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Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Sister Act: Sisters Kathy Stannard, left, and Susan Thornberry, found hundreds of photos taken in the Willow Glen area that their grandmother saved. Their family has been in the area for close to 150 years.
Pictures of the Past
Two sisters who discovered hundreds of historic photos of Willow Glen will show photos at cafe
By Chantal Lamers
Imagine Lincoln Avenue with one-lane dirt roads instead of two-lane streets. Imagine buggies and tRollers chugging down that dirt road, instead of SUVs and BMWs zooming through downtown. Imagine creameries, candy stores and movie theaters on the avenue instead of smoothie bars, fast-food joints and bagel shops.
Believe it or not, Willow Glen was once a sleepy old town. In 1936, by a margin of 57 votes, Willow Glen residents voted to incorporate their town into the city of San Jose. Incorporation added Willow Glen's estimated 7,000 residents to San Jose's population of about 68,000.
Today, 54 years later, it's hard to imagine or remember exactly what Willow Glen was like. But thanks to two sisters, everyone can catch a glimpse of what "The Willows" used to be.
Kathy Stannard and Susan Thornberry have lived in Willow Glen almost their entire lives. The sisters have a family history in Willow Glen that stretches back to the 1800s. They also have hundreds of old black-and-white photographs that commemorate those good old days.
Beginning on Sept. 1, over 40 of those photos will be on display at the Willow Glen Coffee Roasting Company. Visitors can also set their eyes on the historic photos during a reception on Sept. 3, where Stannard and Thornberry will be around to meet and greet viewers, and answer questions about the old photographs.
The old black-and-white photos capture moments from Sadie Hawkins dances and seniors proms at Willow Glen High School. Photos of residents hanging on to the bars of a tRoller strolling up and down the dirt avenue is a sight unseen today. The photos also include shots of an old Lincoln Avenue strip, where old butcher shops and movie theaters thrived. Photos of cherry orchards, summer picnics and grand Victorian homes are part of the month-long show, too.
This is the second showing of the old photographs. One early this year at the coffee shop attracted hundreds of people. Roasting Company owner Chris Carris says people who grew up or worked in Willow Glen 40, 50 and 60 years ago showed up to see the old photos. Carris says many people recognized old friends or family members in some of the photographs.
Old barbers, meat deliverers, drugstore owners and grill cooks visited the gallery on the cafe walls. Stannard says a 92-year-old woman, who knew her mother and grandmother from a sewing circle, came into the coffee shop to see the photographs.
The sisters say hundreds of people signed a guest book that accompanied the show. Due to the overwhelming popularity of the show, Carris and the two sisters wanted to give it another swing.
Carris enjoys the show because he says it brings the Willow Glen community together. He says showing the historic and unique aspects of the old town bring understanding that residents should take the time and energy to try and preserve Willow Glen.
Photograph courtesy of the Stannard family
The Prom: Kathy and Susan's parents, Charlotte and Warren Stannard, (on the right) at their 1951 high school pre-prom dinner with friends. They were both part of the first graduating class of Willow Glen High School. Dave Smith, far left, eventually became their best man.
Carris can thank Edith Warner Murison for saving and documenting hundreds of old photos. The great, great-grandmother of the two sisters also kept scrapbooks and diaries through most of her adult life. Those diaries helped the two sisters trace the history of some of the photos.
But the two sisters didn't discover the photographs until about five years ago. Stannard and Thornberry moved into the Willow Glen home where their mother, Charlotte Murison Stannard, grew up. Thornberry's daughter, Amanda, had to create a family tree for a school project. So Thornberry went searching through two old trunks, stored in the garage, for photos.
"We knew there were photos," Thornberry says. "We were shown them as kids growing up. We didn't know there were more and we didn't know the extent of what was there."
Thornberry says just as many other families, somewhere along the line, the trunks were shoved away and forgotten about.
What Stannard and Thornberry discovered was that they are the eighth generation of their family to live in Willow Glen, and the fifth generation to live in their great-grandmother's 1930s home.
The family roots were established in Willow Glen in the 1800s when E.H. Warner began building homes along Lincoln Avenue. A Warner home, near the current location of Blockbuster Video, was one of the original homes on the street. The home still exists today, but it has been moved back onto Meredith Avenue.
Around 1846, John Francis Pyle and family traveled west by covered wagon. Stannard says her great, great-grandfather is part of the group that split with the Donner Party on their way out to California.
The Pyles owned a cannery business in San Jose. E.H. Warner's daughter, Edith, married into the Murison family. Their son married Thelma Pyle, the daughter of John Francis Pyle.
Thelma Murison is the sisters' grandmother, whose family owned Murison's Floor Coverings on Lincoln Avenue.
The two sisters have uncovered the history lesson of a lifetime during the past five years. And Stannard and Thornberry are gathering as many pictures as possible to place on the coffee house walls. For a month, the black-and-white photographs will tell a unique story about the sisters' family and unique story about a little town called Willow Glen.
Willow Glen Coffee Roasting Company is located at 1383 Lincoln Ave. The show runs through September. For information, call 408.297.9077.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
