Photograph by Moryt Milo
Make a Wish: Willow Glen resident Edna Morgan celebrates her 100th birthday surrounded by her grandsons Todd (left) and Craig Casho at a party thrown for her by longtime friend Emily Mazone.
Longtime Willow Glen residents celebrate two milestone birthdays
WG's Morgan, 100, and Garbarino, 90, share memories of the past
By Moryt Milo
In ancient cultures, those with gray hair and wrinkled skin were revered for their wisdom. They were community elders and regarded as living history. They lived in times when storytelling was the only way history was preserved.
Today's hyper-paced lifestyle doesn't lend itself to gathering around the fire, yet our communities have a wealth of oral historians who are willing to share their pasts, if we are only willing to listen. In Willow Glen, Edna Morgan, 100, and George Garbarino, 90, are two such individuals.
Morgan, born in Los Angeles Nov. 5, 1901, in an era when airplanes and automobiles sounded like science fiction, celebrated her 100th birthday three days after Thanksgiving at a party with family and friends.
She still lives in the Willow Glen home that she and her husband, Eugene, purchased in 1948, and 53 years later remembers the day they moved to Willow Glen as being "kind of rainy, and there was no heat."
In fact, her good friend Yolanda Gullo, 77, who moved next door to Morgan more than 50 years ago, says there weren't any lawns either.
"There was a man, Mr. Malone, who used a mule and a plow to rototill the soil," Gullo says.
In the late 1940s, after the end of World War II, homes began to replace cherry and pear orchards in Willow Glen. Along Shibley Avenue, where Morgan lives, families picked out floor plans from a developer, bought homes for $12,500 each and waited for their houses to be built, Louie Gullo, Yolanda's husband, says.
Beverly Toole, 83, Morgan's friend for 53 years, also remembers everyone moving into the newly built Willow Glen development.
"We moved into our home the same year as Edna," Toole says. "The neighborhood had a gang of about 40 preschoolers, and Edna's daughter, Barbara, was the oldest. She was 7 and used to watch all the kids."
The street even had a nickname. It was called "Rabbit Gulch" because there were so many children running around at once, Emily Mazone, 82, Morgan's best friend and next-door neighbor, says.
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Telling It Like It Is: 90-year-old Willow Glen resident George Garbarino recalls stories of getting arrested for fishing in Los Gatos Creek when he was 80.
But the changing of the landscape from orchards to homes is the very thing that saddens George Garbarino the most.
Garbarino, born Dec. 11, 1911, says, "The biggest thing that ever happened here was the destroying of the orchards."
Garbarino, whose family invented fruit-dehydration equipment and owned the Garbarino Machine and Iron Works Company in downtown San Jose for 53 years, says changes to Willow Glen began right after the war.
"The boys were in the service, and most of them lived in cold places like the Dakotas and towns like Chicago. When they came to train at Fort Ord and saw our beautiful country, they never moved back," Garbarino says.
Developers started buying up big pieces of land and paying millions of dollars for property. The farmers couldn't pass it up, Garbarino says.
"Slowly but surely, everything got bought up, and the orchards disappeared. It was the saddest thing that ever happened here," he says.
With the loss of land, Garbarino remembers traditional events like the annual Blossom Festival on Almaden Road, where farmers came with their harvests, also disappearing from the local scene.
Garbarino faults greed as the main culprit, and he reminisces on the valley's heyday, when the area was known as the Valley of the Heart's Delight because of its rich soil and endless acres of fruit and vegetables.
"You could never imagine what a beautiful valley this was," Garbarino says.
He is not alone in memories. Those who raised their families after World War II vividly remember the beauty that captured the area.
Photograph by Moryt Milo
Keep the Old Friends: Yolanda Gullo, 77, hugs her longtime friend Edna Morgan during Morgan's 100th birthday party. The pair, former neighbors, have been friends for more than 50 years.
At Morgan's birthday party, which was held at Mazone's home in Willow Glen, Mazone says, "When everything was in bloom, it looked like it had snowed the night before."
Morgan also remembers driving up into the foothills during the spring when all the orchards were in bloom and staring down at a valley, into a bouquet of colors and smells.
"It was beautiful," she says.
Yet unlike Garbarino, who is sad to see all the changes, Morgan's view of farmland giving way to technology is more progressive.
"Things don't stay the same, or we would never get anywhere," she says.
Morgan's friends and family say this is the cornerstone of who she is and why she has overcome adversity and tragedy in life to see her 100th birthday.
She lost her husband in 1958 from a heart attack, on the very day he was planning to drive their only child, Barbara, up to college at Oregon State University. Barbara was entering her freshman year, but after the sudden loss of her father, she withdrew from college to stay home with her mother.
Then, just 14 years later, at age 32, Barbara also had a heart attack and died. Edna was left to help raise Barbara's two young boys, Todd and Craig, who were only 6 and 10 at the time.
But she is far from bitter and says, "There is no point in worrying about things because everything will be just fine."
Before tragedy struck, Morgan and her husband experienced many firsts together. Morgan recalls spending a lot of time watching the building of the Golden Gate Bridge, which opened May 28, 1937.
"Everyone had to ride over the bridge," Morgan says.
She also remembers going to the San Francisco World's Fair on Treasure Island, during 1939 and 1940. But when asked what it was like, her reply is simple: "I had a fun time."
Morgan also remembers when Willow Glen was just a quiet little community.
"Willow Glen used to fold up on Saturday and Sunday nights," she says, "and San Jose was deader than a doornail."
But it was a big deal to get dressed up, put on a pair of high-heeled shoes and go into San Jose during the day, Morgan says.
Once in the city, people would go to O'Brien's, an ice cream parlor and candy shop, and they frequented Hart's Department Store. Many of the people who lived in Willow Glen would reach downtown San Jose by taking the streetcars at Minnesota and Lincoln avenues and traveling down to Market Street. Morgan, who never learned how to drive, rode them often.
Even today, at age 100, she still walks to the PW Market in the Hacienda Gardens Shopping Center, pushing her grocery cart, and to St. Christopher's Church every Sunday.
"I have to sneak out of my house or my neighbors try to give me a ride," she says, smiling.
Morgan still lives alone without assistance, and can regularly be seen outside pruning her trees and raking the leaves in her yard.
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
A Site to Behold: George Garbarino, 90, relays stories about his escapades during his youth, especially becoming "buggy-eyed" upon seeing the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time.
Garbarino also has fond memories of major local events and recalls opening day on the Golden Gate Bridge as windy but clear. He drove up to San Francisco in his Model T Ford and was "buggy-eyed" when he saw the bridge.
"I walked across the bridge when it was first built," Garbarino says. "The weather was beautiful that day."
He was equally in awe the year before, 1936, when the Bay Bridge was opened to the public and he drove across with hundreds of other people, he says. His Model T transported him to Treasure Island when the World's Fair opened, which he says was wonderful.
That same Model T also took him up Mount Hamilton to the Lick Observatory, which was one of his favorite things to do.
But his strongest memories are of the times he shared with his family.
As a young boy, he was asthmatic and doctors recommended the family move from San Jose into the foothills of Saratoga.
"I was 11 when we moved to the side hills off Prospect Road," he says. "We lived on 300 to 400 acres, in an old farmhouse. We had no water, no lights, no electricity and no bathrooms."
The year was 1922, and the family would go down to the creek to get their water. It was hard work, and Garbarino says, "Pulling that water from the creek killed my mom, who had come from a nice home and moved out to Saratoga because of my asthma."
Life in Saratoga was simply too much for Garbarino's mother, Lucienne, who passed away when he was 18. His older sister, Marie, then 19, took care of him and his younger brother, Edwin.
"We were real close and grew up to love each other," he says. "We all worked together and took care of each other."
An Englishman, who was called a remittance man, owned the Saratoga farm on which the Garbarino family lived. The Garbarino's lived there and in return worked the orchards. The family picked every kind of fruit, but a side hill of apricots, where putting up ladders was particularly hard, sticks in Garbarinos mind.
"We picked the apricots using a bucket and then emptied the fruit into a box," he says. "A team of horses would take the boxes away."
During the last three years the Garbarinos lived on the farm, the workhorses changed to tractors, but the horses were special to Garbarino, who spent hours riding them bareback around the farm.
In those days Garbarino's family was very poor, and times were extremely difficult as they struggled through the Great Depression. For food, the family shot game. Rabbits, pheasants and deer were plentiful in the foothills and fields.
"The deer would come down and eat with the chickens, and we went to Alviso for duck hunting," Garbarino says.
He also spent lots of time fishing in Los Gatos Creek, which he continued doing until he turned 85.
When he turned 80, Garbarino jokingly says, "I became an outlaw. I would spear the salmon because I couldn't catch them with a hook, and I got caught by the game warden."
He was brought before the judge, who asked him why he was fishing in the creek.
He said, "Well, the creek dries up every year and I hate to see the fish dry up with the creek."
The judge told him to go home and not do it again, but Garbarino says he only stopped five years ago.
Being feisty could be one of Garbarino's secrets to long life, or it could be in the family genes. Garbarino's great-great-great-grandmother, who lived to 109, was married to his great-great-great-grandfather, who lived to 105.
This feisty nature is something he has in common with Morgan, who didn't marry until age 32, which in 1933 most people considered spinster status. Morgan saw it quite differently.
"Most people got married because they didn't know what to do with themselves," she says. "But I was working in a collection agency."
After getting married in 1933, she moved up to San Francisco, where her husband was working as an insurance adjuster.
Garbarino also married after returning from serving in the Navy for four years during World War II.
Eventually he and his wife moved to Blewett Avenue and then to Willow Street in Willow Glen.
"One of our favorite things was going to the Garden Theater every Sunday," he says. "We would walk right through a gate where Wells Fargo Bank [on Lincoln Avenue] is and go to the movies.
"San Jose was always very friendly," he says. "We never had to close or lock a door."
The only illegal activities in the area were during the years of Prohibition--1933 to 1935--when wine was being made out in the Evergreen area of San Jose.
"But the police never bothered us too much," he says. "It was just a cheaper way to sell the crop."
For most of Garbarino's life he worked with his dad at the Garbarino Machine and Irons Works. The family sold their dehydration equipment, which the family designed and handcrafted, to businesses including Mariani's Packing Company, Sunsweet and CalPrune Packing House. They also built ornamental iron works--decorative railings--for businesses like Hart's Department Store in San Jose.
Reflecting back on it all, Garbarino says, "I've had a good life. But the trouble is, when you live too long you lose all your friends."
But he offers this advice to others: "Be honest, work hard, take care of each other and don't be greedy."
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
