Saratoga News

Saratoga Stereopticon

Willys Peck

Memorial Day tradition lives on in Saratoga

Saratoga has a tradition of cooperative community endeavors, antedating by many decades its incorporation as a city. To name just a few outstanding examples: the Blossom Festival, which grew from a homespun celebration into a major entertainment attracting thousands; the public-subscription campaign to build a library in 1927; the maintenance of an all-volunteer fire department well into the post-World War II era; and the annual Memorial Day observance sponsored by the Saratoga Foothill Club.

This ceremony, initiated in the 1920s, involved another community endeavor, the creation of the small park located in what is now the intersection of Saratoga Avenue/Big Basin Way and Saratoga-Sunnyvale (Saratoga-Los Gatos) Road. As related in Florence Cunningham's Saratoga's First Hundred Years, this is where the Peninsular Railway interurban line had its station. What with poles, wires and a spur track onto which boxcars frequently were shunted, the whole effect was not what Saratogans wanted as the entrance to their town.

That's when Charles D. Blaney, owner of the landmark Rancho Bella Vista, headed a group of local citizens who put up money to form a company and acquire the Peninsular site, having persuaded the railway to move its station to where the Village post office is today. Part of the site was sold to Neil and Dan Carmichael for a business building, but the major portion was developed as a park, with the Memorial Arch as its dominant feature. The park was dedicated on Admissions Day, 1919, shortly after World War I, and the arch, designed by prominent landscape architect Bruce Porter, commemorated those Saratogans who lost their lives in that conflict. Since then it has been regarded as a memorial to all veterans.

Once the park was built, the sponsoring company was dissolved, and in the absence of a municipal entity to hold title, ownership was turned over to the Foothill Club. After incorporation, the city took over.

Saratoga came within an ace of losing that arch when the highway was widened through town in 1965. As has happened with many other landmarks, the Memorial Arch was destined for demolition. That's when the Saratoga Historical Foundation and various individuals raised enough of a fuss for the city to have it moved to its present location.

Three years ago, I regretfully wrote a "Speak Out!" piece in this newspaper when the arch was redecorated. I regretted having felt impelled to put the knock on a well-intentioned and altruistic volunteer effort. But I regretted even more this prettification that robbed the arch of its monolithic dignity and made it less a monument than an architectural gewgaw, something that simply blends in rather than standing out.

Still, it's the Memorial Arch, and come May 25, it will be the starting point for an observance that has been going on for well over 70 years. There will be the placing of a wreath and the lowering of the flag to half-staff, followed by the march to Madronia Cemetery for the main ceremony. I have been attending these solemn rites since I was in grammar school, and I am impressed by the adherence to tradition. There always is the placing of laurel wreaths on the graves of veterans, a Memorial Day address, the singing of a patriotic song and, finally, the sad, lingering notes of "Taps."

For years, a central figure in these observances was Saratoga's military celebrity, retired Maj. Gen. Grote Hutcheson, who lived at the old Saratoga Inn. As a 1884 graduate of West Point, he was a classmate of Gen. John J. "Black Jack" Pershing, commander of the AEF in World War I. Gen. Hutcheson's career included service in the last Indian campaigns, in Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War, in the China relief expedition of 1900 and on the Mexican border just before World War I.

He knew personally every U.S. president from Grover Cleveland through Franklin Roosevelt, and when he came here in 1924, he became a valued member and program chairman of the Saratoga Men's Club, bringing distinguished speakers from his wide acquaintanceship.

On Memorial Day, he would put on his officer's uniform and drive to Madronia in his big green Packard, with its two-star emblem above the license plate. Other veterans would don their uniforms also. One was my dad, who had trained as a balloon observer in the Air Service in 1918. He'd turn out in his reserve officer's uniform, complete with Sam Browne belt and leather puttees, and throw the general a smart salute as he drove by. It was military pageantry with a nostalgic touch.

Gen. Hutcheson died in 1948 at the age of 86. The personnel has changed over the years. The spirit lives on.

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