Fast-forward to 1973. Residents organized again, this time to take on City Hall. The community created the Willow Glen Neighborhood Association with the determination of three women--Becky Worsham, Hannah Kennedy Jacobsen and Margey Schumb--to stop Cherry Avenue from becoming an expressway. They revved up the community, touting the need to preserve the quaint atmosphere on Cherry Avenue. The residents took up the cause, and the grassroots effort succeeded in eliminating the expressway project.

"We didn't have any money to speak of," Worsham says. "Things can be done, [but] you have to be persistent."

In its 33 years, the neighborhood association has battled the city on countless issues, from traffic and parking to land use. The association has helped improve downtown Willow Glen, designate historic landmarks, build parks and affect citywide policy in favor of neighborhoods.

Today, the organization continues to work collaboratively with residents, Willow Glen businesses and the city. With more than 600 members, the association also hosts a lively email list where neighbors can refer businesses, find lost pets and discuss changes in their community 24 hours a day.

"They have just done a wonderful job," San Jose Councilman Ken Yeager says. "They're an example for other neighborhood associations on how to be effective."

In fact, Yeager selected the association for the 2006 Good Neighbor Award for District 6. Each council member and the mayor chose an individual or group for the annual award, which will be presented at the State of the City address on Feb. 8.

Helen Solinski, a longtime association board member and president from 2003 to 2005, says, "It's an honor for all of us, for everyone that's ever served on the association."

In the beginning

By the 1970s, Willow Glen had changed from an old town with strong orchard roots to a suburban neighborhood. Political activists were among the new residents, frequently speaking up on issues ranging from the Vietnam War to local community issues.

"Generally speaking, the activists were interested in social change, in human rights, in protecting the environment, regulating big business and controlling urban sprawl," April Hope Halberstadt wrote in her book, The Willow Glen Neighborhood: Then and Now.

None were more determined to save their community than Jacobsen, Schumb and Worsham, three friends who were also members of the League of Women Voters.

In 1973, Worsham discovered San Jose planned to remove a house at the end of Cherry Avenue bordering the Los Gatos Creek. The city wanted to build a bridge crossing the creek to link Cherry Avenue with Race Street. Cherry Avenue would be widened to four lanes and become a cross-town throughway into the Almaden Valley.

The women went to a city council meeting and managed to have the Cherry Avenue issue deferred. Then they turned to their neighbors for support, canvassing the community with fliers and holding the first Willow Glen Neighborhood Association meeting at the Willow Glen Public Library. More than 100 people attended.

When the issue came before city council again, council members said plans were going forward because the city had already purchased the Cherry Avenue home.

During a break, Worsham rushed to a pay phone to call her husband, Daniel.

"Can I buy a house?" she asked him. "I need to buy a house."

"Whatever you have to do is fine," he replied.

When the meeting resumed, Worsham told the council, "We have a buyer for the house; that's no longer an issue."

Cherry Avenue was saved that day, and the house was ultimately purchased by another private buyer, Worsham says.

The fledgling organization fought other street widening protects, with one primary goal--save the neighborhood's character.

Willow Glen residents worked with the San Jose Planning Department to revise the General Plan, the overall master development plan for San Jose.

"The city was working with a plan from the late 1940s where San Jose was going to be the L.A. of the north, so they had all these grandiose plans of [street] widenings and cut-throughs," Worsham says. "Fortunately, times changed and values changed, and Willow Glen is still here today, better and stronger."

The neighborhood association also had political clout. It helped elect Nancy Ianni, the association's president from 1978 to 1979, as its first District 6 councilwoman in 1978.

Ianni served on the city council for eight years. In 1984 she secured a block grant to revitalize Lincoln Avenue. The grant funded the Downtown Willow Glen Revitalization Strategy Project. This lead to the creation of the Willow Glen Business and Professional Association, the Founder's Day Festival and the planting of sycamores on the avenue instead of the palm trees originally planned.

In the early 1990s, the association even ran a graffiti abatement program. Board members spent their weekends driving around Willow Glen with gray spray paint to cover over "tagging" that was plaguing neighborhood homes and businesses. The city has since taken over this task.

These group efforts continue to build strength, but members say none of it could be accomplished without dedicated volunteers.

Faces of change

In 1979, Larry Ames moved to Willow Glen from Wisconsin and joined the neighborhood association.

"When I came out here, I expected there to be one," Ames says. "You're a homeowner, and you're expected to participate."

That's exactly what Ames did, becoming one of the organization's longest-serving members.

Despite a seven-year hiatus between 1986 and 1993 when his children were young, Ames has served on the board in various capacities, including president from 1995 to1997. Ames is the group's environmental advocate, newsletter editor, website manager (at wgna.net) and electronic listserv moderator.

"He does 90 percent of the work that no one's thanked for," former association president John Gibbs says. "He really is the heart and soul of the organization."

Ames is also the group's unofficial historian. In its early days, the Willow Glen Neighborhood Association board met over the dining room table at the president's home. Later it met at Tattler, a bookstore owned by former president Nadine Casserino, who served from 1979 to 1980. By the mid-1980s, the board had moved its meetings into local churches. Currently the group meets at Willow Glen Baptist Church of San Jose on Minnesota Avenue.

The association's efforts can be found throughout the community.

Along with planting sycamores on Lincoln Avenue, the association helped preserve the Buffington House at 1224 Lincoln Ave., Ames says. The developer planned to tear down the house to make way for a bank. The group helped designate the former residence of first Willow Glen fire chief Howard M. Buffington as a city landmark.

Two years ago, the association returned to the Revitalization Strategy Project findings to ensure the architecture of the new Longs Drugs, 1285 Lincoln Ave., retained the character of downtown Willow Glen rather than the "big box" building first proposed, Ames says.

But Ames' proudest accomplishment was to secure grant money and create a
10-acre park on Los Gatos Creek between Leigh and Meridian avenues. The project began in 1992 on a site that resembled a dirt parking lot. However, it was illegal to plant trees on the site according to state law, so Ames lobbied the neighborhood, city, county and state departments to change the law. By 1996, more than 1,000 6-inch-tall trees were planted by an army of more than 200 people. Today those trees are 20 to 30 feet tall.

"Larry was just phenomenal," says Kris Cunningham, who succeeded Ames as president from 1997 to 1999, adding that Ames' work on the trail also included bike paths.

On the board

Like Ames, Cunningham moved in Willow Glen in the 1970s. She moved to Cherry Avenue in 1972 and watched the neighborhood association blossom. She joined the organization but was not active.

"They were good at organizing people," Cunningham says. "That power gives voice."

In the 1990s, when discussion began about building a bicycle bridge on Cherry Avenue, Cunningham got involved. Although the issue never materialized, Cunningham occupied several board positions before becoming president.

During her term, one of the most controversial issues involved Willow Glen Billiards and Brew on Lincoln Avenue, which opened in 1997. The restaurant and bar was later renamed The Glen, then changed to Beavers and most recently D's before the facility closed permanently.

Back then the restaurant and bar stayed open past midnight, generating complaints of noise and nuisance in the surrounding neighborhood.

"We had people come and yell at us in board meetings," Cunningham says.

But Cunningham took the association's mission to preserve and enhance the neighborhood seriously. After numerous meetings, the neighborhood association succeeded in getting the city to require owner John Karamanos, who applied for a conditional use permit in 1999 as The Glen, to close his establishment by midnight. The city council vote was 6-5, with then-District 6 Councilman Frank Fiscalini supporting the neighborhood.

"We did our homework, and we used the ordinance of the city to support what we believed in," Cunningham says. "It took a lot of time and energy, and it was controversial. I'd do it again."

Cunningham left the board to focus on her campaign for the District 6 city council seat against Yeager. Although she lost the election, Cunningham took two things with her--empathy for constituents she works with as chief of staff for Santa Clara County Supervisor Blanca Alvarado, and friendships with her former board members.

"[Those friendships are] invaluable. It was very satisfying to work on projects together, to try to find a way to solve a problem that was there," she says.

One of those friends, association members Helen Solinski, considers Cunningham a mentor. Solinski took up the cause to help save the hose wagon at San Jose Fire Station 6 in 2005. For others, such as former president Gibbs, it's the interaction between the board that makes the association successful. During his term, 2001-03, Gibbs headed the board that took over the 2002 Founder's Day festival after the Willow Glen Business and Professional Association could no longer afford to sponsor the neighborhood event.

The festival was a huge undertaking for the board, requiring money and time from volunteers. But the board hired an event planner and received grant funding, turning the festival into a "premier community event," Gibbs says. The festival had four band stages and a parade down Lincoln Avenue.

Since that time, the neighborhood association and the business association have developed a more cohesive working relationship, Gibbs says, and he hopes that collaboration continues.

Current president Ed Rast and the neighborhood association board plan to sponsor the 2006 Founder's Day festival, which is being organized by the Willow Glen Business and Professional Association. On Sept. 8, the business association will stage the festival for the first time in four years.

Rast is also leading United Neighborhoods of Santa Clara County, a coalition of neighborhood associations and homeowner associations across the county. Former Willow Glen Neighborhood Association president Tiralisa Kaplow co-founded the organization in the 1990s.

"It's a nice place to live because it's beautiful. They want to have that little bit of Americana that means that you're safe and that your home is your haven," Cunningham says. "That's what I love about the people of Willow Glen. I think they really do care about their home and their neighbors."

For more information on the Willow Glen Neighborhood Association, visit www.wgna. net. To sign up for the group's electronic listserv, email to admin@wgna.net.