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Photograph by Sarah Gaffney
Gold Woodman: Rosemary School volunteer Ralph Woodman sees hope for the young generation.
Public Citizen
Grumpy Gramps No More
'Grandpa Ralph' puts the 'great' in great-grandpa
By Sarah Gaffney
Ralph Woodman doesn't like little kids littering his lawn. He knows the problem all too well, as a neighbor of Rosemary School on Hamilton Avenue. He yelled at the kids and complained to the school until principal Connie Elness suggested a solution: get to know the kids on their turf and perhaps they'll be more respectful of his turf.
So, for the past two years Woodman has spent two days a week at the school as a volunteer reader to classes of second- and fourth-graders. Now, when the kids walk by his Eden Avenue home, instead of pulling his flowers or tossing their soda cans, they're more likely to stop for a chat with the 76-year-old retiree.
"[The principal told me] if you get to know the kids from the standpoint of what they're like in the classroom and they get to know who you are, maybe you'll see a difference," says Woodman, describing his conversation with principal Elness. "Well, it did make a difference. Do you know what those youngsters did to me? They gave me a nickname. They call me Grandpa Ralph."
Retired since 1985, Woodman is the real-life grandpa of four and great-grandpa of five. He spends his days tending to the Eden Avenue apartment building he's owned for more than 20 years, and is getting to know his computer and the Internet. He reads to the kids on Mondays and Tuesdays.
"It's a real pleasure coming here. I get a charge out of the kids," says Woodman, who enjoys books about archaeology. "I get quite a kick out of it. It makes me feel good that the kids ask me a lot of questions."
According to Woodman, the kids are fascinated by the horse and wagon days of his youth in San Bruno, where his grandfather owned a feed and fuel business and the largest barn between San Francisco and San Mateo. Woodman was raised on the Peninsula and moved south to Cambrian Park in the 1950s. The former building contractor built a house in Los Gatos and later bought the Eden Avenue apartment building where he now resides with his collie.
Woodman not only gives the gift of reading to the Rosemary kids, but also the joys of Christmas. For the past two Decembers he's been the school Santa, something that gives him as much pleasure as his reading time.
"That is quite a thing for an old man to be sitting there and see the expressions on those kids' faces when they come in to get Christmas presents," says Woodman, who begins growing a beard for the event in August. "It's really very satisfying. I'd rather be able to help the kids in that way than to be one of those that has to correct them about things that they do wrong."
At Rosemary School, Woodman reads to a melting pot of immigrant cultures, which reminds the septuagenarian of his former school days. "We had lot of mixtures in our grammar school. At that time we had Chinese and Japanese and European," he says.
For Woodman, the smiles and laughter and sharing of the Rosemary kids is a portent of good things to come.
"Seeing these kids get along together," he says, "I think it's hopeful that the world one day, instead of going after each other because their hair is a different color or their eyes are a different color or their skin is a different color, maybe they'll learn to understand each other."
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Campbell, California
