Saratoga News

Memories of the Saratoga News

By Dale Bryant

I spent my first six months in Saratoga living at the Blue Rock Shoot. In the mid-1950s, it wasn't an entertainment venue, just a funky little green house with steep wooden steps that went down the side into a yard where my brother and I picked lemons from an enormous old tree. Saratoga Creek meandered on its merry way just beyond the fence.

My father had started teaching at Oak Street School that semester, and we were in a holding pattern on Big Basin Way for six months, waiting for something more appropriate to open up. Eventually, we moved into a two-story house on Park Place directly across the street from the Federated Church, where my grandfather once made history by marching in to a Sunday morning service to demand that the owners of the cars parked in our driveway move them--now!

I attended Oak Street School, where, much to my chagrin, I became known as "Mr. Stewart's daughter." Saratoga High School was in the planning stages but hadn't been built when it was time for me to move on to high school, so my classmates and I hopped aboard yellow school buses every morning and made our way down Saratoga-Los Gatos Road to Los Gatos High School.

Back in those days, when Saratoga was incorporating and Burton Brazil was the mayor, I appeared in the pages of the Saratoga News more than once. I remember Sherman Miller coming up to Oak Street School to take my picture when I became captain of the safety patrol. Another time, he showed up at Argonaut School, where I was working one summer as a playground director for the Recreation Department.

Sherman Miller was the quintessential community newspaper editor. He was a presence in Saratoga in those days. I remember him wandering around town and around the schools and just about any place where community news was being made. He always wore a tweed sports jacket with leather patches at the elbows, and I never saw him without a pipe sticking out of his mouth.

Now, I have Sherman Miller's job.

I'm not sure how Sherman put his Saratoga News to bed, but I know it wasn't with computers and scanners and letters to the editor that arrived in his office via email. I don't wear tweed jackets or smoke a pipe, but I think I share his passion for covering the community.

These days, we have the luxury of a much larger staff than Sherman enjoyed, and we also have professional photographers, so editors don't have to carry a camera around their necks the way Sherman did.

Technology allows us to communicate faster, make corrections faster and rewrite copy with greater ease than journalists could when Sherman was editing the Saratoga News.

As managing editor of Metro Newspapers' community publications, I can edit stories and talk with reporters no matter where I am. Voice mail and email let me stay in touch with readers and staff even on Mondays, when I'm in production all day.

I'm always available to Saratoga readers but am most accessible on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, before deadline crunch begins to consume my attention.

As I take on responsibility for the day-to-day management of the Saratoga News, I am pleased to announce several changes that I think will help us better meet our goal of making this newspaper a "must read" for those who live in Saratoga. Starting next issue, I'll be working with an expanded pool of writers--four staff reporters and several interns--that will provide us with more resources than ever to track down important stories.

Sarah Lombardo, our capable government reporter, has been named assistant editor. She will continue to cover government news in Saratoga.

Clarence Cromwell, a former Saratoga News reporter who's now at our sister paper, the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, will continue to concentrate on Town Hall in Los Gatos, but his byline will show up in Saratoga as well.

Shari Kaplan, who's done a terrific job covering arts and community news in Los Gatos, will become feature editor in Saratoga. She's particularly looking forward to beefing up arts coverage. Contact her to discuss arts and community features.

We've just hired Michelle Alaimo to cover the education beat, and I'm happy to report that, beginning with our June 11 issue, Mary Ann Cook, a frequent contributor to the News, will appear weekly with a new people column. Louise Webb, who has long written a column for the paper, has decided to take the summer off; when she returns, she plans to do some feature writing for us.

When I was the captain of the school safety patrol back in 1957, smiling into Sherman Miller's camera, I never dreamed I'd some day become the editor of the Saratoga News.

But after a professional career that's included a long stint at a daily newspaper, freelance writing and public relations, and four years with community newspapers, I can say that I truly understand why Sherman Miller always looked like he had the best job in the world. Editing a community newspaper is the best job in the world.

I'm looking forward to getting reacquainted with old friends and meeting the people who make Saratoga the special community that it is today.

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