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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2017
Scott Atherton: Turlock’s own historian BY ANGELINA MARTIN Turlock Journal
For nearly two decades, community members have been able to learn about Turlock’s past through the Journal’s history page, which features newspaper articles from past decades. The blast from the past gives readers a chance to see what life in Turlock was like back in the day, and it’s put together by the one-man team of Scott Atherton. Atherton, general manager of Turlock Memorial Park and Funeral Home, took over the history page in 1999 in hopes to receive access to microfilms of early Journal articles. Since he began, Atherton has covered almost 100 years of Turlock’s history. “It always seems like when I’m looking for something, something new is discovered,” said Atherton. “It’s kind of like learning a new word, and then all of a sudden you hear that word all the time.” To create the history page, Atherton goes through microfilms of past newspaper articles for the week he is working on. He tries to choose articles that readers will find interesting, he said, such as articles about specific locations or events around town that people can relate to. There are other criteria he looks for as well. “If they know names in the article, that’s what people find interesting,” said Atherton. “They can relate to it. It could be their parents or grandparents, or maybe they don’t even know them but they recognize the name.” From stories about the city’s parks to features on public figures in the community, Atherton is responsible for letting readers know what
Scott Atherton
happened during “this week in history.” He sifts through microfilms from each decade – a tedious process, but an important one, he said. “I do this on behalf of the historical society so that we’re preserving history, and then hopefully getting other people interested,” said Atherton. “The fun of doing the history page is the search, the hunt.” Through his work, Atherton is able to make known the challenges, accomplishments and controversies that the Turlock community dealt with at numerous points in its past. Although the decade of the articles may change, he has learned that the people do not. “We all have the same challenges and problems no matter what period of time you live in,” said Atherton. In addition to educating Turlock
on its past, Atherton said that it is always rewarding when community members thank him for finding a certain piece of information. He has also made discoveries through his research, sometimes finding photos with no description and tracking down their true origins through a bit of digging. “By going through the microfilm, sometimes that photo or the event it was from may have been in the Journal and you can match them up, so that’s always fun,” said Atherton. The history page has changed over time, evolving from just a couple of paragraphs in the paper to an entire section dedicated to the city’s olden days. As a part of that evolution, Atherton does not anticipate the
page’s growth to stop any time soon. He’s transformed the feature by including state and world events, as well as how certain times in the nation, like the Dustbowl era, affected different cultures locally. “We have come a long way as a society, and I also find that we are a product of the times we live in,” said Atherton. Atherton has seen first-hand through his research just how much the city has changed over the years. Though the population has grown, he said, the city still has a small town feel. He hopes to continue telling its story as the years go on. “Whenever you go drive out of town people, will comment good things about Turlock. I think we need to work on preserving that.”
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