The recent death of Carolyn Hayes at age 93 was of local significance on at least two counts. One, although she had spent her last few years at the Los Gatos Meadows retirement home, she and her late husband were very much a part of the Saratoga scene for several decades.
Carolyn Berry Hayes was born in Pennsylvania and came to California in the 1920s. She was a 1927 graduate of the University of California, Southern Branch, now UCLA, and her subsequent teaching career included positions at San Jose State College, now University; Castilleja School; and schools in Franklin-McKinley and Saratoga districts, from which she retired as a sixth-grade teacher in 1966.
Art and design were her milieu, and she came to the Saratoga district from her post as art supervisor for Santa Clara County schools.
Her husband, Charles, had his career with the First National Bank of San Jose, where he started in 1922 and eventually became a branch manager. He complemented his wife's artistic talents with his skill as a wood craftsman, and their home on Orchard Road had many examples of his work, including the gingerbread trim on the eaves.
The other aspect of Carolyn Hayes' life I'll mention here is the fact that, as the member of longest standing in the Saratoga Federated Church, her death leaves me with that distinction, if I have my facts straight. Carolyn joined the church on Sept. 1, 1935, shortly after marrying Charles. I joined the Federated Church on Nov. 1, 1936, when I was in the eighth grade at Saratoga Grammar School.
My association with the church really began as an infant, my name having been added to the Cradle Roll in December 1923 when I was barely 4 months old. I was baptized in the Julia Morgan-designed sanctuary, now the Chapel, when it and I were both new.
In 1936 when I formally joined the church, the minister was Dr. Burton M. Palmer, who assumed the Saratoga pastorate in 1929 when he was almost 60. Before 1900, his father, Rev. Asa Burton Palmer, had been pastor of the Congregational Church here, one of two denominations that combined in 1920 to form the present Federated Church.
My memories of Dr. Palmer are clear and indelible. Although he was the soul of propriety and piety, he was also capable of playing a dignified fool, as in a skit at one of the Saratoga Foothill Club's annual Jinx programs. On Sundays, though, he was always formally attired in a morning coat and striped trousers, with his Phi Beta Kappa Key from Stanford (class of 1897) on a gold chain across his vest. There may have been no more than 15 or 20 people in the pews, but Dr. Palmer's presence would have done credit to a congregation of hundreds.
I particularly remember his lengthy and wide-ranging pastoral prayers, delivered in a rather high-pitched monotone as he grasped the edges of the pulpit, his upward-inclined face catching light from the pebble-glass windows high on the south wall of the sanctuary. The total effect was that of a man who had a direct pipeline to God and knew how to use it.
There were other facets of Dr. Palmer's 10-year pastorate here that come to mind. One was his concern for his flock. I think of the time when, as a freshman in high school, I contracted bronchial pneumonia and was confined to bed for several weeks. Dr. Palmer took the time to come and read to me one day, not a religious tract but a story of early California with a humorous twist.
There is one postscript to his career that has resonance today. In the mid-1930s, pretty much at the bottom of the Depression, the congregation through sac-rificial giving, raised the money to build a new parsonage on Lutheria Way. It was, and is, an attractive, two-story Spanish-style house, ideally located in proximity to the church. It was dedicated in 1936.
Having been somewhat out of the loop, I'm not sure just why the parsonage was sold, sometime in the late 1950s or 1960s, I think. But now, with an appeal being made to the congregation for a Senior Pastor Housing Fund, wouldn't it be a fine thing to have that house on Lutheria Way? It has since become an artist's showplace, one of the outstanding homes in the area. Once it belonged to the Federated Church.
Saratoga, California Since 1975
