Photograph by Paul Myers

League of Women Voters President Marge Bunyard, 71, wants more citizens watching the government arena: 'Until something goes wrong, people don't pay attention,' she says.




League head Bunyard beating bushes for civic participants

By Oakley Brooks

Marge Bunyard's dining room table doesn't look any different than yours. It shines of varnish and is tucked into a long, narrow room in the middle of her house off Cox Avenue in northeastern Saratoga. But when Bunyard, 71, isn't hosting her kids and grandkids, the table is home to discussions of international politics, local elections, pollution in area streams, expansion into open space, low-cost housing and neighborhood traffic.

Bunyard is involved. She's served on the board of the Saratoga Union School District and the Hakone Foundation, headed Saratoga's Parent-Teacher-Student Association, and has been a consistent player in the American Association of University Women and the League of Women Voters for decades. And most of those groups have made visits to the Bunyard dining room. "It's just a good place because I have a long dining room table," said Bunyard in her kitchen recently, tacking on a hearty laugh.

Bunyard's been a past Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year. And this summer she was re-elected president of the Los Gatos-Saratoga-Monte Sereno League of Women Voters.

First formed as a national group after 1920 to rouse women to exercise their new rights of suffrage, the league now promotes civic awareness and activism across all stripes of the population and at the local and national level.

Throughout years of league participation, motherhood and teaching at the college level, Bunyard fought the sexism of her earlier days; in her kitchen recently, she pulled a clip from a Livermore paper of the late '60s featuring her and her many activities--the headline read, "Homemaker isn't staggered by schedule."

She now works to recharge the younger generation's interest in local government and electoral issues. "Do you know that they don't teach civics anymore in schools?" she said.

She spoke recently with Oakley Brooks of the saratoganews.

Saratoga News: So the league was formed to get women involved years ago and now what?

Marge Bunyard: Voting is important to the League of Women Voters. Voting is what we always emphasize all the time.

I just wrote an article for the league newsletter, and Bush had said something along these lines: You don't want to be spectators; you want to be participants.

We're trying to organize a candidates' forum for the four Saratoga Fire District candidates. There's four candidates running for two seats right now.

We never endorse candidates. We just try to give pros and cons, and we have a smart voter service on our website so candidates can put what they want to about themselves.

We do study issues, over a year or two-year period, and we'll come to some conclusion. For example, on election reform, we interviewed the county registrar of voters to see how our registrar is doing. We really feel pretty good about the system. We don't have many hanging chads. We don't have problems with absentee ballots. They stack the absentees as they come in, so when the polls close they run them through a counting machine right away.

SN: This past November there wasn't anything suspicious going on?

MB: Not in our state. We've got a consistent voting practice.

They're looking at voting ahead of time, voting in shopping centers, talking about touch-screen methods.

We would like to see them computerize the voting lists--so if somebody's registration is missing at the polls, the registrar can immediately check it.

SN: League members have been a constant presence at Saratoga's housing discussions in the past couple of months--what's the pull there?

MB: League has had a long, long stand [in support of] housing. We've always had it for seniors. The last time Saratoga did a housing element was 20 years ago. Now more people are concerned about it. They realize it's hard for teachers and city employees to find a place to live.

SN: Are you glad that people have started to wake up to this?

MB: Yes, we've been pushing it for so long. But what we want is denser housing near transportation points so that people can use alternate transportation.

I think Saratoga is smart to use that idea of mixed-use in commercial zones--we had that position in the mid-1980s. It's so people could live and work in the same area.

SN: You've been in the league in different places than here--but it wasn't housing that got you involved in the first place was it?

MB: It was a get-out-the-vote in Nashville, Tenn., while my husband [George] was working on his Ph.D. and I was teaching speech and debate and English in college in the mid-1950s. I can't even remember the issue ... it's been so long ago. But they had a huge get-out-the-vote campaign.

When I came to Saratoga, it was transportation issues and Ron Diridon, Sr., the former Saratoga City Council member, was involved.

I've done plenty of fundraising for them.

SN: Nashville was where you joined the league--you sound like you are from the South.

MB: I'm really from Texas. George and I went to a Baptist university there, and then he was in the Navy in Boston. This would have been in the mid-'50s. I was typing doctorate theses for guys who were working in an apartment where we lived. I thought, "These guys, they have to be edited; their English is terrible. If they can do that, then I can do it." So I got my master's at Boston University in speech and hearing. And then they hired me as a guest instructor.

While we were in Nashville next, I taught at a local college.

SN: One would imagine there weren't a lot of women teaching in colleges and universities in those days?

MB: Well, my boss was a woman. I mean they paid the women less, because they supposedly weren't the breadwinners. And they were considered not as qualified. But I mean [George] had a scholarship to Vanderbilt under the GI Bill, but I still had to earn some money, too. (She laughs.)

It was coming along then; women were getting more rights.

SN: In the business world we saw Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina grabbing the spotlight recently, and it seems like for organizations like yours, women don't have the time anymore because they're out in the business world.

MB: That's right, the women don't have the time. There are some [not working] though. If you go downtown, you see a lot of women there. I say, 'I wonder what they're doing.'

I've got a daughter now, and she doesn't work, and she's got young babies now. Of course when I had kids, I did league. I thought, 'I've got to talk to intelligent people about something besides diapers.'

Having child care is really important for organizations, and we've talked about that.

Because I feel like the younger women, the younger generation isn't voting. Now they're volunteering. They'll do things like coaching soccer. But to join an organization ... all of the groups have trouble. You used to have organizations like National Organization for Women. But they're not as big and important as they were because it's harder to get [people] to participate. And they don't realize the benefits of learning something right now.

Until something goes wrong, people don't pay attention.

Citizen alerts officials to Mountain Winery signs code violations

Commentary: World Trade Center

Local Home Sales and Property Listings

Obituary: Florence Worrell

Saratoga Sampler

Sports Briefs

Courtside Tennis Club wins state titles

High school football

High school cross country