Last Dec. 31, while driving up Pine, toward the stop signal at Lincoln, I happened to catch sight of a little elderly lady on the sidewalk holding onto a walker. An impulse impelled me toward her. I first approached her where she stood near a giant oak tree with a wooden owl perched in a knothole in its thick trunk. She seemed like a little pixie who had suddenly materialized. Weeks later, having not been able to forget her, I saw and approached her once again. On this occasion it was by the deck beside the house where she lived. We talked as she led me through a back entranceway, into her room and into her life.

I would know her merely 8 ¹/2 months and a few days before she would succumb to the affliction of old age on Sept. 18. This was such a very short period out of a lifetime that had spanned nearly 97 ¹/2 years. She leaves behind two sons and a daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and a multitude of friendships acquired over the course of 60 years as a resident of San Jose.

Ida Catarina Hvala Chiolis lived an unusually long life. Most that age seem to retreat into themselves, plagued by memory disorders that are coupled with other physical ailments associated with old age. Ida's life seemed to traverse in an opposite direction. She was extremely alert and with a memory to challenge that of any young person's. Always compassionate and with a sense of humor, old age seemed to have let her blossom into full bloom. She loved to laugh and to tell jokes and was like the belle of the ball.

Each of us has a time in life to effloresce—for some it comes early, for Ida it seemed to have come in her later years.

Time is so fleeting and friendship such a precious revelation. And so now I am left to ponder the loss of my little fairy queen, whom I met one fateful day on the sidewalk beside a great oak tree with a wooden owl perched in its trunk.

Gene Meyers

Glen Eyrie Avenue

Editor's Note: Gene first wrote about meeting Ida, the lady who referred to herself as "Ida ... like in Idaho," in the April 28 issue of the Willow Glen Resident.

Myers is honest about
local school problems

I read with great interest the letters in the Oct. 6 Resident regarding the race between school board candidates Carol Myers and Pam Foley. Carol Myers, in my opinion, has done a very good job of representing the Willow Glen schools.

I am a retired employee of the San Jose Unified School District and am very aware of the issues that Carol brings up, which make the rest of the board uncomfortable. But these issues are real and the board needs to see that. I think the SJUSD is making a mistake in busing students from afar and bringing them to the schools. As I see it, all of the schools have excellent teachers who are capable of working with all kinds of students and there should be no reason whatsoever to drag these kids all over the San Jose area to get an education just like the one they can get in their local school. If all the schools would have the same type of classes, there would be no need to have special magnet classes. All the schools should have art, science, algebra, and language arts. There should be no differentiation in the amount of money each school gets for their projects.

Also, all the schools would have parent representation at meetings, PTA and volunteerism without these parents having to drive to the other side of town. I have never believed that the district should have used buses to resolve the desegregation problem; instead it should have used a different solution, such as distributing its teachers more evenly to throughout the district. Then we would not have had to spend so much money on all that unnecessary busing.

The busing we should have been doing, if at all, is within the neighborhood to the neighborhood school.

If the parents want their students to go to a faraway school, then they should transport the students themselves or work with other neighbors in carpooling.

From what I have read recently, I get the feeling that a business executive like Pam Foley would let the whole educational program fall through the cracks, particularly for our local area and, if she has a child in a different school, that school would naturally get more attention than ours would. Will she have her child go to a local school? My guess is no. So, Carol gets my vote and happily so.

Sue Evans

Dean Avenue

Camino Ramon family
also victim of flag theft

We read about the flag stealing in the Sept. 22 issue of the Willow Glen Resident, and we also had a theft. We've lived on Camino Ramon in Willow Glen, since 1970, and on May 26, 2004, we had our flag stolen, between 4 and 5 p.m. Like the other residents whose flags were stolen, we also filed a police report.

Our flag was a Luxembourg flag, purchased by us in Luxembourg, which is the country of my roots and relatives, so it had sentimental value. At the time of the theft the flag was in a flag holder on the side of our garage. We thought perhaps someone took it thinking it was a French flag. Unfortunately, Willow Glen is no longer the totally safe neighborhood it once was.

Carol and David Fitting

Camino Ramon

Myers cares about the
entire school district

Carol Myers is the only person on the San Jose Unified School District Board who really voices her concerns and cares about her constituents and the district as a whole. The other board members seem happy to keep things going in the current direction, even though it is not resulting in the integration that choice and magnet schools were meant to create. This is damaging the neighborhood schools.

When you take the children out of the neighborhoods, you hurt the neighborhoods themselves. We need to strengthen our neighborhood and their schools. Carol Myers is working to do that for the Willow Glen area.

I find it interesting that Pam Foley, Carol Myers' opponent, has many big businesses and community leaders supporting her. I find it even more interesting that none of them are from the Willow Glen area, the area that Pam Foley hopes to represent. It makes me wonder if she really has the Willow Glen schools (Booksin, Galarza, Gardner, River Glen, Schallenberger, Willow Glen Elementary, Middle and High schools) in mind as she runs for the SJUSD board position that represents them.

Karen Strasilla

Willow Glen resident