Picture from the Past
Los Gatos and vicinity have seen many U.S. presidents
By John S. Baggerly
During the last century, presidents of the United States--sitting, past and future--have visited Los Gatos and the West Valley area. The most recent was President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, who took lunch at the California Cafe in Old Town in February 1993. The two candidates were "pressing the flesh" in Silicon Valley and somehow heard of Los Gatos as a pleasant "retreat."
If retreating from the public was a purpose of the luncheon, word-of-mouth advertising had the grounds of Old Town and University Avenue packed with people when the candidates emerged.
Candidates have learned that shaking every hand extended would take hours, so a technique of brushing over hands is often used. However, a pretty local girl felt that Clinton "held" her hand longer than the "celebrity touch." A romantic gesture and indications of history to come? This reporter will not hazard a guess.
On May 1, 1891, President and Mrs. Benjamin Harrison spoke from a decorated flatcar on a siding at the Los Gatos railroad depot. They were greeted by James W. Lyndon, the town's leading builder.
In the 1920s, ex-president Herbert Hoover came to Los Gatos to visit California state Sen. Sanborn Young and his wife, writer Ruth Comfort Mitchell Young, at their home above Loma Alta Avenue.
Long before Hoover's visit, the man who defeated him for the presidency in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Undersecretary of the Navy, was a guest of U.S. Sen. James Phelan at his Montalvo estate in Saratoga. From there, Roosevelt attended the annual Saratoga Blossom Festival. A few years later, Roosevelt, a Democrat, defeated Hoover during the Great Depression.
Prior to the election, a group of Republicans urged President Hoover to do something about the country's economic problems. Hoover's reply was, "Gentlemen, the Depression is over." This inactivity helped Roosevelt win the election.
At the same time FDR was serving in the U.S. Navy, Winston Churchill, who held a similar post of Undersecretary of the Navy in Great Britain, was accused of "destroying the tradition of the British Navy." In a typical Churchillian manner, he replied, "There are only three traditions in the British Navy: rum, sodomy and the lash." The two men would later join forces to help Russia dispose of Adolph Hitler and his Nazi Germany.
Sitting President Theodore Roosevelt was once coaxed by letter to plant a tree at Campbell High School. Turning to former Campbell Mayor Jeanette Watson's book, Campbell the Orchard City, there is toothsome Roosevelt in top hat, holding a shovel he used to plant a coast redwood tree. Hatless and with white chin whiskers is Principal J. Fred Smith and Campbell's founding father, Benjamin Campbell. The President later leaned over a baby carriage to kiss a child.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
