Photograph by Robert Scheer
Joe Clevenger (left) chats with Betty Thompson.
By Mary Ann Cook
In the movie It's a Wonderful Life, the hero is allowed to see what life in his town could have been like if he hadn't lived. Using that same premise, let's see what Saratoga would have been like if the Foothill Club had never been formed.
For one thing, there probably wouldn't be a Saratoga Historical Museum without the Saratoga Foothill Club. Putting together a history of Saratoga started as a Foothill Club project in 1938, and it was club member Florence Cunningham who gathered together and documented the artifacts of those early years, using records, letters, research, memorabilia and photographs.
Her work led to the formation of the Saratoga Historical Foundation in 1960, and it was this group that established the Saratoga Historical Museum in 1976, with material from the foundation and from Miss Cunningham's private collection. Florence Cunningham died in 1965, but others continued her work, and her book, Saratoga's First Hundred Years, was published posthumously.
If it weren't for the Foothill Club, might the road between Saratoga and Los Gatos be littered with billboards? Club members campaigned as long ago as 1909 against the proliferation of unsightly billboards, threatening the company doing the advertising that they would stop using that brand of butter.
The threatened boycott was successful: The signs came down, and the results of that campaign are evident today. That stretch of highway is scenic, not commercial, and unencumbered by billboards.
The annual Memorial Day ceremony that honors American war veterans might be nonexistent if it weren't for the Foothill Club. That celebration has been part of the club's community outreach program since 1919. Other civic groups are involved, and the Foothill Club coordinates all these efforts.
The Saratoga High School band leads the parade, which winds from the Memorial Arch on Highway 9 up Oak Street to Madronia Cemetery to honor the war dead buried there. Girl Scouts make laurel wreaths for each veteran's grave, and the Boy Scouts lay them out. It's a page right out of Norman Rockwell's Americana, say those who participate.
Then there are the dozens of American Heritage Scholarship recipients who would not have had the financial boost that the club offers yearly to an outstanding senior, usually a student with a major in history or the social sciences, says Foothill Club president Winifred Simpson.
The membership this month has launched a new $500 scholarship that will be presented to a Saratoga High School senior in May. It will be known as the Foothill Club Fine Arts Award and will go to an outstanding senior in the field of fine arts, including music, art or drama.
Without the Foothill Club, the community would not have had a movie theater in 1917 and for a few years following. The clubhouse served as the town theater, with the screen placed in the arch in the alcove of the auditorium and the projection booth located where the entry and beverage room is now. It is just another example of how far-seeing the Foothill Club's architect, Julia Morgan, was. She had designated that area as a projection booth in her blueprints.
Another community event where the Foothill Club made an impact is the Blossom Festival. That yearly historic event celebrated the arrival of spring and was enhanced and made more ambitious under the auspices of the Foothill Club. In 1912 the club's part was so ambitious that not all of it could be carried out.
But the women who had made it their mission to study California history felt it was up to them to provide a "Pageant of Early California Life." The extravaganza included caballeros, Spanish ladies, miners and two teams of oxen pulling covered wagons.
The oxen were the most daunting task, but they were finally obtained from Cowell Cement Works near Santa Cruz after a near-hopeless search, according to the club's history book. One club member who rode behind the oxen in a covered wagon was Miss Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, one of the firebrands of the Civil War. In 1937, the festival was made the sole responsibility of the club. That ceremonial highlight of the Saratoga year was enlivened by the existence of the Foothill Club.
Another yearly outreach, this one still in existence, is the Christmas basket project, which began in 1931 and continues to this day. Last year, 80 baskets of turkey dinner and trimmings were put together by Foothill Club members, says vice president Wil Morrison.
Another successful campaign for the club was getting a county library established in Saratoga. And club members pitched in to save the redwoods and to work on Prohibition and European relief work after World War I. Before World War II, the club sent funds to support a canteen for servicemen in England for a year, reports Amy June Jorgensen, a third-generation member of the club.
And shortly after Pearl Harbor, the clubhouse served as the 31st Field Artillery headquarters for three months, she adds. Club members met in the Federated Church during those months. During World War II, the clubhouse became a Red Cross station stocked with sewing machines, where anyone who wanted to help could come. Jorgensen remembers those days because her mother was a member; she was too young then to belong.
The longest-running contribution the club has made to the community, however, is probably the renting of its historic clubhouse for weddings, receptions, memorial services and concerts. Rental fees help maintain the historic building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is no. 1 on Saratoga's Designated Heritage Resource list, as Morrison points out.
The clubhouse's venerable place in Saratoga history is assured because it was built by Julia Morgan, the first licensed woman architect in California, who also designed the somewhat larger Hearst mansion of San Simeon. The chapel in the Saratoga Federated Church nearby was also a product of Morgan's, as was Asilomar in Pacific Grove.
Foothill Club member Adele Richards was a friend of the Berkeley-based Morgan, and that helped seal the deal for designing the clubhouse in 1915, according to club member Betty Peck.
Peck reinstated a lecture series for the club last fall that is open to the public. Since its rebirth, three lectures have been presented, each costing $6. To launch the series, Peck enlisted Sara Boutelle, a biographer of Julia Morgan. Boutelle characterized Saratoga as "a living museum of architecture," what with the clubhouse, the church, and several smaller houses, all evidence of Morgan's work. The architect was known for her innovative use of light, her biographer says.
The second speaker in the series was Nancy Mellon, who discussed the importance of family storytelling. In February, Dr. Mario Belotti of Santa Clara University spoke on "The Myriad Aspects of Money." The next speaker in the series is scheduled for March 4 at 10 a.m., when Katherine Metz will speak on Feng Shui, the art of placement.
"I wanted to bring the club back to its roots," Peck says, citing a club objective printed in a 1914 bulletin, "to encourage intellectual and civic activities within club and community."
She hopes to expand the series next year.
The club was fortunate not only in its choice of an architect, but in acquiring the land. That was a surprise gift from two dedicated early club members, Mrs. George A. Wood and Mrs. David Bell. The Woods lived in the large, white-pillared house called Woodleigh on Saratoga Avenue, just north of Big Basin, and most recently owned by the Farley Youngs.
The Julia Morgan Foothill Clubhouse made extensive use of redwood and is in the California arts and crafts style that flourished in the early part of this century. "Homey, beautiful and expressing a woman's heart" is the way Betty Peck describes it. Continual renovations have been necessary through the years, including putting in a central heating system and bringing the kitchen up to date. Keeping the roof in good repair and the cellar dry are ongoing problems, as those two major expenditures crop up repeatedly in the retelling of club history.
Since the clubhouse is located at the bottom of the hill, drainage is a continuing problem. (At least five sump pumps were added successively through the years to help drain the cellar.)
"I think we finally have it licked," what with new cement drainage to divert water, Jorgensen says. "We stayed dry after those most recent storms."
Four years ago, after major storms set in, members could hear frogs croaking in the basement, an amphibian landing of sorts, says club treasurer Jo Ann Syvertson. The frogs have long since decamped.
Another wildlife adventure took place just last year, when a waiting bride was about to embark on her trip down the aisle. Her composure was rattled when it was discovered that a swarm of bees had taken refuge in the clubhouse and were competing with the bride for attention. Fortunately, the bee man was able to come to the rescue just in time. The bees were extricated, and the wedding went ahead on schedule, Syvertson reports, with not one guest having to fear bees in the bonnet.
Club started in 1907
It was something of a bee in the bonnet that started the whole thing. The club was an outgrowth of a study group formed by three women--Lyra Mills, Mrs. Flynt Mills and Mrs. Edwin S. Williams--in 1907. One of them had just gotten a glowing letter from a friend detailing how much she was enjoying belonging to a women's group.
Twelve members were at that founding meeting, intent on serious study. They met in members' homes at first and, if weather permitted, outside, often sitting on orchard boxes, as early photos of club meetings show. Since many members were wives of orchard growers, it was an appropriate seating.
By 1914 the pull of a woman's club dedicated to intellectual and cultural enrichment was so strong that the study group had gained 63 members and had become too ungainly for meeting in homes. A clubhouse was in order, and Miss Morgan set to work. The clubhouse was completed in late 1915 and the first meeting held there in early 1916. The total cost was $5,059.90, which included Morgan's architectural fee. Members embarked on a whirlwind campaign of fundraising, including putting out their own issue of the town paper, appealing for funds.
Other fundraising efforts involved selling land on Oak Street that had been a gift to the club and holding several festivals. So successful were they that only a small (undocumented) amount remained. A bank loan was procured and paid in full by 1920. Though the clubhouse is usually booked solid on weekends through the summer, Syvertson says she would like to see the clubhouse rented out more. "Many people don't even know it's there. I'd like more people to become aware of it."
A tie to the past
Wil Morrison will become president in May and says, "We have a wonderful variety of speakers, but I'd like to concentrate even more on local people--artists and authors, for instance. There's so much talent right here. And we'd let them decide the topic they want to speak on."
Another change she'd like to launch during her presidency is to make the club more accessible to younger women by scheduling some evening meetings.
"Young women today have two jobs--their home and work outside. This is the only time they can attend meetings, and we need to encourage younger members as well. Next year, we're going to have a fashion show with members modeling clothes from Saratoga's secondhand shops," a decided change from the past, she says. "We want to continue to grow and still maintain our traditions: As you can see, it's a continual balancing act.
"I love the rapport," Morrison adds, "when you see 20 women all working together, arranging all the flowers brought in before a meeting, for instance. It doesn't look like it could work, but it all comes together beautifully. There's a certain magic within this club you have to experience for yourself."
Felicia Pollock, too, mentions the blend of old and new. "It's a tie to the past, a tie to California's beginnings and its evolution from being two-horse towns to Silicon Valley. Californians are willing to take a chance on the future and yet keep our ties to the past, our interconnectedness with the Spanish settlers and those from the East."
Besides Simpson, Morrison and Syvertson, other club officers are Eleanor Patten, second vice president; Harriet Johnson, membership secretary; Holly Davies, recording secretary; Pat Dubridge, corresponding secretary; and Emily Dorr, parliamentarian.
"I can't begin to tell you what this club means to me; the tradition, the camaraderie is wonderful," Syvertson says. "The women are unbelievable, the experiences they've had. You meet college professors in their 90s. My sixth-grade teacher is a member. It's a unique group of women--the whole concept. The warmth, I don't have this in any other group I've been involved in, and I've been in many. My life has been enriched manyfold by belonging to and serving on the board of the Foothill Club."
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, February 19, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.