"Morgue," as I use the word, is a "reference library kept by a newspaper," according to one of the dictionary definitions. The traditional concept, involving clippings, pictures and similar material, has been rendered obsolete by the computer. Now everything is digital, and where people once painstakingly cut items from a newspaper and pasted them onto little slips of paper of uniform size for systematic filing, today it's all put onto a disc for instant retrieval on a
video screen.

The traditional newspaper morgue has now been relegated to the other kind. Incidentally, when I went to work for the San Jose Mercury Herald—now Mercury News—in 1949, the term "morgue" was discouraged if not outright banned, even though used informally by some reporters. The room itself was called the library, and the man in charge was the librarian, and we'd better not forget it.

However, living in the past as I do, I like to say that I have a rather interesting morgue, thanks to my dad, the late Llewellyn B. Peck. Although he spent his last 11 working years as Saratoga postmaster, retiring in 1954, he was a career newspaperman, having started as a reporter in 1909 on the Fresno Republican (the irony there is that he was a lifelong Democrat).

True to his craft, he kept his own clipping file, to which I gladly give space in what I regard as my morgue. Now, years later, it's interesting to sort through it and pick out items of local history. Here's one from April 1935 about Lutheria Cunningham being appointed acting postmaster for Saratoga. The appointment was later made permanent, and she held the post until 1943, when my dad succeeded her.

There are several aspects to this item worth mentioning. Perhaps the most obvious is the title "postmaster," not "postmistress." The title, as she herself emphasized, was correct. We're in "madam chairman" territory here, and the concept of political correctness was a few decades away.

Lutheria herself was an interesting person. The daughter of Luther Cunningham, a real estate man and member of an early-day Saratoga family, Lutheria was, on her mother's side, a descendant of pioneer Spanish families, and her great-grandfather was James Alexander Forbes, whose name is perpetuated in Los Gatos in the Forbes Mill historical museum. It is appropriate for the purposes of this column that the current exhibit is titled "Ashes to ashes; the birth of the death industry 1860­1920." The exhibit includes many documents and artifacts pertaining to the cemetery and funeral homes of Los Gatos.

At the time of her appointment she was only 27, and, according to the news story, one of the youngest postmasters in the state. I have another memory of her, as the Red Queen in Dorothea Johnston's 1933 production of Alice in Wonderland. That was the production in which Olivia de Havilland played Alice. The following year, 1934, Olivia played Puck in Miss Johnston's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and from there went to Hollywood.

I find it interesting that, in the same column as the Lutheria Cunningham story, there is an article headed: "Miss de Havilland in star line-up." The lead paragraph reads: "Miss Olivia de Havilland, daughter of Mrs. G.M. Fontaine of La Paloma Avenue, is now being groomed for stardom in talking pictures, according to word received here."

The reference to "talking pictures" seems a bit archaic, inasmuch as "talkies" had been around for several years by 1935. Anyway, Olivia made it to the top, winning two Academy Awards, and it all started in Saratoga.

Another category of clippings in the morgue has to do with the incorporation of Saratoga, an issue that passed by a narrow vote in 1956. Two brochures characterize the spirited election campaign. One, titled "The Battle for Saratoga—Incorporation or Extinction?", was distributed by the Saratoga Citizens' Committee for Incorporation.

On the other side was "The Story of an Incorporation," produced by the Saratoga Protective Committee. It purported to show that the incorporation of Campbell, which succeeded in a 1952 election on the second try, was not a very good idea.

As far as I know, neither community has regretted becoming a city. The motivating factor in both instances, of course, was San Jose's aggressive annexation policy of the 1950s. Had they not incorporated, there would be a lot of territory with different ZIP codes today.

There's much more in those files, and the thought comes to me that, whenever things seem to be getting dull, they can always be livened up by going to the morgue.