The Sunnyvale Sun

Letters & Opinions

Something you may not know about Sunnyvale

By Carol Bogart

One of the things I've always enjoyed about working in the news business is the opportunity to really learn about new places and the people who live there.

In the early years of my career, it seemed as though I moved every three to six years.

By contrast, my parents moved just once after I was born. Originally, they'd set up house near my father's family. For most of my life, though, we lived on a farm outside the small Ohio town where my mom grew up.

My assorted moves gave them a reason to travel to places they might otherwise never have visited. Mom especially liked the lush flowering vines and bushes in Atlanta.

Both vowed never to visit me again in Chicago after they got lost going home, and, driving through a rough neighborhood on Chicago's south side, witnessed police frisking a young man flattened across the hood of a cruiser with his hands up.

The only time either had seen that before was on TV.

Their Christmas trips to Denver found them trapped in their hotel room at least twice by surprise blizzards. Even taxicabs weren't running. (It wasn't long before I traded my car for one with 4-wheel drive.)

Were they still living, I think both would have loved everything about California, especially since three of four grandchildren, and one great-grandchild, all live in San José. (And, of course, their only daughter.)

Now that I'm sort of settled in my new place, I've been studying San José and Sunnyvale.

For one, I'm within walking distance of St. James Park--talk about history! I'm almost certain I've found the two trees where those two guys were hauled out of the jail and hanged in 1933 after they were arrested in the kidnap/murder of the son of a well-liked department store owner. The victim was thrown off the Hayward-San Mateo Bridge.

A huge mob of angry people lynched the suspects from the trees. They used material from what was then the construction site of the now-Post Office as a battering ram to break down the door to the jail. One version of the story said the trees from which the suspects were hanged were later "removed." But looking at the front page newspaper photo that, from a distance, showed the two hanging from the trees, I'm pretty sure those trees are still there. There are two, pretty close to the Post Office, that sure look like the ones in the photo. Each has had a large, lower limb removed.

As I've begun to research Sunnyvale history, I've learned the origins of all that bright yellow mustard you see growing along the sides of roads here. History has it that Spanish padres, on their quest to establish missions along what is now El Camino Real (the royal, or king's, road) sprinkled mustard seeds to mark their path, much as Gretel and Hansel once sprinkled bread crumbs in the forest.

The religious outposts, each separated by about 30 miles, were easily found by following the trail of bright yellow flowers.

When I worked at my first newspaper in another northwest Ohio farming community about 20 minutes from where my folks had lived, as I started covering the news there, I was amazed at all the stuff I hadn't know about the place where I grew up.

I often included various things I'd learned in my weekly column. It was always fun when long-timers would drop by the paper to tell me "I never knew that"--and then tell me other stuff I hadn't known.

For example, I learned that, in a bygone era, when tracts of land were platted, each corner was marked with a "corner stone." The corner stone was buried deeply enough that ground upheavals, such as happen when frozen Ohio ground thaws, won't disturb it. The stone itself was often no more than a good-sized rock of some sort, maybe limestone, maybe granite. The spot was then topped with the corner fence post.

The local surveyor's office had a collection of corner stones on display, dug up and removed as property lines, and fence rows, shifted.

I don't know if that's how it was done years ago when Sunnyvale was being settled. But I'm sure there are plenty of other interesting, little-known facts about this community as well, and I hope you'll share them with me.

Carol Bogart is the new editor of the Sunnyvale Sun. Contact her at cbogart@community-newspapers.com or call 408.200.1055.