The Willow Glen Resident Letters Schools should be returned to neighborhoods A cruel hoax has been played on the children in Willow Glen by the former superintendent of schools and the San Jose Unified School District for the past 12 years or more. All the schools were stolen from the neighborhoods and turned over to the federal government. Broadway High School, off Willow Street and Lincoln Avenue, was made into a school for juvenile delinquents and unwed mothers, complete with nursery. River Glen Elementary School at Bird and Pine avenues now is a school for bilingual Spanish speaking children. I have watched portable classrooms moved in and out, in and out at a huge cost to the taxpayers. A million-dollar school could have been built at River Glen by now. When they closed River Glen Elementary School to the neighborhood, a very upset parent told me the San Jose Unified School District had lied to them. They were told the school was closing because of diminishing enrollment. Willow Glen Elementary School was kept open, but our neighborhood children were bused out to let minority children attend. The 12 children on my block have to be driven to and picked up at schools all over town, when River Glen is a block away. So much for bilingual when they have to steal schools from English-speaking children in the neighborhood. About 15 years ago, strongly built Woodrow Wilson Junior High School was declared unsafe for earthquakes and closed by the San Jose Unified School District. The children were bused to Willow Glen's Edwin Markham Junior High School, causing havoc. My grandson was afraid to use the bathroom. Why are the portable classrooms earthquake-proof and not Woodrow Wilson Junior High School? At one time college authorities wanted to relocate San Jose State University to Almaden Valley. They could have had a beautiful and safe campus. The downtown building owners and merchants wouldn't allow it. Something is terribly wrong with all the closures. Sadie Z. Mouber Jansen Avenue Chimneys are open invitation to birds We would not want anyone else to go through what we experienced on Saturday evening, Sept. 27. We had our house built 27 years ago. It has a Spanish-style tile roof, and the two fireplaces were equipped with gas heaters and gas logs. Evidently, this is the reason no screens or spark arrestors were put over the tops of the chimneys. In the changing weather in the last few weeks--heat one day, air conditioning the next--we had used our family room fireplace to "take the chill off." We evidently didn't close the damper after we used it the last time. On Saturday evening, we heard a rumbling sound and an undescribable mower or electric-motor sound coming from the family room fireplace wall. We thought it was possibly an earthquake. Looking outside through the west-facing sliding glass door, we saw a huge flock of birds flying over. Then the birds started flying out of our fireplace in the family room, into the kitchen, dining room and living room--all rooms with large windows. We managed to get the two opposite sliding doors in the family room opened, and many birds flew out, but others had to be chased out. Many clung to the drapes or windowsills and behind the furniture--these had to be removed by hand. They were all covered on soot, which scattered all over the floors, furniture, counters, tables and chairs. There were at least 75 to 100 birds; it was unbelievable! Needless to say, we are having the chimneys covered properly. Just once in 27 years is too much. What if we had been gone for the weekend or longer? It's too horrible to think about. We just hope it doesn't happen to anyone else. Please check your chimneys! Gene and Glenna Tritt Saratoga Better to be right than to be president? Adlai Stevenson said that when he was a youth, "I thought I might grow up to be president. But later, I changed my mind. I dismissed it as a risk that every American boy has to take." Who was it that said, "I'd rather be right than president"? Now we have an incumbent who--well, you fill in the blanks. It is far better to be right than president, unless adhering to principle jeopardizes your continuance in office. It is easy to believe the worst about anybody, particularly if it is the worst. Conversely, the most evident thing about Clinton loyalists is in trying to find reasons for continuing what they would like to believe irrespective of the facts. Political opponents who belittle those in power are accused of trying to pull them down to their own size. Often, this is so. However, if their positions were reversed, the same conditions might well pertain. There is something to be said for history remembering you. But it should be for more than being recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records as the first American president to be censured--for conduct jeopardizing your political party's adherents to remain in office. It is not only the president who is on trial. If we do not adhere to consistency in our judgment of presidential conduct while in office, what history will say about this presidency is less important than what it will say about us. What should every one of us do? An old newspaperman named Frank McKinney (Kin) Hubbard once said, "Live, so that at least, you can get the benefit of the doubt." Vern Hansen Los Gatos Though he didn't know where he was going, Columbus wasn't so bad As an Italian-American, I felt compelled to defend Columbus and ask his bashers: Where would you be if Columbus hadn't discovered the Americas? And let's get a few facts straight. It was Queen Isabella I of Spain who made the trip possible, her soldiers who killed the natives, brought Columbus back in chains and made Spanish the language of the land. While Columbus was no saint, it was the natives who introduced tobacco that has and still is killing hundreds of thousands of people every year. I must admit, Columbus didn't know where he was going, where he was or where he had been. But he did it all on borrowed money. Tony Di Leonardo Sunnyvale [ Back to Contents Page | Willow Glen Resident Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Willow Glen Resident, October 14, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.