This spring there has been quite a bit of activity along El Camino in Barron Park. The big news has been the renovation of the former All American Market. Blockbuster Video is just completing construction on the exterior and opened for business at the beginning of June. Foodini's no longer intends to occupy the remainder of the building. Businesses considering leasing the three available spaces include Jamba Juice, Seattle's Best Coffee, and Right Start (a store selling children-related items for the home). There is no news yet on what will happen at Blockbuster's old location.

The former Coopt gas station (at the corner of Ventura) was demolished and construction began for a new Chevron gas station and self-serve car wash. Construction is currently underway on Classic Community's 26-townhouse develop-ment and it should be completed by the end of the year. Plans are on hold right now for the proposed 40-unit hotel at the Goodwill trailer site.

Revised plans for the vacant lot on the island at El Camino (4131) were presented to the Architectural Review Board for review in May. The developer is now proposing a three-story, mixed-use commercial/ residential building, including about 3,000 s.f. of ground floor retail, 5,000 s.f. of ground floor office, and ten two-bedroom residential units on the top two floors. Parking would be provided both at grade and in one underground level. Auto access for both the residential units and commercial space would be from El Camino. The plans were favorably reviewed and will be revised before going back to the ARB for approval.

The major activity of the Zoning and Land Use Committee this spring was the survey about the proposed expansion of the Lucky's Market at Alma Plaza. Even though this project is outside of Barron Park we felt that because it is our closest market it directly impacts our neighborhood. A card with a brief description of the proposed expansion and arguments both supporting and opposing the project were sent to our membership to gauge community reaction to the expansion.

We received responses from more than a third of the 450 cards that were mailed. 87 (54%) were in favor of the expansion and 67 (42%) were opposed (the remainder revised their responses to not clearly fit in either category). The BPA Board discussed whether it was appropriate to support the project at Planning Commission and City Council hearings when the project is reviewed. We decided that even though a majority of residents were in support, it was not an overwhelming majority, and we would take a neutral position. We agreed that we would report the results of the survey and the neighborhood's support for a market at the site (many people who were opposed to the expansion still supported some type of market at Alma Plaza). Thanks to everyone who responded to the survey.

Construction will begin this summer at Barron Park Elementary School as the first phase of the Palo Alto Unified School District's $143 million bond. Renovation of the existing buildings and the construction of four new classrooms and a library will take place over the next 18 months. Restrictions on parking for construction workers and hours of operation are planned to reduce the impact on traffic in the neighborhood.

If any part of Palo Alto is affected by a natural or human-caused emergency, the City of Palo Alto now has a telephone alert system which will contact all residents and businesses within a prescribed area. Members of the Barron Park Neighborhood Safety and Emergency Preparedness Committees were able to tour the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) located at the City Hall. There, Fire Chief Grijalva demonstrated the operation of the telephone alert system.

With the use of the alert system computer, a map of Palo Alto is brought up on the screen. Then a selected area of the City is brought up and enlarged. A boundary is drawn on the map to identify the notification area.

Residents or businesses or both are chosen to be notified. At that point, a command is given to start calling. A pre-recorded voice message is delivered to all the designated phones. Sixteen phone lines are used to deliver a 30-second emergency message totaling 360 calls per hour. A sample message was heard in a simulated session. In case the phone lines are down, a backup system is being investigated.

The EOC also has 10 work stations that can be put into operation during an emergency. Radio input can be fed into each one of the work stations.

The new Palo Alto Office of Emergency Services (OES) Facility is now open at Mitchell Park on 3750 Middlefield Road. Battalion Chief Mick McDonald is the OES Manager and Barbara Cimino is the Executive Assistant.

In the recent past, certain aspects of emergency planning have been put into effect. For example, the telephone alert system has been purchased and installed. Emergency supplies have been purchased and will be stored in vans located at each fire house so that they may be brought quickly to where they are needed..

Now that the OES is housed and fully staffed, the various other provisions of the Palo Alto Master Disaster Preparedness Plan can be implemented more effectively. The Palo Alto Neighborhood Disaster Activities Committee will be meeting again and renewing its goals and objectives. The Barron Park Association Neighborhood Safety and Emergency Preparedness Committees are ready to work cooperatively with the OES.

And this is about changes. My mustachioed friend up there and I are making our last appearance in the BPA newsletter with this issue. I have resigned from the BPA board -- as they say "to pursue other interests" --

Please be assured that I am still actively interested in all of you. So keep my phone number handy -- 493-8023 -- if you have "senior-type" questions. I'll gladly try to help you.

(Keep July 13 open for a program on "Frauds and Scam" at Avenidas [the Senior Center to you & me]. We're all sitting ducks ready to be plucked.)

Well, the snails are still climbing up the agapanthus, and the daffodils will bloom again next year --

'Bye for now -- Katie

Due to minimal Home of Distinction Nominations for the Summer issue of the Newsletter the Beautification Committee is featuring a Resident of Distinction article for this issue. We urge you to submit Home of Distinction nomination forms for the fall issue.

Meet Frank Hesse
Barron Park Neighbor
by Lois Prior Co-Chairperson, Beautification

It was 1940 when Frank Hesse saved up the $300 down payment to buy his house on Magnolia Drive in Barron Park. The selling price was $5000. Frank was a young man working as a bartender for Pierre and Andre who owned L'Omelete¹s Restaurant on El Camino Real. It was while working at Lomie's (as the restaurant was affectionately called) that Frank met his future wife Shirley whom he married in 1942. The two of them settled in and raised a family of two girls who attended Barron Park school and graduated from Cubberly High School. Shirley continued working as a waitress during the day and Frank tended bar at night.

Together they planted the redwood trees (now over 100 feet high) put in the swimming pool and planted the many fruit trees and shrubs that continue to bring color and interest to his garden. The street at that time was unpaved and his house and the house next door were the only ones on the street. Most of Barron Park was covered in fruit trees and open fields. The Barron estate, which had big iron gates leading into from El Camino on the present site of Blockbuster had been transformed into a military school and El Camino was a three-lane highway wending its way down to Mountain View.

Frank and Shirley lived a good and full life in their home and when they decided to travel they rented their house and remodeled their garage to become a charming cottage which served their needs very well. They spent many years abroad including a seven year stay on the isle of Crete where Frank introduced Crenshaw melon to the local residents.

Sadly, Frank lost Shirley five years ago after a long battle with cancer. He is still actively traveling, plans a trip to Zanzibar this fall, and is a friend and neighbor to all those who live around him. His cottage is filled with his ceramic figures (Frank is quite an artist) photos of family, postcards of places he and Shirley visited and a potpourri of paintings, needlework and colorful posters. Frank lives his life grateful for all that he has experienced and eager to share his love of life with all those who stop by to say hello.

The Maggard family¹s motto has been ³leave the land as we found it² ever since they established their home on Magnolia Avenue in 1952. Pride in the neighborhood and careful custody of the land have been cherished family values whether camping or at home. So it¹s no surprise that Dorothy recently urged her son, Grady, to help the neighbors clean up the litter surrounding a recently vacated home slated for demolition. He spent two days clearing the lot of accumulated discards by storing them in the garage until demolition day, and removing toxic materials from the property. This is not the first time Grady has quietly surveyed a demolition site in Barron Park to remove toxic materials before the bulldozing began.

Many of us neighbors felt he brought dignity to the old house in its final days. Our thanks to both of you, Dorothy and Grady.

The Beautification Committee theme for 1999 is Bits of Beauty. In March and April, members of our committee armed with cameras fanned through our neighborhood and photographed "bits of beauty". Photographs were carefully selected by committee to make photographic greeting cards showing the "Bits of Beauty in Barron Park". The result of this effort yielded four series of eight note cards each, which are being sold as a fund-raiser for our committee. The scenery series are selected photos of the creeks, bridges, and small gardens. A series of flowers features close-up photographs of a variety of spring flowers; wisteria, tree peonies, pansies, succulents, cactus, and mixed flora. The tree series features California Buckeye, Italian pine, Japanese maple, crabapple, and mayten trees all residing in Barron Park. In addition, Sabra Driscoll had taken a series of black and white photos of Bol Pasture in 1969, showing the fences, farm equipment, buildings, and donkeys, prior to it becoming Bol Park. This popular series sold out the first day, and a second printing to fill back orders has been published.

The funds from this project will be used to purchase and plant California native plants in the fall, to upgrade the appearance of the natural habitat area at intersection of Laguna and Matadero Avenues.

Six People who Speak of our Past
More than twenty years ago, one of our neighbors set out to capture part of our history before it was lost forever. In the Autumn of 1977, Ann Knopf carried out an oral history project for her degree of Masters in Library Science at San Jose State University. She taped about eight hours of reminiscences by six people who had lived in Barron Park during the period 1920-1950. Ann had previously discovered that there was very little information available about life in Barron Park during these formative years of the neighborhood when it was still a semi-rural area. Her intent was to capture the flavor and character of the neighborhood and to preserve source material for people who are interested in the community, especially youth and newcomers. She did a fine job and the information in those tapes is invaluable, especially to local historians. The tapes are the property of SJSU, which has permitted copies to be donated to the Palo Alto Historical Association. Many topics are covered; the typewritten indices alone comprise about 16 single-spaced pages. In this article, I will tell you a little about the people and what they told.

Josina Bol
Josina came to Barron Park from Holland in 1938 to join her husband Cornelis Bol, who had taken a job as a researcher in the Physics Department at Stanford. Cornelis had come ahead and selected a property near the home of Professor William Herbert Carruth, who organized a faculty 'colony' on lovely, oak-studded Roble Ridge which backed up to Stanford grazing lands on two sides. Josina and Cornelis bought land along Matadero Creek on both sides of the railroad. Cornelis and Josina started a water company, later staffed by their sons, which provided water to about half of Barron Park. They also owned the land where one of the first Eichler developments was laid out along Josina Avenue. After Cornelis' death, Josina sold their 'donkey pasture' at a price well below market to the community to develop Bol Park. Josina Bol was Barron Park's greatest benefactor.

Her oral history covers her life while raising six boys on the Ridge. When they first moved in, you could see the Bay from a high point on their land. Topics covered include a fire that the volunteer Fire Department responded to, the railroad, daily life in Barron Park, the water company, their cows, horses and donkeys, neighbors, the 'Portugese farmer' on the present VA Hospital land, hoboes, schools, wildflowers and the creek. Josina tells us of the time a Southern Pacific freight train had to stop rather than run over one of the Bol's goats.

Chatham Forbes
Chatham Forbes came to Barron Park in 1923 when his grandfather Sebastian Jones bought the Barron Mansion and 30 acres of park surrounding it for the California Military Academy. Colonel Jones laid out the original 'Barron Park' subdivision in 1926, along El Camino Real, Barron Avenue and La Selva Drive. Chatham lived in the mansion with his family for six years as he was growing up, until his grandfather's sudden and untimely death in 1929. His taped reminiscences are the only detailed descriptions of the house and grounds that are known to exist. He also supplied history with a selection of photographs of the property in the 1920s, when the facade of the great gingerbread Victorian was nearly smothered by the grandmother of all Wisteria vines.

He describes the military academy and its influence upon and connections with the neighborhood growing up around it. His recollections of the place are sharp and rich with the kind of intimate details that a child notices and remembers. I walked the Magnolia Way --Military Way neighborhood with him in 1985 and he pointed out the exact locations where the buildings of the Military Academy had stood, including locating the footprint of the mansion for us. He even remembered much of the vegetation of the estate. He pointed to trees that were his favorites to climb when he was ten or twelve years old. I immediately recorded the information on an overlay of the current streets and lot lines, so we now know where everything was.

Chatham tells several amusing stories, like the time a member of the filthy-rich Vanderbilt family was driving by the estate, saw the fancy weathervane on top of the third-floor cupola, stopped and rang the doorbell and tried to buy it on the spot (Colonel Jones wasted no time showing him the door, rather unceremoniously). And then there was the time his Grandfather stopped the State Highway crew from cutting the giant Eucalyptus trees along his frontage on 'The State Highway' (now El Camino) by waving a large pistol around. Eventually he lost --the trees had to go, sacrificed to the widening project, but he sure made them back off and think awhile. Colonel Jones would have fit right in with the modern, prickly in-your-face side of the Barron Park culture when it comes to standing up to neighborhood destruction.

John and Bertha Freund
The Freunds came to Barron Park in 1937. They leased and ran the Encina Dairy until they were forced out by suburban development two years later. They talk about running a dairy and how they felt about the changes overturning the neighborhood. Topics covered include the land and streets, El Camino strip businesses, street name changes and floods from the creeks. They tell of life in Barron Park during World War II. Bertha tells us that David Packard lived on Matadero Avenue in the early days when Hewlett-Packard was still a struggling startup.

Doris Greenbaum
Doris and her husband moved to Barron Park in 1950 when they bought the Stanford Motor Court (now the Creekside Inn) on the corner of El Camino Real and Matadero Avenue. She tells what she learned about its beginnings as the Grove Auto Court. She also describes El Camino and tells of a Barron Creek flood in the early 1950s.

Ernest and Lena Johnson
The Johnsons came to their classic California Bungalow on Laguna Avenue in 1926. Ernie tells about agriculture in Barron Park in the 1920s --the strawberry and tomato fields and the young pear and apricot orchards. He says Japanese, 'Spanish' and Filipino farmworkers harvested $5,000 to $7,000 worth of strawberries per day during the season (that is about $70,000-100,000 in terms of today's dollar).

There was no electric service until they bought an electric stove and water heater --then PG&E put in a line. Ernest and Lena developed a well at the trailer court, then put in meters for their customers when they incorporated the Mutual Water Company. There wasn't enough water when everyone came on the weekends from fog-bound San Francisco to their little summer cottages. Finally, Palo Alto took over and their part of the neighborhood was tied into the City mains. They speak of using the Military Academy swimming pool, which was available to local residents in the summer.

Ernest was President of the Improvement Club, which fought the State Highway Department over the great 'borrow pit' they dug between Maybell and Manzana. They discuss the two railroad lines, steam and electric interurban, that ran side-by-side where the bikepath runs today. There was a stop --a small station called 'Neal' after a nearby landowner, at Matadero and Laguna Avenues. The Johnsons tell of the schools --of Barron Park children going to Mayfield School and Jordan Junior High and Paly. They remember when the neighborhood first got telephone service in 1935.

Joe Weiler
Joe Weiler came to our neighborhood in 1932 with his parents. They purchased the Buena Vista Auto Court at the corner of El Camino Real and Los Robles Avenue. He witnessed the fire that destroyed the Barron Mansion in 1936. He offers another child's viewpoint on the neighborhood a decade after Chatham Forbes', but also an adult perspective as he grew up in Barron Park and was one of our volunteer firemen.

Barron Park enjoyed a mild winter this year, as rainfall levels were almost half those of last year. Despite the lack of action in the creeks, important activity has taken place in Santa Clara County's public forum board rooms. On May 19th, the Northwest Flood Control Zone Advisory Committee (NWFCZAC) unanimously approved a recommendation that the Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD) Board of Directors proceed with funding the $13.2 million construction for the Matadero/Barron Creek Remediation project.

The SCVWD Board subsequently approved next year's budget, which contains funding for the project's planning and design. Funding for the actual construction would not take place until the year 2000. Barron Park Association Board members Doug Moran (Vice President) and Christian Kalar (Creeks Committee Chair) spoke at the meeting in support of the funding. On June 10, 1999, the SCVWD hosted a public outreach session at the Cubberley Community Center. The session provided information about the Remediation project, including details about the calculations that are being made to determine the proper creek and channel capacity requirements.

The SCVWD is exploring alternatives to enlarging the Matadero Channel downstream of El Camino, one of these being a small reservoir upstream of Foothill Expressway.

Present Remediation Project Schedule:

1. Complete design by October 2000
2. Award construction contract by January 2001
3. Begin construction in April 2001 The project would most likely be completed by December of 2002. The SCVWD will offer two more public information sessions this summer: a "technical" meeting in August and general information/status in September.

We are still working on the Bol Park natural habitat, although it does not look like what we have planned, as yet!!! The biggest problem is the fire hazard of the grass-weeds. TWO months of prodding, still has not solved the problem!!! Hopefully, by the Fall Newsletter, we can report that the main-plantings and replacements are in and we can go into a mainly maintenance phase. In the Fall too, we hope to know a time schedule on additional water lines and several new benches. We have asked for help in the maintenance phase, and have had some replies from friends and neighbors, which we will answer individually. Please be patient with us, we are getting there, but slowly, oh so slowly! WE HAVE NOT GIVEN UP, SO PLEASE CHEER US ON, WE WILL SUCCEED, BUT A COUPLE OF YEARS BEHIND SCHEDULE!!!

A BIG, BIG THANK YOU FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MAY FETE!!!

FIRST thanks to Bob Griffin for putting together the WONDERFUL Canine events at the May Fete!!! A truly enjoyable addition to the May Fete, and we hope just the beginning of an annual tradition! Two amusing side-lights for me were picking kids out of the dog tunnels so the dogs could perform, and the police dog's desire to join in. Hopefully, next year, the police dog(s) will take part, as well as giving their own show!

SECOND thanks to the Barron Park Elementary Kindergarten, Room 1, for opening the Fete at 12:00 Noon, by singing two donkey songs, eagerly watched by our own Perry and Miner-49er. Please come again!

THIRD, thanks to all who took part in the PET PARADE!

FOURTH, thanks to the Grass Menagerie Band for the great music.

FIFTH, thanks to everyone who manned tables, stuffed burritos, helped with decorations, posters, flowers and the ribbons for the May Pole. And especially to Paul Edwards, without whom the May Pole Dance and music would not exist.

THANKS ONE AND ALL FOR COMING TO THE FETE, PARTICULARLY CHILDREN OF ALL AGES (1-90 years) AND OUR WONDERFUL 4 FOOTED FRIENDS!!! COME AGAIN NEXT YEAR!!!