Photograph by Aaron Suozzi
Sunnyvale's Joseph Ekman found family artifacts--some more than 100 years old--in his father's garage.
By JULIE MEHTA
Up in a corner of the attic, stashed away behind the kids' old toys and your old computer, may lie clues to a historical legacy. That's what Joseph Ekman of Sunnyvale found while cleaning out his parents' house in Mountain View earlier this month.
In three boxes labeled "old magazines," he discovered historical memorabilia that has drawn the interest of the Presidio in San Francisco and even the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.
Hidden away in those boxes were pictures, newspapers and books relating to the Spanish-American War, in which Ekman's great-grandfather, Rolla Drake, fought. Some of the items could probably bring a high price. But Ekman, whose father Duke is ill, has decided it would be more valuable to donate the artifacts in his father's name.
"We wanted people to enjoy them and wanted a legacy for my father," he says. "That's worth a bit more than a couple bucks."
Among the artifacts from the war nearly 100 years ago--through which the United States acquired the Philippines and Puerto Rico and Cuba won its independence from Spain--is a kind of yearbook. Its brittle but lavishly designed pages are filled with black-and-white pictures and biographies of soldiers. Photos stand out of boys wearing jaunty hats, mustaches and smiles, who would soon march into battle.
The book also contains scenes of troops setting up and leaving camp at the Presidio, landing in Manila and parading down Market Street in San Francisco. Conspicuously absent from the Presidio pictures is the Golden Gate Bridge, which Ekman's grandfather would later help build.
Another pocket-sized book is a detailed primer on battle formations and regulations. But the most exciting item for Ekman was a war diary kept by his great-grandfather, who Ekman says was among the first expeditionary forces to arrive to take Manila during the short-lived war. He read the entries, which include Spanish lessons, descriptions of buddies dying, and a letter to his mother.
Ekman's great-grandfather was hospitalized for tuberculosis and discharged in 1899. Poster-sized certificates honoring his service and a copy of the first Manila newspaper published after the United States takeover are carefully preserved in portfolios.
Ekman, who has a collection of other family-related memorabilia and is a history buff, says when he found the items, he realized they were "pretty heavy-duty."
He says he plans to give some of the find to the Smithsonian and some to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, of which the Presidio is a part.
Susan Ewing Haley, who is park archivist for the area, says some of the items would be unique to its research collection and that they may be particularly useful in view of the upcoming 100th anniversary of the Presidio.
Aside from providing a glimpse of world history, Ekman's find also helped him to unearth more of his personal history: Among the artifacts Ekman found is a family tree that traces his roots back 12 generations to explorer Sir Francis Drake, who claimed the San Francisco Bay for Great Britain in 1579.
"We want to let people know what they may have," says Ekman. "It may be lying in the basement and they don't know. The message is the legacy."
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, November 6, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.