kindest and most genuine celebrity I’ve ever encountered.

Another giant of letters, Roger Angell, not only reigned over America’s baseball writers; as a

fiction editor of The New Yorker, he championed many young authors. He was 101. Sometimes, the good live long.

Scott Dailey, Editor

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TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S •

FEATU RE

Fifty Years of Title IX

8

SPOTLIGHT

San Mateo County Prohibition

16

PROFILE

Chris Duffley: Blind Ambition

24

MICROCLIMATE

Hannig Cup/Union Cemetery

14

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT �����20 FOOD.............................28 HISTORY......................30

4 · CLIMATE · September 2022

On the cover: Crushing both academics and athletics, soccer star Aminah Evans of Sequoia High School already has offers from the U.S. Air Force Academy, the University of Nevada and Delaware State. Her dream school is Duke, with the University of Chicago a close second.

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This ad was provided as a courtesy of

Neighbors helping neighbors - since 1938 September 2022 · CLIMATE ·5

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C L I M AT E •

CLIMATE M A G A Z I N E Publisher

S.F. Bay Media Group Editor

Dinner & a Movie & More!

In the heart of the Theatre District, Redwood City.

Scott Dailey scott@climaterwc.com Creative Director

Jim Kirkland jim@climaterwc.com Contributing Writers

Kimberly Carlisle Scott Dailey Jim Clifford Susan Jenkins Janet McGovern Jim Kirkland Photography

Jim Kirkland Advertising Director

Scott Dailey scott@climaterwc.com Editorial Board

Scott Dailey Jim Kirkland Adam Alberti Advisory Board

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by S.F. Bay Media Group, a California Corporation.

Entire contents ©2022 by S.F. Bay Media Group. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use in any manner without permission is strictly prohibited. CLIMATE is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork.

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What’s going on with Real Estate on the Peninsula?

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All-American Rebecca Dorst of Menlo-Atherton High School accepted a scholarship to UCLA en route to becoming a nurse.

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F E AT U R E •

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Shooting for Equality

Fifty years ago, Title IX changed young women’s lives. Many believe much work remains.

By Kimberly Carlisle

The 90,185 spectators at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena were about to lose their hearing. Minutes before, Briana Scurry, the goalkeeper for the U.S. women’s World Cup soccer team, had blocked an attempt by China’s Liu Ying in the post-overtime shootout that would decide the championship game on July 10, 1999. Now, with the penalty kicks knotted at four apiece, 31-year-old Brandi Chastain of the U.S. had a shot at history.

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lowly, meticulously, she settled the ball onto the small, white square 12 yards from the goal.

She turned, walked back six steps, turned again, paused, and scrunched her forehead. Then she started forward, drew back her left foot and drove the ball toward the upper right corner of the net.

The entire sporting world knows what happened next. Chastain’s winning kick matched Bobby Thomson’s “Shot heard ’round the world” for the 1951 New York Giants and “The Catch” by Dwight Clark

that sent the San Francisco 49ers to their first Super Bowl in 1981. Chastain spun around, raised her head, pumped her fists and yanked off her jersey. Clad in just her soccer shorts and sports bra, she joined her teammates in a celebration that etched a defining image in the continuing progress of women’s athletics.

Like virtually every U.S. female athlete over the last 50 years, Chastain got her biggest break when Congress passed the legislation known as the Education Amendments of 1972. Among them was an update to the Great Society-era Ele-

mentary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Title IX in the 1972 law banned sex discrimination in “any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

What a difference those few words would make.

Dreams of a Southern Girl In 1972, I was 11 years old and a budding swimmer in the Southeast. It was an Olympic year, and my family was living in Knoxville. My father, a career swimming coach, was studying for his master’s deSeptember 2022 ·

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• gree and assisting the men’s swim team at the University of Tennessee.

That summer, the women’s U.S. Olympic swimming team chose the Tennessee facility for its training camp. Like a little girl peering over the candy counter, I watched practices and collected autographs. Many of my swimming idols to this day populated that team.

None went to college on an athletic scholarship. But that was about to change.

Just seven years later, in 1979, I was one of the nation’s top college swimming recruits. Full rides promised a university education pretty much anywhere. I chose Stanford, and the course of my life — along with my small-town, southern view of the world — blew wide-open. I went from being a smart, athletic girl who was ostracized to a smart, athletic woman who was celebrated.

“Other than the right to vote, Title IX is the single-most important piece of legislation ever passed for women,” says Nancy Hogshead-Makar, an attorney, activist, author and expert on access and equality in athletics. “In the United States,” Hogshead-Makar continues, “education is the ticket to ride. It allows us to transcend social and economic classes, and can change how one fundamentally sees herself and how she understands the world.”

Hogshead-Makar was a world-class swimmer, a gold medalist at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics who had accepted an athletic scholarship to Duke four years earlier. “My life was profoundly changed,” she says, “not just from sports, but by the opportunity for me just to go to college.”

Opening Doors at Last Title IX’s most immediate and visible application was to high-school and college athletics, where opportunities for girls and women began steadily increasing in the latter 1970s. A study completed in 2006 documented a nine-fold increase in

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Nancy Hogshead-Makar

“Other than the right to vote, Title IX is the single-most important piece of legislation ever passed for women.” the number of girls in high-school sports, and more than a 450-percent expansion in college athletics. A 2008 assessment of U.S. intercollegiate sports showed women competing on more than 9,000 teams — approximately nine per school.

And the new opportunities extended beyond campus. “Title IX was the most ridiculous blessing I have ever received, then and now,” says Kim Oden, a 1986 Stanford graduate who became a twotime Olympian and member of the U.S. bronze-medal indoor volleyball team at Barcelona in 1992. “Our sport was growing exponentially at the club level and in visibility nationwide,” Oden says. “All of a sudden, women’s sports became serious.”

In the summers between her Stanford years, Oden represented the U.S. in national and international tournaments. Beyond competing in the Olympics, she played the professional circuits in Italy, China, Brazil and Turkey in both indoor and four-person beach volleyball.

“I was able to play volleyball and earn a good living until I was 34,” Oden says. “It was a mindset change.”

As a swimmer in an earlier era, Anne Warner Cribbs experienced far different circumstances. Growing up in Menlo Park, she won gold at age 14 at the Pan-American Games in Chicago in 1959. The next year, she swam in a preliminary round for the victorious U.S. 400-meter medley relay team at the Rome Olympics. But after, like other young women of her time, she returned to hometown salutes and little more.

She left the pool and later attended Stanford, graduating in 1979. Nearly two decades later, she co-founded the American Basketball League. It was a professional women’s organization that operated for two-plus seasons from 1996 to 1998 before folding in part because of competition from the newly formed Women’s National Basketball Association, created and backed financially by the NBA. “After years of seeing women’s college basketball seniors get roses on their home court and then disappear overseas to play professionally, we decided to do something about it,” recalls Cribbs, now 77. “We started the ABL so little girls can see themselves as professional basketball players right here at home, and for all the women my age who played three-bounce basketball because in my day it wasn’t believed women could run the full length of a basketball court.”

More than Athletics As much as it benefited female athletes, Title IX addressed all aspects of education. As Cribbs says, “It’s not just about sports opportunities. It’s about finance, medicine, law. The parity Title IX seeks to effect brings women into college in general, and then into the workforce, who wouldn’t otherwise have been.”

One of those academic and professional fields was music. When Stanford

• upset Ohio State and Michigan in the 1971 and 1972 Rose Bowls, none of the schools’ bands included women. At the time, it appeared the norm; a 2014 article in the Columbus Dispatch reported that before Title IX, “college marching bands typically were reserved for men.”

Not that the Stanford band hadn’t tried — at least, well, once. Stanford was founded as a coed institution, and a 1947 article in the Stanford Daily invited female musicians to join their male counterparts.

It’s not clear that any did; until the 1960s, the band was a traditional, fraternal, military-style marching unit. The sixties’ dismantling of cultural norms gave rise to the band’s irreverent halftime themes and wild scramble formations that many Stanford fans still cherish. Nontheless, women remained absent.

Until Title IX. “By the early 1970s, we were deep in protest of the Vietnam war, and the mindset was anti-establishment,” remembers Greg Hall, a retired Southern California banker who played clarinet in Stanford’s band from 1971 to 1975. This time, though, it was that very establishment — notably Republican President Richard Nixon, who signed Title IX — that in 1972 was compelling bands and other collegiate organizations to admit women. “Eventually,” Hall says, “we fell in line.”

In that fall of 1972, freshman Jacki Williams-Jones, another clarinetist, became one of only six Stanford women who took the field with an instrument. A year later, she was the first band member to join Stanford’s athletic dance troupe, the Dollies. She says she might not have attempted the latter but for the encouragement of her male bandmates.

“Those guys my freshman year not only spoiled me; they gave me the courage to try different things,” says Williams-Jones, who earned a master’s degree in education and spent a three-decade ca-

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Jacki Williams-Jones

“Those guys my freshman year not only spoiled me; they gave me the courage to try different things. They continue to this day to be there for me in the best and the worst of times.” reer teaching high-school French. “They continue to this day to be there for me in the best and the worst of times.”

The director who oversaw the transition was Dr. Arthur P. Barnes, whose rock-and-roll arrangements turned marching-band music upside down during the 1960s and 1970s. Today, Russ Gavin is the Dr. Arthur P. Barnes Director of Bands at Stanford. For him, having women in the band is a no-brainer.

“Bands are great environments for coeducation,” he says. “In their best iterations, they cross the gender spectrum of working together. Music has been historically sexist, and the gendered nature of music is a long-carried burden. I’m thankful for Title IX entering the university landscape. The absence of female voices in an ensemble would be a significant void.”

Gavin’s assessment of music’s historical sexism is well-founded. Although

major groups such as the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra hired women starting in the 1920s, the London Symphony and the Vienna Philharmonic appointed their first female members in 1975 and 2003, respectively.

Until perhaps the last 30 years, the jazz world also frequently shunned women other than singers and piano players. It may not be coincidental that current stars such as violinist Regina Carter, clarinetist and saxophonist Anat Cohen and trombonist Natalie Cressman emerged from college music programs post-Title IX. Splitting the Pie Whether for music, history or physics, all educational institutions must answer to accountants. The most obvious and difficult challenge for high-school and college athletic departments is allocating funds for women while still supporting men, especially at schools that field expensive football programs. Stanford, an early adopter of Title IX, incorporated women’s sports into its previous athletic administration and immediately enlisted the savvy and devotion of its alumni to raise money for scholarships.

Today, the university takes pride in its robust offerings for both women and men.

Even so, coaching legend Tara VanDerveer believes the school needs to do more.

“Stanford is still working hard to have gender equity,” says VanDerveer, the Setsuko Ishiyama Director of Women's Basketball. “The challenge for Stanford and basically all universities and high schools is built-in bias and the financial challenge.

“Yes, there has been progress,” VanDerveer continues. “But we are 50 years into this legislation, and you would be hard-pressed to find any major program in compliance.”

An oft-cited criticism of Title IX has been that male athletes in sports beyond

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football and basketball have paid the price when their programs have been cut to free up money for women’s teams.

Hogshead-Makar doesn’t buy it. “I had a son first,” she says, “and then his twin sisters were born.

My son didn’t lose anything, but he did have to learn how to share resources. It’s part of being a good citizen.”

VanDerveer says an ironic Tara VanDerveer - Photo courtesy of Stanford Athletics result of the rise of women’s collegiate athletics has come in the coaching ranks. “One of the unintended consequences of Title IX has been that because coaching women has become lucrative, men have taken a large majority of the jobs,” she says. “This is very unfortunate for both the female coaches and the young girls who don’t bennationwide initiatives are so sweeping that efit from female role models.”

The growing number of men in wom- the term “Title IX” may now stand more en’s sports has coincided with increased for safeguards than opportunities.

That bothers Hogshead-Makar, whose reports of sexual harassment, abuse and advocacy now includes cases of sexual assault. Recent cases have involved highly publicized scandals within USA Gym- abuse and assault. She alleges the shift nastics, Michigan State University and San has allowed many institutions to reduce or abandon their efforts toward athletic Jose State.

The first legal action that tied harass- equality.

“Right now,” she says, “across the ment to discrimination went to trial in United States, 200,000 women are still 1980. A group of five Yale students employed Title IX’s protections to sue the being denied college opportunities that university over alleged improprieties by a rightfully belong to them.”

High schools also appear to be strugflute instructor, an English professor and gling with Title IX. “Despite its 50-year a hockey coach. The women lost the case but won their objectives; Yale established history designed to address inequalities, a grievance system and the courts agreed and despite a massive amount of progress,” that sexual harassment equaled illegal sex- says Sean Priest, principal of Sequoia High School in Redwood City, “we have not ual discrimination. achieved equity.”

Nonetheless, he adds, “Title IX has been Losing Momentum?

Today, Stanford and many other institu- a valuable compass in guiding us through tions devote considerable means to sen- the challenges — number of teams, facility sitivity training as well as investigating space, availability of coaches — in offercomplaints and supporting victims. The ing the valuable and formative experience

of sports to more who wish to participate, and in helping us to change outmoded perceptions of what women and men do best.”

Title IX’s reach has been extensive, but still applies only to educational endeavors that receive federal funds. Other institutions, such as the Olympics, lie beyond its authority.

Hogshead-Makar recently joined a United States Olympic Committee-sponsored commission to address potential abuse of its female athletes. Currently, she and her organization, Champion Women, are also studying Title IX’s implications for transgender athletes in women’s sports.

“Title IX set clear direction regarding sex, where sex and gender identity are the same,” she says. “But now, with fluid gender identity, we have sex and biology — specifically the unfair competitive advantage of testosterone — coming into question.”

Produced by both sexes but in far greater volume by men, testosterone affects growth, among other bodily functions. Testosterone-suppression drugs greatly reduce strength, lean body mass and muscle area in transgender women.

Earlier this year, however, the International Olympic Committee reversed its previous policy that required at least a year of testosterone suppression for transgender female athletes, and punted the issue to the governing bodies of individual sports.

“The challenge for Stanford and basically all universities and high schools is built-in bias and the financial challenge. Yes, there has been progress, but we are 50 years into this legislation, and you would be hard-pressed to find any major program in compliance.”

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Reflections of an Athletic Woman Among Title IX’s many successes, it has changed how women view themselves and their accomplishments. Cribbs recalls a telling moment from 1995, when Stanford awarded 2,200 “Block S” varsity letters to women who had competed before Title IX. The university invited three ath-

• letes from different eras to speak: Cribbs, the Olympian, who didn’t swim for Stanford but graduated in 1979; me, an alumna from 1983; and Anne Wicks, a volleyball player at the time.

“I spoke about having no vision of women athletes attending college,” Cribbs says. “You spoke about wondering if you deserved the scholarship you were given and doing everything you could to be worthy of it. Anne Wicks essentially said, ‘I earned this, and I deserve it.’”

Title IX’s greatest legacy may be twofold. First, it illuminated vast and continuing inequities. That was vital, because before we can create change, we must see the need. Second, and even more powerful, it reinforced and extended our society’s fundamental belief in equality: Our belief that as women — for ourselves, our daughters and sons, their fathers and each other — we have and deserve the right to equal play and equal pay. Our belief that that principle extends to everything from playing soccer to playing the trombone, from studying, writing and speaking to coaching and teaching. And perhaps most of all, our belief that we have an inalienable right to receive equal access to education in all its forms, free of harassment and stereotypes.

We’ll still working on it. But here’s more evidence of progress. To celebrate Title IX’s fiftieth anniversary, Stanford this fall will induct Tara VanDerveer and eight other women into the first all-female class in the university’s athletic hall of fame. C

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“Title IX has been a valuable compass in guiding us through the challenges — number of teams, facility space, availability of coaches — in offering the valuable and formative experience of sports to more who wish to participate, and in helping us to change outmoded perceptions of what women and men do best.”

Sequoia High senior Natalie Gebhart leads her team on a practice run along Cañada Road.

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Sailing for Charity

By Jim Kirkland Redwood City attorney Ted Hannig has three passions — the law, sailing and philanthropy. He co-founded the Sequoia Awards, which honor volunteers in greater Redwood City, and chairs the Danford Fisher Hannig Foundation, which supports numerous local causes.

In addition, he sits on the boards of various charities, including the Sequoia Hospital Foundation and Kainos, a home and training center for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

In 2006, Hannig found himself unexpectedly involved in yet another cause — one that captured his love for sailing. It came through Redwood City's Sequoia Yacht Club, of which Hannig is a longstanding member.

“It happened that the normal Wednesday-night sailboat race was on my birthday that year,” Hannig says. “One friend wanted to help me put on a dinner for 100 people as a birthday gift, and another wanted to donate money.”

Hannig wanted to honor three friends who had passed away: Pete Uccelli, owner of the former Pete’s Harbor Marina, and fellow yacht-club members Martin McDonough and David Crevelt. Hannig had an idea: Hold both a dinner and a race that encouraged fellow sailors to solicit contributions. Hannig asked if Sequoia Yacht Club members would be up for turning the next boat race into a fundraising event. All replied with a hearty “Aye!” The first campaign, titled the "Give Something Back Race," was intended as a one-time gig. It garnered $25,000. Its success inspired Hannig and crew to keep the ships sailing. After a couple of years, club member Kate Humphries surprised the assembly with a trophy that dubbed the race the “Hannig Cup.” The 2022 Cup, on August 13, charted the event’s seventeenth year and drew its largest crowd ever. More than 170 people attended, and the occasion raised $3.7 million — nearly the total for the previous 16 years. To date, the Hannig Cup has collected more than $7.4 million for charity.

Hannig’s law firm and other sponsors such as Black Mountain Properties of San Carlos have also come through with substantial donations. All monies go directly to designated charities. More than 100 causes have benefited, including the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Doctors Without Borders, the St. Francis Center, the Ron Davis Autism Foundation and multiple youth organizations, to name a few.

The event is 100-percent volunteer-run; ticket sales for the dinner support the Sequoia Yacht Club Junior Sailing Program. For the sailboat race, participants collect money for the charities of their choice.

Foundations frequently match those gifts and provide even more.

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Ted Hannig

Event organizer Kathleen Harris says the club offers fundraising challenges beyond racing. For instance, if each crew member wears a certain designated color, $100 is raised. This year, each boat flying the Ukrainian flag earned $1,000. Past events have encouraged costumes and decorations, such as a pirate theme years ago.

Recently, the organization announced the creation of the Hannig Cup Foundation, which will continue supporting selected charities and advocating for the most vulnerable, from people to the marine environment. Also, in 2015, Hannig sold his home in Woodside and purchased 100 acres of primary-growth rain forest in Dolphin Bay, Bocas del Toro Province, Panama. Recently, he donated the parcel to the Institute for Tropical Ecology and Conservation (ITEC).

“I have treated this property as my child,” Hannig says.

“I have done my best to nurture it, protect it and prepare it for the future. But there comes a time as a parent when you know it is your time to step back. If you have done your job well, the

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M I C R O C L I M AT E •

future is something to behold and believe in, to be amazed by and not to fear. That’s been the case with my daughter and now with this property.”

According to The Bocas Breeze, a local Panamanian news outlet, the donated acreage was conservatively valued at $3 million, and the property’s rare woods and animals caused appraisers to estimate a worth of up to $14 million.

According to its website, ITEC “provides field courses in tropical ecology to college undergraduates and graduate students. The courses offered include coral reef ecology, primate ecology, rainforest and canopy ecology, Neotropical herpetology, tropical bird ecology, animal behavior and canopy access techniques, among others. ITEC’s educational reach is international, and it has received students from all over the world; 42 countries and counting.”

put it back into place. Similarly, disjointed fragments that demarcated the final resting place of George and Willie Bullivant, who died in early childhood around 120 years ago, have been reassembled by the V. Fotana Company of Colma.

All the improvements, Klebe adds, help make the landmark cemetery more accessible and interesting for visitors. After all, the grounds capture much of the mid-Peninsula’s early history and connect today’s residents with people whose lives may still touch them in unexpected ways.

In Woodside’s early days, for example, the Dalve family owned what is today the Pioneer Saloon. Descendants still reside in the area, Klebe says. She recently got their permission to have their family’s wooden markers repainted by Redwood City parks department employee Benny Morales, who volunteered his time. Along with another wooden memorial, the markers have been treated with a preservative to keep them from deteriorating further.

Reassembling History and Though decades have passed since Personal Connection at the Cloud put out the call, Klebe thinks residents Union Cemetery may have a headstone or perhaps a decorative cemetery item and not realize where it

By Janet McGovern came from. “I think people don’t know what Three decades ago, Redwood City’s historthey have stored if they’ve put their tools or ic Union Cemetery was a mess of untendrakes on it,” she says. Perhaps a family has ed overgrowth and vandalized graves and inherited a house and found an old headstone monuments. Local resident Jean Cloud, who in the garage but didn’t know where it came had labored for years to get the cemetery on from. Klebe wants to assure people their Woodside Road both recognition and resdiscoveries will be cared for. She encourages Benny Morales toration, told a newspaper reporter in 1991 people who think they may have a piece of the that the situation was so bad that families had removed their fore- old cemetery to email her at kathy@historicunioncemetery.com. bears’ headstones. “People take these things,” Cloud said. “They C say, ‘When it’s safe, I’ll take them back to the cemetery.’”

Spin forward to 2022. Kathy Klebe, today’s cemetery board president, wants anybody who may have a headstone or other marker stashed away in a garage or toolshed to know it’s safe to bring it back. Not only is the cemetery now on the National Register of Historic Places in a much better state of repair, Klebe says, but several restoration projects have recently put “puzzle pieces” back together.

For years, many stray chunks of granite, marble and wood have been stored in a windmill on the cemetery grounds. Klebe found what turned out to be the missing top piece of the monument for the Eikerenkotter family from the nineteenth century.

People from the Roman Marble Company of Redwood City have

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SPOTLIGHT•

Cops vs.

San Mateo County’s rugged shore kept smugglers a step ahead during Prohibition.

By Jim Clifford Missed the Ken Burns PBS series on Prohibition? No worries.

For a glimpse of the Roaring Twenties, just take a walk on the wild side — to the remote bluffs and hidden beaches of the San Mateo County coast. Long before surfers discovered Mavericks, rumrunners rode the pounding waves to bring illicit liquor to the Peninsula and San Francisco.

Photo coutesy Redwood City Libray Archieves

16 · CLIMATE · September 2022

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SPOTLIGHT•

Bootleggers L

ike much of the California shoreline, the San Mateo County seaboard was a natural for smugglers.

The Coast Guard had difficulty enforcing the National Prohibition Act, which lasted from 1920 to 1933. One steamer, the Ardenza, brought in 25,000 cases of Scotch in 1924 on a voyage that extended from Scotland through the Panama Canal.

Most ocean-borne booze, however, came from Canada. Half Moon Bay offered an excellent entry point because of the area’s many landing sites, nearby roads and sparsely populated settlements.

Violent encounters between bootleggers and the authorities were frequent. Author June Morrall recalls one such fight on her website, “Half Moon Bay Memories.”

The Coast Guard boarded a smuggler’s

boat near Moss Beach, took the vessel in tow, and left only one sailor to supervise the seized ship. The crooks overpowered him, cut the towline and sped away. The crew on the Coast Guard cutter let go with rifles, machine guns and a deck gun, but the lawbreakers managed to outdistance their pursuers in the dark. The next morning, hatches and wreckage floated ashore, proof that the gunfire had, at the least, hit the fleeing boat.

One of the more interesting coastal remnants of the nation’s dry spell sits near Shelter Cove in Pacifica. There, government agents blasted shut an abandoned railroad tunnel that bootleggers used for a warehouse. Author Barbara VanderWerf recounted the saga of the tunnel in her book, “Montara Mountain.”

“At night, rumrunners took over the cove, known then as Smuggler’s Cove, to off-load thousands of bottles of illegal whiskey from Canadian ships,” she wrote.

“The next day, the whiskey was for sale in San Francisco speakeasies.”

The 354-foot-long tunnel was built by the Ocean Shore Railroad, an ill-fated venture designed to link San Francisco with Santa Cruz. The railroad, whose slogan was “Reaches the Beaches,” lasted from 1907 to 1920, when autos increasingly lured away passengers. Faced with continuing mudslides, the company never completed its 75-mile route down the coast.

Speakeasies Were Everywhere In addition to the railroad tunnel, other reminders remain from the Gatsby age.

September 2022

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• Mitch Postel, president of the San Mateo County Historical Association, says visitors shouldn’t be surprised.

“On the coastside, at various times, nearly every prominent building served as a speakeasy — even (Pacifica’s) historic Sanchez Adobe,” he says.

Among the most popular haunts today is the lively Moss Beach Distillery, which overlooks the ocean from a cliff that once shielded smugglers. The restaurant boasts a fabled flapper ghost known as “The Blue Lady,” who, some say, wanders the beach in search of her lover. Built in 1927 by Frank Torres, whom Morrall describes as a “Peruvian world traveler,” the establishment was originally dubbed “Frank’s Place.” According to legend, the clientele, said to include mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, was so influential that the place was never raided.

Other spots known for their shady past include the Miramar Beach Restaurant, called the Miramar Hotel during Prohibition. It was designed specifically as a speakeasy, complete with revolving cabinets and other secret compartments for booze. An imposing private residence in Pacifica known today as “Sam’s Castle” was called “Chateau LaFayette,” popular not only for its alcohol but also its restaurant and dance floor. The operators were rumored to be so confident of avoiding arrest that they signaled boats when to bring their illegal cargo ashore.

Hoarders Were the First Targets Before bootlegging, the era’s main source of liquor was not “rotgut,” but, rather, good stuff stashed by rich people who had planned for Prohibition. Shortly after booze was outlawed, newspapers carried numerous stories about private stocks stolen from homes.

In a research paper in 1978, Eileen Wieland, a student at the College of San Mateo, reported that such thefts occurred

18 · CLIMATE · September 2022

SPOTLIGHT•

The Moss Beach Distillery during Prohibition.

The coast’s reminders of the Gatsby age include the Moss Beach Distillery, which boasts a flapper ghost known as “The Blue Lady.” Some say she wanders the beach in search of her lover. almost daily in the early years of Prohibition. Fame provided no safety shield.

Wieland wrote that the San Mateo home of Bank of America founder A.P. Giannini was hit in January 1920 by brazen but disappointed bandits who found only wine.

They left a note reading, “We’re looking for booze. We don’t like your vino.”

Still, it was the contraband artists and their customers who stole headlines with colorful tales that were sure to bait news reporters. Take the case, no pun intended, of Jack Mori, who hired an armada of small boats to haul liquor to a dock at what is now Pacifica. In 1921, police confiscated $50,000 worth of alcohol, including 1,000 cases of whiskey, at Mori’s roadhouse. It constituted one of Prohibition’s richest seizures in the county.

Lighthouse keepers had a bird’seye panorama of many operations. Jessie Mygrants Davis, daughter of Pigeon Point’s assistant keeper, called the smugglers “quite ruthless men.”

Davis is quoted in “Shipwrecks, Scalawags, and Scavengers: The Storied Waters of Pigeon Point,” by JoAnn Semones of Half Moon Bay. The chronicles include the story of the night Davis’s father, Jesse Mygrants, was forced at gunpoint to drive a band of rumrunners eight miles down the coast.

“They were audacious enough to use the lighthouse derrick to unload their ships,” Davis recalled. “They always came on moonlight nights, so we could see them clearly.”

How Did Prohibition Happen?

Accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 1928, Herbert Hoover said of Prohibition, “Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.” If that was true, then San Mateo County could have been considered a laboratory. It had all the ingredients — hijackings, stills, gunfights

• and speakeasies. In that sense, it reflected much of the nation.

Experiments are supposed to produce answers. To many members of the generations that followed Prohibition, the biggest question was this: How did the United States get to the point that alcohol was outlawed?

The temperance movement stretched back to the early 1800s. But historian Daniel Okrent, author of “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition,” believes its ultimate genius was Wayne Wheeler, an attorney and leader of the Anti-Saloon League, founded in 1893 in Oberlin, Ohio. Okrent says Wheeler was able to bring together groups that on the surface seemed directly opposed to one another.

Writing in Smithsonian Magazine in 2010, Okrent observed, “Wheeler’s devotion to the dream of a dry America accommodated any number of unlikely allies.

These groups included the Ku Klux Klan, which joined the radical Industrial Workers of the World in the drive against liquor.

The Klan’s anti-liquor sentiment was rooted in its hatred of the immigrant masses in liquor-soaked cities; the IWW believed liquor was a capitalist weapon used to keep the working classes in a stupor. Anti-German hostility in World War I also played a part. A dry Wisconsin politician named John Strange said the ‘worst of all our German enemies … are Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz and Miller.’”

Okrent wrote further that Wheeler’s organization made common cause with social reformers who wanted to wrest political control of cities from forces they thought purchased the immigrant vote through saloons. Suffragists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought not only for a woman’s right to vote, but also, through the temperance movement, sought to prevent the wages of working wives (money that legally belonged to their husbands) from filling the cash registers of corner

SPOTLIGHT•

“Wheeler’s devotion to the dream of a dry America accommodated any number of unlikely allies. These groups included the Ku Klux Klan, which joined the radical Industrial Workers of the World in the drive against liquor." bars. Prohibitionists also joined racists whose greatest fear, Okrent said, was a black man “with a bottle in one hand and a ballot in the other.”

Who Really Supported Prohibition?

California’s legislature ratified the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, joining counterparts in every other state except Rhode Island. But popular support may have remained tepid. Gary Kamiya, author of “Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco,” wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2018 that the City trailed only New York in its wide-open acceptance of unlawful boozing. Kamiya wrote that the Anti-Saloon League “argued falsely” that Californians beyond the San Francisco-centered “whiskey strip” backed Prohibition.

As the Peninsula grew to become a San Francisco suburb during the first two decades of the 1900s, residents may have objected more to drinking establishments than to drinking per se. In 2007, the Redwood City Public Library Archives Committee published “Redwood City: A Hometown History.” In a chapter titled “Saloons, Breweries and Bordellos,” now-retired Redwood City librarian Mary K. Spore-Alhadef explored the county’s quest for respectability.

After the 1906 earthquake, Spore-Alhadef wrote, families began moving south from San Francisco. Many who left behind the City’s highly visible vices brought with them an early version of what later became known as “family values.” As their number grew, Spore-Al-

hadef said, sentiment “began to turn against the saloon.” Even so, increasingly popular fraternal organizations began to supplant taverns as places where self-described “family men” could indulge in alcohol-fueled conviviality.

It all came crashing down — officially, at least — on January 17, 1920, when Prohibition took effect. The “noble experiment” lasted nearly 14 years until its repeal at 5:32 p.m. on December 5, 1933. At that moment, ready to lift a glass but also weighted by the Great Depression and the nascent threat of Nazism, President Franklin D. Roosevelt summed up the national mood.

“What America needs now,” he said, “is a drink.” C

C

Saturday, Oct. 1 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

451 Seaport Court, Redwood City, CA Enjoy a fun-filled day on the bay Oct. 1 at PortFest!

Scan to learn more.

FREE WATERFRONT FAMILY FESTIVAL

September 2022

· CLIMATE · 19

•

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT•

New Scooter Program Gets Traction Jessica Manzi, Redwood City’s transportation manager, reports that riders rented the town’s 250 new electric scooters 3,776 times in just three weeks after their introduction July 15. The scooters are provided by Bird, a “shared micromobility” company in Santa Monica whose advertising proclaims, “Give gas the bird.”

Manzi recently answered Climate’s questions about the new initiative.

Why this program?

It’s another non-driving option for short trips in town. We want driving to represent less than 50 percent of all trips by 2040.

Does the city get a cut?

The city receives 15 percent of the revenue per trip.

How does it work?

First, you install Bird’s mobile app on your smartphone. The ride costs $1 to start, and then 49 cents per minute, with a $3.50 minimum (a 5-minute ride).

Bird’s community pricing program offers various discounts.

A few tech details?

Bird’s electric scooters can travel about 20 miles when fully charged, with a maximum speed of 15 mph. They also have an identifying barcode and contact information, along with a GPS device that communicates their location.

Scooters are seen parked, or left, all over. Shouldn’t riders be returning them?

Riders do not have to return them to a specific location — but they have to stay within Redwood City’s service area (shown on the app). We will soon be working with Bird to assign parking spots for scooters in high-demand areas such as downtown and the Caltrain station.

Hair Love Step back two years, when local historian Dee Eva took seven-year-old grandson Ricci (pronounced Richie) and his brother, James, to Minnesota to visit family. There, Ricci and James met with cousin Enzo, who in turn introduced them his friend, Parker, who was being treated for leukemia and had lost his hair. Upon returning home, Ricci vowed that he would let his hair grow so he could donate it to Locks of Love, an organization that makes wigs for cancer patients who lose their hair through chemotherapy.

Between then and now, Ricci grew his hair to 14 inches in length, before giving it all up to a buzz cut to help cancer patients.

20 · CLIMATE · September 2022

•

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT•

Family Camping Without Leaving the Neighborhood Kids and parents tried roughing it — after a fashion — at the Redwood City and San Carlos family campouts at Red Morton Park and Burton Park in July and August.

Like the food and entertainment, the tent cities at both locations were impressive.

Redwood City firefighters flamed up burgers and hotdogs, as did the San Carlos Lions Club. Parents tended sleeping bags and tents while kids ran and played. Later, fire pits provided just the right heat for that great camp tradition, S’mores.

Games, live entertainment and stargazing at the RWC camp were mirrored at Burton Park, where a big-screen showing of the Disney film, “Encanto,” capped the evening.

September 2022 ·

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•

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT•

Sequoia High Alums Celebrate The Sequoia High School Alumni Association held its fifteenth annual picnic and barbecue fundraiser on Aug. 20. All alumni were invited; representatives attended from the classes of 1944 through 1998.

Campus tours were led by principal Sean Priest, and the day included performances by the school’s choir and cheerleaders.

A classic car show delighted more-seasoned alums, who remembered driving the flashy sets of wheels when they were new. As in past years, Bruce Utecht, Class of 1985, served as master of ceremonies.

Many from the Class of 1972 were on hand to celebrate their fiftieth graduation anniversary, and members of the Class of 1962 observed their sixtieth. “It's such a great time for people to visit and catch up with old friends,” said alumni president Ken Rolandelli.

Above: The class of 1962 held a pre-picnic gathering at Harry's Hofbrau in Redwood City.

Above: Graduates admired classic cars, many of them from their youth.

Sequoia Hotel Prepares for a Name-Flip and a Facelift The Redwood City Downtown Business Group on August 9 hosted a presentation of the proposed renovation of the 110-year-old Sequoia Hotel, on the corner of Main and Broadway. Dani Gasparini, principal in the project along with husband Alyn Beals, described how the inside of the hotel’s façade will be reconstructed to create seven stories that will house 82 rooms. Also included will be a ground-floor restaurant and a top-floor bar, both open to the public. The vision is of a “boutique” inn, rather than a mainstream hotel. The new establishment will be aimed toward corporate visitors and will carry a rate of $650 to $750 per weeknight (Gasparini and Beals expect cheaper stays on the weekends).

“This is more than a development project for Alyn and me,” Gasparini told the audience. “We want this to be a legacy to our history and love for Redwood City.”

The anticipated new name: Hotel Sequoia, the original name from 1912.

More information: www. hotelsequoiarwc.com

22 · CLIMATE · September 2022

Artist’s rendering of the proposed renovation and expansion.

Dani Gasparini

•

A NEW DATE!

Saturday, December 10th, 2022 from 10 am - 6 pm

C L I M AT E •

Hometown Holidays is back!

Come prepared to enjoy a kid's carnival, vendors, food & beverages, Santa photo opportunity and a "Hallmark" parade.

Redwood City Library Foundation Fundraiser

An Upscale Pub Crawl “Pub-Libations“

In Recognition of Banned Books Week Stroll downtown and enjoy libations at different drinking establishments. Each pub will feature a banned book and discounted beverages.

In 1922, there were speakeasies - pubs had to quietly let people know where they could share a drink. In 2022, we are making sure libraries don't become speakeasies for banned books!

Event Info:

Wednesday, Sep. 21, 2022 5-8 pm, Tickets: $50

Tickets:

Crawl begins at Downtown Library, 1044 Middlefi fieeld Road, Redwood City

September 2022

· CLIMATE · 23

•

24 · CLIMATE · September 2022

PROFILE •

•

PROFILE •

Blind Ambition At 21, singer and inspirational speaker Chris Duffley shrugs off his autism and lack of sight.

By Scott Dailey

How’s this for irony? The song that launched Chris Duffley’s career was called “Open the Eyes of My Heart.”

Then again, maybe it’s not so strange after all. The tune, a Christian pop standard from 2001, is about trying to see God. Literally speaking, that’s not possible, at least in this life. But there are many ways to perceive.

And Duffley has mastered quite a few.

S

tart with hearing. It helps that he has perfect pitch, which a music teacher and therapist discovered when Duffley was seven. Then there’s touch and dexterity. Duffley’s father, Steve, says Chris can tap on his iPhone’s Braille keypad faster than most sighted people can wiggle their thumbs. He also possesses a keen understanding of technology, which has led to a side job that may become Duffley’s ultimate calling — testing websites to help make them accessible to people with vision loss.

If anything, the tech explosion of the past 40 years made May 19, 2001, a pretty good day to be born. It’s safe to say Duffley’s life and career would be far different without computers and especially the Internet. A video of Duffley singing “Open the Eyes of My Heart” at age 10 in his native New Hampshire has attracted more than 3.6 million views over the last 11 years. That clip and others, including films of three performances of the Star-Spangled Banner at Boston’s Fenway Park, led to singing and speaking engagements nationwide; the Covid pandemic forced the cancellation of a planned tour to South America and Asia in 2020.

Photo courtesy of Grace Wise Photography

September 2022

· CLIMATE · 25

• The continuing gigs will include a performance at Redwood City’s Fox Theatre on Sunday afternoon, September 11. Information is available at www.foxrwc.com.

Duffley’s birth date may have shown good timing, but the circumstances were something else. His birth parents both had drug problems. Duffley arrived more than two months prematurely. He weighed just 1 pound, 12 ounces. His blindness also resulted from his far-too-early birth. According to Steve, Chris spent 100 days in the neonatal unit at a Florida hospital. It seemed a miracle that he lived long enough even to be adopted by Steve and his wife, Christine, who brought him to their home in Manchester, N.H., in August 2002.

Calling Steve and Christine devout Catholics is like saying Beethoven was a pretty good composer. Both say their faith gave them the courage to take Chris in.

Christine, especially, says she was wary of having a “savior complex.” When she first saw Chris, he was just short of a year old and was back in the hospital with double pneumonia. The enormity of what she and Steve were considering filled her with understandable anxiety.

She turned where she always did — to prayer.

“I believe God spoke to my heart,” she says. “He told me, ‘Do not be afraid.

I will take care of everything.’ And I received that as a sign of trust that everything was going to be okay if I stepped out in faith to bring Chris into the family.”

The decision was difficult for another reason, as well. The Duffleys already had four other kids under the age of 10. Before adopting Chris, Steve and Christine

26 · CLIMATE · September 2022

PROFILE •

His birth parents both had drug problems. Duffley arrived more than two months prematurely. He weighed just 1 pound, 12 ounces.

His blindness also resulted from his far-too-early birth.

The newborn spent 100 days in the neonatal unit at a Florida hospital. asked how they felt about having a new baby brother who was blind and would need extra love and attention. The response: A unanimous thumbs-up.

When Chris was seven years old and starting first grade, there came additional news: He had autism. The diagnosis wasn’t completely unexpected; among other things, it explained why Chris had banged his head on the floor as a toddler, and was currently poking his eyes, living in his own world and conversing only by repeating what people said to him.

One thing Cristine and Steve didn’t believe was that Chris lacked intelligence. He had been labeled developmentally delayed, but Steve says that by age three or four Chris could already recite the capitals of all 50 states. He was especially attracted to sounds — both ones he could hear and ones he could amplify through the microphone of his kiddie karaoke machine.

In fact, he was falling in love with electronic gadgets, and microphones in particular. Christine’s mother, Ann Matchekosky, whom Steve describes as the family’s “respite and help,” was a church music leader. While driving Chris to physical therapy and other appointments, she sang in the car and taught him to harmonize.

With that, it might have been serendipity — or maybe not — that the family was seated in the audience when a police detective named Joe Hoadley started singing Chris’s favorite song at a gathering of Eight Days of Hope, a Christian relief organization that was helping to rebuild the small Mississippi town of Bay St. Louis four months after Hurricane Katrina blew much of it into the Gulf of Mexico.

On that night in December 2005, the now-retired Hoadley — Steve says the bad guys in Meridian, Miss., called him “Scarface,” after the Al Pacino movie character — began the soft, contemplative lyrics to “Open the Eyes of My Heart.” Chris gazed at Steve, who scooped him out of his chair and carried him to the makeshift stage. Chris sang next to Hoadley, who shortly handed him the mic. Steve says, “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”

(Hoadley is not the same Joseph Hoad-

•

PROFILE •

son, who attended regular ley, a fired police officer in classes with the help of a Caldwell, Id., who currently paraprofessional starting faces charges of roughing in kindergarten. Christine up suspects and tampering says much of what the with documents.)

Duffleys consider their The invitations started ministry focuses on enflowing in to sing at churchcouraging other parents to es, conventions, sporting create high expectations. events and disability-relat“We know we inspire ed occasions. Teamsters others in their faith jourUnion Local 25 in Boston ney, with people that have had adopted autism as a families with children with charitable cause, and flew special needs,” Christine Chris and Steve to the orsays. “We inspire them to ganization’s international Duffley joined with members of the special-needs ministry at raise the bar.” convention in Las Vegas in First Baptist Concord Church in Knoxville, Tenn.

Chris, too, sees his July 2011. Chris sang the work as a religious calling. Not long ago, National Anthem, and the cheers began as he founded an Internet-based Christian he approached the climactic high note in radio station where he spreads his mesthe song’s next-to-last line. A week later, sage and spins his favorite songs. Of his he sang the Star-Spangled Banner again, career and his unanticipated celebrity, he when the Boston Red Sox asked him to says, “It wasn’t really to make me known. perform for the team’s Disability AwareIt was to make God known.” ness Night.

The current phase may not last forIn 2017, he was invited by the Caever, at least not exclusively. Chris still nucks Autism Network, founded by the loves the road, but a new cause beckons co-owners of the Vancouver Canucks But it hasn’t been universal. Chris — making the digital world more accessiNational Hockey League team, to sing Andrea Bocelli’s arrangement of the Ital- was recently taken aback by an encounter ble to people with disabilities, especially ian folk tune, “Con Te Partirò.” With with a grocery clerk in Manchester. He those with visual impairments. This year, one rehearsal, he sang harmony with the understands she was trying to be nice. he earned a certification to test websites’ world-renowned Canadian vocal group, Nonetheless, he was a bit miffed when compatibility with “screen readers,” the Tenors, and then joined them with an- she told him, “It’s good you’re able to get which transform Internet content into audio and Braille. other of Chris’s favorite tunes, “Lean on out and go places.”

“That statement, in particular — I felt One thing is certain: It’s not for nothMe,” by Bill Withers.

The Duffleys and Chris’s teachers and really awkward,” Chris says. “Because I ing that the Canucks Autism Network is therapists all say Chris was well-accepted was, like, I can go out,” he says, empha- usually shortened to “CAN.” For Chris, it’s no big deal — just the way life should by his siblings and schoolmates. Once the sizing “can.”

Another frequent misconception be. His continuing ambition is to build inother kids got over the inevitable awkwardness, Chris, who graduated from about disability — especially autism — is dependence for the visually impaired. “I high school two years ago, was just anoth- that it equates with low intelligence. (A feel inspired,” he says. “I want to make a er student who happened to carry a cane T-shirt for the hearing-impaired succinct- change in certain things.” C and sometimes slept in class (especially ly expresses the resulting frustration. “I’m history). Steve and Christine say the two deaf,” it reads, “not stupid.”) Christine of them are naturally positive, “yes, we and Steve credit Chris’s teachers and therapists for consistently challenging their can” kinds of people.

“We know we inspire others in their faith journey, with people that have families with children with special needs. We inspire them to raise the bar.”

September 2022

· CLIMATE · 27

•

FOOD by Susan Jenkins•

Grilled Nectarine Salad from Northern Italy A few years ago, after three weeks of touring Rome, Florence and Venice, I decided to venture from the main sites and journey to the small town of Gorgonzola, northeast of Milan. I was expecting four days of quiet reflection, and the quaint city of slightly more than 20,000 inhabitants did not disappoint. From its humble beginnings as a small station for changing horses, Gorgonzola has achieved worldwide renown, mostly for bequeathing its name to its highly regarded variety of blue cheese.

As I had hoped, Gorgonzola (the town) was an idyllic place to meander along twisting, narrow streets flanked by green-shuttered windows. Serenity enveloped me. I walked for hours, hearing only my sneakers crunching on the ground, children playing in parks and women laughing from three-story, yellow-brown houses whose kitchens gave off enticing aromas all day. Small cafes welcomed me with strong coffee and fresh food, offered with warm smiles and a compelling story or two.

I ate Gorgonzola cheese almost everywhere I went. It was smooth and lush, with a crumbly, soft texture and a nutty aroma. I thought that just looking at it could make it melt, and every bite seemed more succulent than the one before. I encountered Gorgonzola served over green salads and pasta dishes, and even on a cheeseburger. And it always perfectly complemented wines such as Bordeaux, Zinfandel and Sauternes.

This salad, a variation of one I had there, boasts the summery richness of Gorgonzola combined with grilled nectarines, toasted hazelnuts and fresh mint. It can make a complete lunch or a delightful preamble to either a simple or formal dinner. For those who have always wanted to visit (or revisit) Italy, it may create the tipping point for a memorable trip to one of the world’s great destinations for food. C

Grilled Nectarine Salad with Gorgonzola Cheese 4 ripe freestone nectarines or peaches 1/2 cup whole mint leaves 1/2 cup crumbled Gorgonzola A trickle of extra-virgin olive oil 3 tablespoons honey 1/2 cup toasted and roughly chopped hazelnuts A shake or two of Kosher salt 1. Preheat grill to medium-high.

2. Cut nectarines or peaches in half and remove the pits. Drizzle each section with a bit of oil, then grill until charred and warmed through, about 3 minutes per side.

3. Transfer the fruit to a serving platter. Drip honey over the top and add mint leaves.

Sprinkle with Gorgonzola, hazelnuts and Kosher salt.

28 · CLIMATE · September 2022

•

C L I M AT E •

Together, we design places that inspire people.

855 MAIN STREET

September 2022

· CLIMATE · 29

•

H I S T O•R YC LbI M y A J iTmE • Clifford•

1939 International Expo Featured Redwood City’s Futuristic Dwelling Redwood City was home to the “house of the future” during the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, an event that drew more than 10 million visitors to the new Treasure Island, constructed in the middle of San Francisco Bay for the festivities.

The Redwood City Tribune forecast that “during the next few months thousands from all over the nation will visit this beautiful residence” at 839 Blandford Boulevard. (Note the significant use of the number 39 in the address.) Current owners Hunter and Holly Volk have never seen that level of interest, but they concede the house in the Edgewood Park area is a traffic-stopper of sorts.

“This place is neighborhood central” during the summer, Hunter Volk says while standing next to a window that looks out onto a backyard that forms the center of his U-shaped home. The term “backyard” scarcely applies; it’s more of a patio or a plaza that, in the old Spanish tradition, was the gathering place for a town’s citizens.

During a quick tour of the 3,110-squarefoot home, reportedly designed by Menlo Park architect Arthur D. Janssen, Hunter pointed out many art-deco touches, including a built-in vanity in one bathroom.

Other reminders of times past are wall buzzers for summoning servants. Large windows and hardwood floors stand out as the dominant features of the three-bedroom, three-bath home.

“There are windows everywhere,” says prior owner Jodi Garehime. “I could have been the nosiest person in the neighborhood.

I could see everything going on around us.”

She and her husband Bill lived in the house for 33 years. “It was hard to leave,” Garehime adds. “We loved the place.”

30 · CLIMATE · September 2022

Garehime says she heard a one-third scale model of the house was displayed at the Treasure Island exposition, which celebrated the opening of the Golden Gate and Bay bridges. Technically, the event was not a “world’s fair,” an official designation reserved for the 1939 extravaganza held in New York.

The house was not in the best shape in 1983 when the Garehimes moved in. They had to sandblast gray paint, which covered the bricks that make up the home’s exterior signature. In addition, bushes had been allowed to grow wild and covered a few windows. Garehime says it was “a labor of love” to get 839 back to its original glory.

Built especially for the fair, the house was the pride of Redwood City. The Tribune of July 18, 1939, announced in oversized letters that the town had its “Own Model Exposition Home.” In fact, the house was one of many for the fair, according to the Redwood City Historical Resources Inventory, a 2019 report prepared for the city government. Certain Bay Area houses were designated “homes of the future” to show fair visitors from other parts of the country how Californians might

live. In addition to the Blandford house, other such homes on the Peninsula were in Burlingame, Menlo Park and Palo Alto.

The Tribune described the Redwood City house as “a modern adaptation of the early California period.” The house combined “simplicity with every modern feature of home construction,” the Tribune’s reporter continued, concluding that the “model home finds a perfect setting among the oaks.”

The San Francisco Chronicle featured an entire section on the homes, reporting that the Blandford house was the work of the local chamber of commerce and realty board. The Chronicle agreed with the Tribune that the house represented a variation of “the early California Hacienda.” In hindsight, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to see the “rancher” label looming for the “house of tomorrow.”

The 1939 price? According to the architectural publication Pencil Points, the house was listed at $12,000. An adjacent lot was included.

C

W

Hidden

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Each office is independently owned and operated.

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CLIMATE · 31

D

avies

APPLIANCE

The Davies Family has been doing business on the same block since 1916

Shop where designers, architects & contractors shop Always honest competitive pricing, industry wide selection and extraordinary assistance to guide you to your perfect kitchen, laundry or outdoor living space.

We have a full showroom of top name barbeques

daviesappliance.com • (650) 366-5728 • 1580 El Camino Real, Redwood City, CA 94063 Hours: Tuesday - Thursday 8:30am - 6pm • Friday & Saturday 8:30am - 5pm • Closed Sunday/Monday