Saratoga News

Babe and Doris Bronzich

Saratoga Stereopticon

Willys Peck

Babe Bronzich provided essence of Saratoga

Although I was never all that well acquainted with Babe Bronzich, now that he's gone I can't help but feel that a significant part of old Saratoga died with him this past June 15. Babe, of course, was not his given name, which was Ralph, but because he was the last of 10 Bronzich siblings, he was tagged Babe, the baby, an appellation he never resisted and which stayed with him throughout life.

Babe was born in 1920 in Angels Camp, in the Mother Lode country, and the family came to Saratoga in 1922. The sons and daughters lived what I would call the quintessential Saratoga experience of the 1920s and '30s; that is, they worked in the summer fruit harvest, mainly on the Louis Bonnet ranch on Pierce Road.

It was while he was cutting apricots there around 1941 that the chemistry really got working between Babe and Doris Mevio, whom he had known at Saratoga Grammar School, but only casually since she was five years younger. Doris, it should be pointed out, has her own niche in local history, being one of the few true Saratoga natives still around. She was born in a house on Saratoga Avenue, about opposite Douglass Lane.

Her dad, Jack Mevio, came here as a barber and, the story goes, gave Babe his first haircut. The family later moved to orchard property off the present Highway 9, opposite the old county gravel quarry, where, at a tender age, Doris was indoctrinated into the mysteries of prune-picking.

Actually, there was no mystery to it; picking prunes was just a hard, dirty job, where the practitioners--OK, prune-pickers--worked stooped over, wearing out the knees of trousers and toes of shoes as they moved over rough terrain, usually clods, retrieving the succulent fruit that had been shaken from heavily burdened limbs. Such menial labor might be hailed today as character-building for youngsters, but back then it was just something you did if you lived in Saratoga.

But, back to the Babe-and-Doris story. That cutting-shed romance blossomed, to get flowery, like apricot trees in the spring. The golden fruit of summer, incidentally, was picked from the branches rather than off the ground.

Babe went into the Army in 1942, where he served in the Military Police in various parts of the country. One of his later assignments was in the honor guard in the funeral cortege for President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945. There was a daily exchange of letters between Babe and Doris, and after a year, Babe proposed, sending a ring by mail. They were married on Sept. 6, 1943, when Babe was home on furlough. The wedding took place in the home of Doris' aunt, Aileen Priest, on La Paloma Avenue.

Babe was discharged in 1946, and two years later he and Doris bought the house at Fourth Street and Canyon View Drive, where they planted and nurtured a garden that could have come from the pages of Sunset magazine. Babe put in 28 years with the A.J. Raisch paving company, where he was a foreman, and Doris spent several years in the late 1940s and early '50s working in the old Saratoga post office, where my dad was postmaster. I remember him speaking with pride of how Doris had become the youngest noble grand (president) of the Saratoga Rebekkah Lodge.

Although he and Doris never had children, Babe was a sort of surrogate uncle in the neighborhood. Touching recognition of that was accorded by a neighbor, Deanna Medeiros, who wrote, in part:

"Whether it was by sharing ice cream or checking out the train sets kids got for Christmas, Babe was one-of-a-kind for everyone who met him. ... Every day, Babe would pick a bouquet of fresh flowers for little Molly Medeiros, now 7."

One thing I remember about Babe was how little he changed in appearance over the years. At last summer's Saratoga Grammar School reunion, a stranger could have looked at the 1933 student body picture and, from that, immediately picked out Babe in the picnic gathering.

Then esophageal cancer hit in November. In the months-long ordeal that followed, Doris was at his side until, on June 15, Saratoga lost a significant bit of its essence.

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