Photograph courtesy of Cookie Curci

Schoolmates Again: A group of children, who were Cookie Curci's playmates in 1945, attended Lincoln Glen Elementary School. Today, all of them can attend classes at the school again, but this time as seniors. From left to right, Tony, Phil, Doug, Gary, Dean, Chester and Diane.




Funny, how time slips away

By Cookie Curci

If you're a senior looking for a place to learn about computers or a place to spend some free time with people your age who are learning from an eclectic mix of classes, then the Willows Senior Center at 2175 Lincoln Ave. is for you.

At any given time, there's something interesting going on in the rooms of this center, which was once the school campus of Lincoln Glen Elementary, where I attended classes from 1947 to 1953.

Dog-walkers, shoppers, in fact most of our community and its visitors pass by the Lincoln Glen facility without paying it much mind. But to a generation of children like myself, who grew up in Willow Glen and attended Lincoln Glen Elementary School, the old building and its surrounding grounds hold some unique and happy memories. For instance, the memory of attending kindergarten classes in the rooms of the Lester mansion, a huge white Victorian house, once adjacent to the school.

The year was 1947 and the newly built Lincoln Glen Elementary School was overwhelmed by the influx of new families moving into our Willow Glen area. Schoolrooms were filled to capacity, forcing the overflow of students to attend split sessions. Standing on the school property was a vacant, three-story mansion, formerly owned by the prominent Nathen Lester family. Because of the crowded conditions, the younger students were forced to attend makeshift classes in the rooms of the old estate.

I was fortunate to have been one of those lucky kids to be singled out for the split shift sessions. I loved attending kindergarten in the rooms of this picturesque, albeit timeworn, mansion.

Naptime in Mrs. Abernathy's crowded kindergarten class was a memorable event, with children all searching for a vacant space on the floor to lie down. Grabbing my issued brown blanket (Army surplus) I scouted out a spot for myself somewhere in the middle of the room.

I lulled myself to sleep each afternoon counting the ornately carved wooden knobs on the oak wood staircases. Each room was perfumed with the past; the faint aroma of lemon oil lingered upon every grain of woodwork in the house. The personal artifacts and antiques were gone, but the arched wooden doorways, ceiling beams and ornately framed windows outlined in rich mahogany remained. Artistic murals and fading wallpaper decorated the walls, while huge inlayed mirrors reflected our smiling faces.

Today, TV's Bob Villa would consider the home an architect's treasure trove.

One of the smaller rooms of the estate was used as a study hall. Of the home's many cubicles, this was my favorite. The room may have been Nathen Lester's private den, or perhaps wife Sarah's sewing room; whichever it was, it was the coziest room in the old house. The inviting warmth of its wood-framed walls and small brick fireplace anchored the room and set it apart from the larger rooms of the house.

In the winter, it sometimes fell below 40 degrees in the rooms of the old mansion. On those occasions, when the house was damp and chilly, Mrs. Abernathy brought in an electric heater and placed it inside the study hall's small fireplace. Sometimes, when the heater broke down and the winter chill was too much to bare, we coaxed our teacher into lighting a fire in the fireplace with twigs we'd gathered from a nearby orchard.

The crackling firewood and the warmth of enthusiasm it circulated through the rooms temporally brought the old house back to life. Our noisy laughter and the tapping of our shoes running along oak wood floors seemed a natural sound inside the grand, old Victorian.

Our only lighting system, at that time, was the natural sunlight that streamed in through the house's many windows or the dull light emitted from a dangling 60-watt lamp that hung over our heads. But as I look back on those days, I can say with full honesty, the lack of fluorescent lighting and central heating didn't dampen my pleasure or dull the time I spent in the rooms of the enchanting estate.

After doing some research on the Lester family and the venerable mansion, I learned that Nathen Lester had originally constructed a single-story home on the site. It wasn't until 1894, when his family began to grow, that the former carpenter and farmer engaged Wolf and Son Contractors to build a 12-room, three-story home on the site. The cost to build the huge Victorian was $5,000, a grand amount for the time. But it was well worth the price, as the mansion would be home for many years to Nathen, his wife and their six children.

I learned that the roots of the Lester family go all the way back to the Mayflower, which carried immigrant Edward Lester across the Atlantic to America from Leicester, England--named for another of the earlier Lester ancestors.

The Lester family originally came to Santa Clara Valley in the late 1800s and engaged in the valley's fruit production. At one time, they owned and farmed more than 1,000 acres of fruit orchards in our area, including apricots, cherries, walnuts and prunes.

Fred Lester, son of Nathen, once owned the entire hill where the Baptist Church now stands and the property that is now Canos School. Hazel Lester, daughter of Nathen, in keeping with her community's generosity, donated the vast property where the Good Samaritan Hospital now sits.

Leland Lester, grandson of Nathen, attended classes at Lincoln Glen school after the grand three-story estate of his grandparents had been torn down and the school expanded. Leland once farmed more than 400 acres of property and owns many industrial parks in the south valley.

It's been more than 50 years since I sat inside those remarkable, makeshift classrooms. And, like all my fellow students who attended Mrs. Abernathy's kindergarten class, I'm now eligible to attend classes once again at that very same location, only this time around as a senior at the Willow's Senior Center.

Like that song says, "Gee, aint it funny how time slips away?"

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Cookie Curci may be contacted at cookiecurci@mymailstation.com.

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