The Willow Glen Resident

WGNA will mark 25 years of community actions

Group keeps Glen residents from being 'a lone voice in the darkness'

By Cecily Barnes

Twenty-five years ago, Willow Glen resident Becky Worsham did something simple yet heroic.

She and two women friends drew up fliers announcing a community meeting and dispersed the papers, warning of a city traffic project that would widen Pine Avenue and turn Cherry Avenue into a thoroughfare. Many meetings, strategy talks and years later, the city dropped its plan.

Worsham had helped preserve the future of Willow Glen--and left behind a legacy so that others could do the same. While organizing the community against the traffic plans, Worsham founded the Willow Glen Neighborhood Association. On Sunday, June 14, at 2 p.m., she will host a party in honor of the organization's 25th birthday at 1300 Pine Ave.

Worsham stands in front of her enormous "Gone With the Wind"- style home on Pine Avenue wearing light pink stretch pants and a matching T-shirt. Her teenage son, the youngest of eight, runs up and down the stairs gathering stuff for an overnight trip at a friend's house.

Worsham chats with the friend's mom, who soon climbs behind the wheel of her sports-utility vehicle, loops around the circular gravel driveway past Worsham's collection of 1940s automobiles, stone benches and wheelbarrows and drives off. Inside, Worsham tells about discovering the city's plans to extend Cherry and widen Pine.

Neighbors told her, "Forget it; it will never happen. You can't fight City Hall." At this recollection, Worsham raises an eyebrow and says, "Well, we definitely wouldn't be able to if we didn't try."

In 1973, the city of San Jose prepared to do away with a bothersome house that sits in the middle of Cherry Avenue, blocking cars from traveling straight through to Race Street at Interstate 280. Appalled by the thought of what such a move would do to their quiet neighborhood, Worsham, Hannah Kennedy and Margaret "Margie" Schumb inundated the neighborhood with fliers announcing plans for a community meeting at the Willow Glen High School library. The three women also went straight to City Councilmembers, all of whom could help, since San Jose had yet to be divided into council districts.

"Back then, councilmembers would hold 'coffees' at people's houses. We infiltrated all of these coffees," Worsham laughs. "They were so sick of us by the end."

When it came time for the deciding meeting, the councilmembers tried to force the project through. Worsham said they held up their hands and said they had no choice but to build the thoroughfare since they'd already purchased the home on Cherry Avenue. Worsham stood up and said she would buy the home. The bewildered council postponed the project, which eventually perished in the bureaucracy of time.

But the Willow Glen Neighborhood Association did not. WGNA members went on to fight other developments and projects that they said would have compromised the neighborhood.

Early members of the association remember blocking the expansion of the Meridian Avenue post office as another significant battle. Willow Glen residents raised such a fuss at the idea of Willow Glen's post office acting as San Jose's main facility that the plans were dropped. Such an epicenter, the group argued, would increase traffic, noise and congestion in Willow Glen. Today, the center at Murphy and Lundy avenues is San Jose's main post office, hosting mail trucks 24 hours a day.

"I remember the meeting at the post office; there were always meetings," laughed early WGNA member and former District 6 Councilwoman Nancy Ianni. "The post office spokesman was just pulling at his hair and sweating, and I said to myself, 'I think that we've won.' "

The neighborhood association has also acted as a powerful player in the political arena. When district elections were announced in 1978, Ianni decided that she would run for City Council. She won the election in part due to her history and involvement with WGNA.

Coming Together

Besides its watchdog role with City Hall, the Willow Glen Neighborhood Association has also taken on community outreach programs such as graffiti "paint-outs," planting trees along the Los Gatos Creek Trail and acting as an advisory group to the Tulip Tree Committee, which worked to treat diseased trees.

"The neighborhood association acts as a central point to begin to be able to come together," said current president Kris Cunningham. "By having a monthly meeting, people have an automatic place to go, to not be a lone voice in the darkness."

Neighbors with concerns about Willow Glen can attend the association's monthly board meetings to request advice and support. But neighbors aren't the only ones who go to WGNA for advice. Higher-ups in city government use the organization to gauge where neighborhood residents stand on issues.

"We're contacted regularly by the City Council people and the mayor's office concerning neighborhood issues," Cunningham said. "Mayor Hammer asked me to speak at a news conference on the park-land dedication fees. She also asked our advice on the group-homes ordinance and airport expansion. I think city government feels it's helpful to have organizations they can go to, to find out how the neighborhoods feel."

Another crucial role of the organization is keeping the community informed through its newsletter and candidates' forums.

"It's only natural for people to want to come and share in something that's good, but you want it to stay good," Cunningham said. "That doesn't mean it can't change; it just means it has to be done well. The planning really has to be thought out."

The WGNA party is open to the public, and a $15 donation is requested to help defray costs of the event. For more information, call 294-WGNA.

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