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Cupertino's Evelyn Miller was recently honored by San Jose State University for her thesis on music in San Francisco and Berkeley at the time of the 1906 earthquake. Behind her are file drawers full of clippings she used for reference during her three years of research.

Cupertino woman's thesis wins accolades at SJSU

By JASON GOLDMAN-HALL

Popular music and San Francisco's devastating 1906 earthquake are not often paired up, but just as the quake leveled homes and sparked an inferno, it also destroyed the majority of venues for the city's vibrant music scene.

Twenty-five year Cupertino resident Evelyn Miller's graduate thesis "The Music of San Francisco and Berkeley at the Time of the 1906 Earthquake," looked at that connection, and Miller was honored as an outstanding graduate during the 2006 San Jose State University Commencement Ceremony for the quality of her thesis.

Although the honor came after more than three years of work, Miller wasn't there to accept the award. Her husband Fred Snively filled in for her on the dais as Miller and her sister toured Hawaii, snorkeling every chance they got.

Miller said the vacation was good, because she had been working so hard, but added she isn't done yet, and plans to work on getting her thesis published so the "great story" can be told. Right now, the blue-bound tome is just under 380 pages. Miller laughs that she still can't read the thesis without finding things she wants to change.

For her thesis, Miller--an avid music fan who began playing piano when she was 3 and still makes yearly trips to New York's Metropolitan Opera with her centenarian father--read through more than 40,000 clippings from old newspapers and other publications.

"It was so extraordinarily enjoyable to immerse myself in another time," she said.

Snively said over dinner, his wife would get excited and tell him what different music reviewers had to say, as if they were still writing and talking to her today, although most of their articles were a century old.

In addition to the opera, vaudeville acts and other performances she discovered in her research, Miller said she was exposed to an overwhelming undercurrent of racism, especially toward black artists who were beginning to make names for themselves. But Miller said all the information she found--positive or negative--helped her paint a picture of the time she was studying, and helped her understand another side of one of San Francisco's most significant historical periods.