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Photograph courtesy of Bill Wulf
Wilma Thompson and Bill Wulf enjoy a drink during the San Jose Historical Museum's Living History Days in 1994.
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Picture from the Past
Bill Wulf remembers his teacher and good friend
By Bill Wulf
In lieu of the usual column, this week's space is given over to Los Gatos historian Bill Wulf, in a tribute to his friend Wilma Thompson, a longtime Los Gatan who died on Aug. 19.
--John S. Baggerly
I Remember Wilma Thompson. As Wilma said, "I have lived it, and you have learned the history of Los Gatos." I have lost my dear friend of 40 years, but her legacy will go on forever in the minds of those who knew her.
Wilma came to Los Gatos with her family in 1927 from Iowa as a 6-year-old. Her father had a job working at the Call family ranch on Kennedy Road. One of the first things her father did was to take his family up to the crest of Blossom Hill Road to see the Santa Clara Valley in full bloom in the springtime.
Wilma never forgot that first view of the Santa Clara Valley, and she spent most of her time collecting and recording the ever-changing scene, until the Santa Clara Valley was covered with buildings and roads.
In the mid-1930s, Wilma and her family moved to High School Court. After World War II, Wilma joined the Los Gatos High School staff, teaching students and, privately, adults how to drive.
In the 1960s, Wilma gave me driving lessons, and that is how I met her, as she showed me how to drive my 1928 Studebaker sedan. I did not see Wilma too much during the next 10 years until I helped teach a night class at De Anza College called "The Ghost Towns of the Santa Cruz Mountains."
After class we shared notes and started meeting every Tuesday night for dinner to talk about our collecting and research of Los Gatos and Santa Clara Valley history. We joined the San Jose Historical Museum, Saratoga Historical Foundation, Los Gatos Heritage Preservation Society and Santa Cruz Mountain History Study Group to name a few. Every time I gave a speech, Wilma was there to help me.
Wilma gave freely of her time in answering questions for the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, Los Gatos Library and the Los Gatos Museum and Forbes Mill Museum. If she couldn't find the information, she would call me and we would find it together.
Each day was an adventure for Wilma; she would go to downtown Los Gatos after buying a diet Big Gulp at the local 7-Eleven and would head for the post office, where she would find another resident to talk about "the good old days."
Later, Wilma would go to Forbes Mill Museum and research the Place Funeral Home records for local information, then head out to Los Gatos Cemetery to find where the person in question was buried. At lunchtime Wilma would go to Vasona Park, where she would feed the ducks that reminded her of the days when she had a small ranch on Pollard Road, where she raised all types of animals. Some of them she displayed at the Santa Clara County Fair, where she was a poultry judge.
When Wilma had her stroke in January, it was hard for her to accept being sick. After a few months in a hospital and nursing home, she returned home long enough to go through her 50-year collection of Los Gatos history and give it to me. I will never forget that kindness. I will miss Wilma, my friend in the history of Los Gatos and the Santa Clara Valley.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
