THE 85-man Garden City Barbershop Chorus, which has copped the Northern California championship for the past five years, will hit those notes both high and low as they perform April 12, at 7:30 p.m. at Los Gatos High School Auditorium for the benefit of the LGHS Wildcat Marching Band. The chorus, which will tour New Zealand this summer, has been ranked among the top 20 in an international SPEBSQSA competition. (That's the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America.) Tickets, available at the door, are $8, or $7 for seniors and students.
THE FIESTA des Artes will be held again next Aug. 24-25, but this time it will be at the Los Gatos Shopping Center on N. Santa Cruz Avenue. The event, which will include the popular "Taste of Los Gatos" from area wineries, together with many arts and crafts, plus family entertainment, will be sponsored by the Los Gatos Kiwanis Club. For collectors, 1995 Fiesta wine glasses are available at $25 and will be in stores after May.
THIS YEAR, tennis player Susan Anawalt of Monte Sereno received the No. 2 national singles ranking for women 55 and over. As a consequence, she's been selected by the U.S. Tennis Association as one of four women members of the Maureen Connolly Cup to play in international team competition. Anawalt and her team, plus a nonplaying captain, will be in Salzburg, Austria, to compete against some 12 other teams under a Davis Cup-type format. This is the fourth time Anawalt has been picked for international competition. She first went with the Young Cup for women 40 and up to Cervia, Italy.
IT was no April Fool prank as the Printing Post of Los Gatos, 651 Industrial Way, marked its first 25 years in business on that day. Owner Stratos Guiliotis, a onetime engineer who's a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., bought the shop formerly at 459 Santa Cruz Ave., and the Industrial Way location, too, in 1971. The firm offers offset, black-and-white and spot color printing.
LOS GATOS High School held a 1988 centennial, celebrating 100 years since the first class graduated. That was when Olivia De Havilland returned to her old school for a commencement speech. According to Los Gatos historian Bill Wulf, that anniversary was based on an extension high-school class of 1888 that had been added to the old University Avenue grammar school. The first class to graduate from Los Gatos High School proper was in 1896, making this year's 1996 class the 100th, says Bill, who has a copy of a 1902 LGHS yearbook.
Says Principal Ted Simonson: "Wulf is correct, as usual, about his dates. The state charter for the high school was in 1896. All our records go back to 1887 when a high school class was added (at the grammar school." The centennial was based on that first class.
A VISITOR to Forbes Mill Museum March 30 was Steven Tollner of San Jose, who said his great-great-great grandfather, Secondido Robles, was one of the Robles brothers who first owned the New Almaden Quicksilver Mine. "They didn't know much about quicksilver," Tollner said. The mine was taken over by an uncle of James Alexander Forbes, builder of Forbes Mill on Los Gatos Creek. Secondido Robles had 28 children, his descendant said.
HISTORY Club of Los Gatos has a reservation deadline of April 20 for its fashion show and high tea, scheduled April 24 at 1:30 p.m. at the clubhouse, 123 Los Gatos Blvd. Fashions from Designer's Corner will be modeled.
ROMANIA is one of the world's impoverished countries. A small church in Los Gatos, Unity Community Church, with 35 members, has raised funds for tuition and support for a gifted student in her third year at the University of the West in Romania. Romona Balutescu was about to drop out of school, lacking money for food or rent. Attending a conference in England, Elizabeth Weeks, Unity's minister, met an old friend, Harry Morgan, a former Reader's Digest editor, now a Fulbright journalism professor at Romona's university. In Los Gatos, Unity Church held an international fundraising dinner, and funds to aid the student were wired to Romania. For badly needed aid to other students there, Weeks suggests a check marked "for Harry Morgan's work in Romania" to Unity Community Church, 123 Los Gatos Blvd., 95032.
ADD to the list of Los Gatans who have seen parts of the world most of us probably won't: Dan Hastings, a graduate of Los Gatos High School, was accepted by the Embassy Intern Program after graduating from UC-Davis and was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Paris during the Gulf War. He later joined the Peace Corps and was part of the first group of 35 persons assigned to Armenia. Dan took an Armenian bride. Living conditions there were harsh, as he described Armenia to Los Gatos Rotary Club. Fuel was scarce because of a warring neighbor, Azerbaijan, and electricity was on for only one hour a day. Dan's wedding for 60 guests cost $150. Hastings plans on foreign service after graduate studies at Tufts University in Boston.
SCUBA diving and underwater photography, as well as nature subjects, won awards for George Ramsay, a retired physician. He and his wife, Carolyn Ramsay, a skilled fine-art photographer, have their work on exhibit during April at the Los Gatos Meadows, 110 Wood Road, daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
MORE on the musical scene: Works by Bach, Beethoven, Nystedt and other composers will be featured in a concert by the San Jose State University Choraliers April 14 at 4:30 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 19 High School Court. The concert benefits a European tour by the singing group. A $10 preferred or $5 general admission is asked.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, April 10, 1996.
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