Christopher Cole

Penelope Williams: This is Penelope Williams and Corinna Schlatter. I am pleased to welcome Chris Cole, who I am interviewing on behalf of the Saint. Helena Historical Society’s Oral History Program. We are conducting this interview at 1:05 o’clock on April 11 [2026] at St. Helena Public Library. Welcome, Chris Cole. Can you begin by telling us where you were born and when you first came to St. Helena?

Christopher Cole: I was born in San Francisco, at Children’s Hospital, the same hospital as my mother, actually by the same doctor. I came to St. Helena circuitously in 1984.

PW: What was life like in San Francisco?

CC: It was exciting. I was in high school there from 1968 through 1972. Actually, because of my athletics, I spent almost my entire high school days in Golden Gate Park, where we had a running group. There was a lot going on in the late sixties in the early seventies, in the city. It was a great experience. I totally enjoyed it.

PW: Great. Yeah, so you spent most of your childhood in San Francisco?

CC: Well, in the summers, I was lucky enough to get out of San Francisco because we had extended family places in the Santa Cruz Mountains and also in the High Sierra. But during the school year, I was always in San Francisco, until I was 18.

PW: So when did you first move to Saint Helena?

CC: So between 1972 and 1984, I spent about six years in Humboldt County, and I spent time in Siskiyou County, working for the Forest Service in Alaska, working on Native American surveys and then I also went back to school and spent a couple of years in Fresno in the engineering department.

PW: Could you describe working in Alaska and in Fresno?

CC: I didn’t actually work in Fresno. I was just in school there at Fresno State because they have a surveying program, which I got enrolled in so I could pass my state board exams. While I was in Fresno, I got this apprenticeship with the Bureau of Lane Management to work in Alaska, in the Bush. I was almost five months in the Alaskan bush in the Yukon Delta, and we were breaking out native lands – breaking native lands out of the Delta Wildlife Refuge. That was a completely wild experience. There were sixteen of us in a bush camp:two pilots who were Vietnam Vets, two women, and the rest of us were pretty hardcore guys [chuckles]. We worked in the bush; we worked for weeks in the swamps. I wore waders a lot of the summer. I had a chance to work permanently in Alaska, but I discovered that I wasn’t really tough enough to do that [chuckles]. So that’s when I came to St. Helena. I came directly from this little village called Holy Cross on the Yukon River and came to St. Helena because my girlfriend was working as an enologist at Beringer. I had never even been to the Napa Valley, but it was easy to find work and been here ever since.

PW: Your current wife, Wendy, was she your girlfriend at the time, or did you have a different girlfriend?

CC: Well, yes, she was my girlfriend at the time, and that’s why I came to St. Helena.

PW: How did you guys meet?

CC: We met at Humboldt State University. She was a biologist, and I was essentially a professional student [chuckles]. I graduated in six years – with probably more units than anybody else in the college – so I was behind her, but I majored in a program they called “Natural Resources,” with an emphasis in soil science and forest soils.

PW: Interesting. You mentioned in your questionnaire that it was a tough choice between Humboldt and UC Berkeley. What really drew you to Humboldt over UC Berkeley? CC:Well, the main thing was that I didn’t want to live in Berkeley. My grandparents on both sides, and my parents, all went to Berkeley. So it was kind of assumed that, should I get into Berkeley, that would be the place to go. I mean, my cousins went to Berkeley or Stanford, it was kind of a thing. I spent a lot of time in Berkeley, even in high school, and got to know a lot of the botany graduate students through a trip I was involved in. But, I just needed to get out of the city and I needed to get out of Berkeley. Humboldt, at the time, had fantastic natural science programs: botany, biology, fisheries, wildlife, forestry. So that’s why I went to Humboldt. My parents were disappointed, but they got over it, [chuckles] eventually. It took a while.

PW: You got to go your own way. CC:Yeah. Yeah, you do. You do have to go your own way.

PW: That’s interesting, though. That’s super great that you were able to break away and kind of start your own life and kind of get away from those ties.

CC: Well, my parents gave me a very long leash all through high school.

PW: Could you describe high school life in San Francisco with them and your family?

CC: Well, I went to Jesuit high school, St. Ignatius, all boys.It’s both genders now, but at the time it was all boys. It was very strict. I did not enjoy it too much. In fact, I wanted to transfer out. By the time I got through with my sophomore year, I wanted to transfer to Lowell where I had a lot of friends. It was a public high school in San Francisco but it’s considered the best high school, because it’s entrance by examination. But, I didn’t [transfer]. I figured out I was far enough along that I would stick with St. Ignatius and graduate. But, I mean, I didn’t even go to graduation. It just so happened that the [track and field] state championships were on the same day, so I didn’t have to go, which suited me just fine. High school was a wild time, you know, there were kids that were following the norm, and there were kids that were breaking into the counterculture. So there was a huge diversity amongst the student body, and it was largely suppressed at St. Ignatius. We did have some great teachers there. I learned a few things as well.

PW: Could you also talk about the running group that you were in? Because that seems like a really fun sports group that you were a part of at the time.

CC: It’s sort of unprecedented. These are the kinds of magazines you used to get for thirty-five cents, [gestures to magazine, see images 1and 2] before the Internet, you know, before there was the Internet. When I was in eighth grade, I had a friend who lived a block away who was running with this group at the Polo Fields in San Francisco, and they met every day. Every day. Including Christmas. 3:30 on weekdays and 12:30 on Sundays and 10 o’clock on Saturdays, depending on whether there were meets. So it was a ragtag bunch from all different schools, and it was led by this guy, Carlton Colombat. They did a little feature of him in this magazine that was published in 1973. This was like a quarterly. We were known as the SF Chuckers: a chucker is a sort of a period in the polo game, and we met at the polo fields. We didn’t have any facilities, there were just bleachers, so we just changed in the bleachers. Rain or shine, we were there.Do you want me to tell you a little bit about Mr. Colombat?

PW: Yeah, you totally could.

CC: Okay. So, [reads from magazine] “Meet Carlton B. Colombat: misunderstood, a nice guy, controversial, a loud-mouth, a loner: the many facets of Carlton Colombat are sometimes confusing. But that he is a dynamic personality that runners confide in can be seen every day throughout the year as kids from all over San Francisco come to the Polo Grounds to learn from a man who has lived track all his life. Colombat is not the “normal” coach by any means. He is not a high school coach or a collegiate coach, but is more-or-less a coach of stray individuals. Klaus Hofmann, a 4:11 miler from St. Ignatius; Willie Eashman, a 4:14 miler at Washington High School in S.F. and last year a finalist in the Olympic trials 1500m; Brad Duffey of Lowell, Chris Cole of St.Ignatius, both near 9:10 for two miles while in high school —these four and many others like them have been heavily influenced by the man that most people in the city know as…” So he had no connection with any school, and that was a little bit awkward because coaches like to keep control of their own kids. But he had all the best runners in the city, and college runners would come on the weekends. They’d come over from Berkeley here – City College. Not all of us were elite runners.People came just because it was fun to hang out. We played a lot of chess; we did sprints; we did everything.

PW: Did you have any good friends on the team that you remember?

CC: Yeah, we were a tight bunch. He [Colombat] had a Volvo station wagon, so we’d pile in the Volvo station wagon and he would drive us home after the workouts – which was all over the city – and then he’d take us to “all comers” meets on the weekends, and occasional road races. [Continues reading magazine] “Perhaps one of the most unusual things about Colombat as coach is his feeling on the philosophy of running as a whole. He feels that the whole person is more important than the running.Health should come first, studies second, then social relationships and development (getting along with others), and finally…running…We build slowly…and when an athlete is ready, increase the workout.” He always had lots of books in his car, and it was like a lending library. So there was a lot going on: we played chess and we talked on the phone too. We used to talk on the phone a lot. My sister Carol says that I was never home. My brother-in-law asked her, “Hey, what was Chris like in high school?” and Carol said, “Well, he was never at home.” And my mother was okay with it, because my friend – who lived a block away – his mother told my mother that everything was cool. But this kind of thing could never happen today. Really impossible. Especially the way we piled into that car. [Chuckles] So that was my high school. I have running pictures and stuff. I picked up on that, I went to Humboldt and ran there and used about half of my eligibility.

PW: Do you think your coach influenced how you became a coach at St. Helena High School?

CC: Yes, greatly so. Carlton Colombat has passed now, but he was still alive when I started coaching, and I had no intention of coaching. I was really busy with work, and I never coached youth soccer or anything like that because lots of parents were available to do that. But when it came to track, my oldest son, Brian, was very interested in it. He played soccer his first quarter of high school, but then he became interested in running. So, I said, “Well, yeah, I’ll coach it.” Because at the time, we had even had some moms that were head coaches, because somebody had to do it, somebody’s got to sign off. So, I just volunteered. I just coached the distance runners, and I was just a volunteer, and that’s how it always was. Yes, I would call Colombat, especially at the end of the season. I followed his lead. In fact, that workout that I call the Hoffman, I don’t know if [current Saint Helena Distance Track and Field Coach] Jen uses that term, but that’s the same workout that this guy, Klaus Hofmann – who still has the mile record at my high school – it’s the same workout that he did. The same workout that Brian did. The amazing thing is: they both ran 4:11 [for the mile]. Forty years apart. [Chuckles] So that tells you a lot.

PW: Working at the high school, were you friends with the teachers? You mentioned Chris O’Connor in your questionnaire, who is currently the biology and anatomy teacher at the [Saint Helena] high school still.

CC: Yes, I did get friendly with many of the teachers. I’m pretty sure that Wendy, my wife, is responsible for bringing Chris [O’Connor] to Saint Helena High School because he was teaching at Justin Sienna. Good friends of ours, one of the wives, was a biology teacher there. Chris was kind of new at Justin Siena, but I don’t think it was really clicking for him. So Daphne [Christopher Cole’s friend] and Chris O’Connor were in the science department, and Wendy convinced Chris to apply to Saint Helena High School. I think Chris had also been working in biotech. But anyway, he came to Saint Helena, and obviously, he’s been here to stay. I got involved with him because of the honeybee program that he started. I’d had my own bees when I met Chris. But I wasn’t involved in the fisheries program, but our two boys, Brian and Tristan, were both in the biodiesel program. Yeah, I’m hoping to see Chris next week. I haven’t seen him for a while….

PW: He’s a great teacher. I know that the biodiesel class is really interesting, but speaking of classes, what classes were you really passionate about in high school?

CC: Well, I was always interested in the natural sciences. I was also interested in philosophy. In college, I took a lot of science classes like ornithology. Wendy’s actually a pretty serious birder, so we spend a lot of time birding. I’ve been birding since I was twenty. So, ornithology, plant taxonomy… I didn’t really have free reign in the botany department because I wasn’t a botany major, but I took a lot of botany classes. I really enjoyed botany. But botany was a dead end in those days, because the environmental movement was just starting and there were essentially no jobs.A lot of the natural sciences were that way, especially if you were a white male who didn’t serve in the army, because all these vets were coming out of the military and the vets had a priority in the workforce, as did the women. So it was difficult to get a government job in the field of interest because there wasn’t really a private sector at that time. That’s how I got into surveying, it was kind of a second choice. But, it worked out well.

PW: What was your dream job as a child? Did you still have those nature-like interests as a kid? ​

CC: I did have a dream job. When I was in college, I got a job. I worked several seasons for the Forest Service. The first season as a firefighter, and then the second season as a kind of a forestry tech looking at soil hazards in timber harvest areas. We lived in a bunkhouse, which was not actually in Somes Bar, it was up the Klamath River about ten miles at a place called Tí Creek. The backcountry wilderness rangers worked out of there, so they would come in about every ten days and resupply and go back out.They were working in the Marble Mountains Wilderness. That’s what I wanted to do. But I was never going to get that job.So, I moved on to something else. But while I was there, I did spend a lot of time in the Marble Mountains Wilderness.

PW: It’s so beautiful and really interesting.

CC: It was beautiful.Unfortunately, a lot of the Marble Mountains have burned with climate change. That’s really affected that area. But, yes, I did have a dream job and I never got that dream job. [Chuckles] I also had some horrible jobs that triggered me to continue my education.

PW: Did you have any goals for Brian and Cole?

CC: It’s actually Brian and Tristan. Tristan’s the younger one. Well, we always wanted them to go to college. That was never even an option to consider otherwise. Athletically, no, it was completely up to them. They like to play soccer, but ultimately they got into running. They were better at it. Of course you want your kids to be happy, and you want them to be successful, and you want them to go to good schools. There’s a huge amount of stress around the college thing. More so now, I think, even [compared to] then, but there was a lot then. Because Wendy and I both went to a small school, we kind of pushed him that way and to go to the small college where they would get personal attention. Now, whether that was actually a great choice, it depends on the kid. The two are quite different. So it was great for one, maybe not so much for the other.

PW: Always different. How was your childhood like really young? What were some of your earliest memories?

CC: Well, we lived on a dead end street, Sixth Avenue, in the Richmond District. While this block, I don’t follow it, but I think there’s a Facebook page for us. [Chuckles] My sister keeps track of it. I think there were almost fifty kids that lived on this block. It was two sides of the dead end street, and we were all broken up into age groups, and naturally by boys and girls. We had friends across the street, the O’Learys had seven kids. Mrs. O’Leary just died a few months ago, so there was a huge Sixth Avenue reunion.None of us live on that street anymore, but the O’Learys have a house in Inverness, so we gathered over there. We have many times in the past. I’m not nostalgic and I don’t really keep track of my childhood friends, but there is a connection here, and others in that group are very good about keeping it. I have good memories of it. Well, I also moved into a private school in fourth grade, which took me in a little bit of a different direction. I kind of left Sixth Avenue, and then in high school, of course, I was never there at all. But, yeah, San Francisco was a great place to grow up.

PW: How would you describe growing up in San Francisco then? Is [it] different from raising your boys in St. Helena?

CC: Well, of course. It was very urban.I usually took the bus to school. Sometimes I would ride my bike. We had run of the whole city on the bus system, so I never borrowed the car for anything. For me, it was largely about getting out of the city. Whereas here, I think our kids had a great youth. The schools were great. They had great teachers. They started at the Saint Helena Cooperative Nursing School; I was on the board there for many years as they went through the whole program, and I was actually the president one year – if you can imagine. I’m the only man that’s ever been president of the St. Helena Cooperative Nursery School for fifty-some years. [Chuckles] They’ve all been women. For many years, I was the vice president, which is kind of the facilities manager, but then they didn’t have a candidate, so I took the job as president and I spent that entire year on the phone talking to other parents. So, they had a great time at the nursery school. The elementary school too was great. They had great teachers. They learned to read early on, long before I learned to read. They had a good experience at the high school. They enjoyed the extracurricular activities and I would say their experience was much better than mine, educationally and across the board, in every way.

PW: Do you remember any stories from when you were young, of getting in trouble or just funny little tidbits that you remember?

CC: Yeah. When I was in kindergarten through third grade, I went to a parochial school that was within walking distance and we would walk to school. It was about ten or twelve blocks, but it could take us hours to get home. My mother would get upset sometimes, like, you’d get home at five o’clock, and it was like: “What have you been doing? Where [were] you?” But the next day it was fine. I remember the earthquake in, I think it might have been, 1957, before I had started school. Pictures came off [the wall], and the whole house was just rocking. My mom and I were just eating lunch, and my cup tipped over, and my mom grabbed me and we ran out onto the street. We had a few fires. Fires, earthquakes, getting lost: I guess that’s the normal kid stuff.

PW: I think we’ve experienced some of those: fire seasons of St. Helena.

CC: My dad went off to work. We lived in the city, and he typically worked out of the city. He had an upstream commute. He was a mechanical engineer, and I went to the office a few times. For quite a while he worked in a foundry in Oakland where they made engines and grinders and things for ships and naval ships as well. I knew pretty early on that I did not want to do that. I don’t think my dad actually enjoyed it that much either. And I did not. I knew early on that I didn’t want to do that. So that’s one reason why I found my own path.

PW: What did your mom do for work?

CC: She was an English major from UC Berkeley and I don’t think she ever worked. [Chuckles] She was a stay at home mom.

PW: It was a good life. Did you have any fun experiences with the rest of your siblings growing up?

CC: I have one older brother [and] two younger sisters. My older brother, Jeremy, I didn’t get along with that well. He’s very different.He got in trouble in high school. He was always pushing the limits. There were huge fights: about the length of your hair, where you have been, who you have been with, and the war. All those things broke families, and my brother was in the thick of it. I kind of stayed out of that river. I got along fine with my two younger sisters and I’m actually pretty close with them now. Once we got to college, I started getting along great with my brother. We both left home at the same time.He was two years older, but once we both launched, we became very close. I was living in Humboldt County, so I used to come down to the Santa Cruz Mountains where he was living and get away from the rain and the cold. I’d come down there for spring break and Christmas holidays. It was good fun. He was studying ceramics at San Jose State.

PW: Did he serve in the war?

CC: No, he got a medical deferment. Honestly, there’s a deeper story there, but I don’t know how that happened. [Chuckles] It’s one of those things.It comes with privilege. There were always ways. When we were in high school, there’s no internet, there’s no counseling, and there’s a draft.There’s also college, but you don’t get any help. Your parents don’t help you; they don’t understand it. You don’t get any help with this.So, the obvious choice was to go to Canada, but I didn’t want to go to Canada. I did not want to serve. I knew that. I was actually looking at my running box as part of preparing for this and I found this is a selective service system conscientious objector form. [See image 3] So there were ways. If you were a conscientious objector – if you were a pacifist, or a minister – you could evade the draft and serve maybe in an alternative position. I’m a minister as of June, 1970, so I can officiate weddings. The Universal Life Church, which is still active today, was a huge thing during the draft. So, of course, I got my certificate. I did register for the draft – you had to register, but I was the first year when the war was winding down, the first year when no one was called. I was just very lucky. I don’t know if I could have survived… I had such deep feelings about it. I don’t know if I would have made it.

PW: Yeah, it was a really tough time. Did you have any friends that served at the time that you knew?

CC: No, because I was with my own age group. The ones that were serving were serving or recovering. I didn’t really get to know veterans until the war was over, and then I got into the workforce. You met them in school because they were going to school on the GI bill, and you met them professionally. I have this one engineer I worked with and he worked out of an office in Sacramento, he enlisted for the Coast Guard and spent his duty at Lake Tahoe. [Chuckles]That’s like the ultimate good luck story. But I didn’t serve, and the people that I met, generally came out okay. I knew a guy quite well that worked on our house years ago that had PTSD and ultimately committed suicide. So it took its toll. Anyway, I didn’t serve. Once I didn’t get drafted, that was over. Never thought about it again.

PW: That sounds like a tough part of your life, the lifestyle of living seemed really challenging. Do you remember a lot about the time then and living through it?

CC: Well, there were a lot of unknowns, but honestly, we had hope. I think every generation has its problems. I came out fine through it, and I think that the challenges that you’re facing are equally daunting. I mean, we had a whole revolution going on that was centered around hope and the environmental movement. There was a lot of optimism. We thought we could change the world, but we didn’t. But we really thought we could. We believed that we could. [Chuckles]

PW: Hope is like that driving force. But obviously that had a huge impact on your life and who you are today.

CC: Yes. I won’t elaborate on that.

PW: We can take a jump over to now and learn about who you are. You mentioned that you had a lot of hobbies, like biking, backpacking, and beekeeping. If you want to talk about your hobbies that you have right now?

CC: Yes. Well, I’m not running because I damaged my knee in an accident. The most important thing for me is to be able to backpack. So I’ve backpacked. I’ve walked – when I was sixty-four I took the whole summer off work, it was like my first sabbatical ever – and hiked 1,700 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. I’ve walked probably 1,000 miles all over the Sierra and in the Marble Mountains. So that’s what I like to do when I can get away, and I can do more of that now because I’m retired. When I finished college at Humboldt, I started keeping bees. I’ve had bees for almost fifty years. I’m probably – no, I know – I’m the only beekeeper in the Napa Valley that had bees before we had the Varroa mite, which is a parasite, which has been hugely destructive to the European honey bee.But before that, beekeeping was so easy. It was just amazing. It was like before there was AIDs or something. I mean, it was very easy to keep bees. There weren’t really any parasites, though there was some disease. It was an easy thing and it was fun. I’ve never been super serious about it, but it’s just something I do in the background because they work every day, whether you’re there or not. I have a big garden I put a lot of time into. I grow most of my own fruit and vegetables throughout the whole year. I ride my bike. I don’t really like driving too much. I rode my bike to work for my entire – actually the same bike – working career. To grad school and then to work. Riding a bike is great because I would have to ride through town and I’d see people I know and when you’re on a bike, you can talk to people. It was fun. I never get stuck in traffic. I did it sort of out of necessity, but also as the right thing to do, and I enjoy it. I’ve never been hit by a car. I’m very careful. Since I’m not running, I’ve been riding. I have another bike; I have my weekend bike that I ride big miles. I’m actually training right now for a century on May 2nd.

PW: How long is that?

CC: 100 miles. I’m training pretty seriously right now for the next few weeks. I also like to do watercolors. I don’t paint anything in large format. I was also going to read you something in here [gestures to book, see image 4] about keeping a journal – which is something that we all talk about, but we never do because we don’t have time, we’re just living it. When I go on hikes, like a through-hike or something, I will sometimes keep a journal, and I made a point of doing that on the Pacific Crest Trail. That’s Washington [points to artwork, see image 5]. The best one is the Sierra [points to artwork].

PW: So you’ve traveled all over the place?

CC: I haven’t traveled that much,I’ve just traveled all over California. I’ve been all over California. I love California.

PW: What was your favorite place that you visited?

CC: My favorite place is California. That’s the Sierra [gestures to journal]. There’s an entry there for every day, just a few lines so I can go back and revisit my trip. They’re [the journal entries] on both sides. Have you been to the High Sierra?

PW: I have not.

CC: That was the fourth of July [gestures to journal]. That’s the hut on top of Muir Pass. This is Adiza Lake [gestures to journal], this is a lake that I wanted to go to for about forty years, and on this particular trip, I made a detour to go to that lake that my uncle had told me about many years before. These are actually [done in] pen and colored pencils, because it’s easier when you’re hiking. But my dad was a watercolorist, so I picked that up from him and he was pretty good. I paint cards and birthday cards and postcards. I don’t have any of them because I send them all away. But I found this one in Tristan’s room [see image 6]. We were in the Chuckwalla Mountains. It’s actually mixed media with the desert tortoise. I’ve painted hundreds of cards, but I don’t have any of them. But when I go to people’s houses, sometimes I see them on the refrigerator [chuckles], which is really fun. In the last few years, I’ve started taking pictures of them. So now I’m building a little digital oeuvre of my work. But I never paint in large format, it takes too much time. Gardening, riding, I like to be healthy – I like to eat fresh food, work was demanding, and coaching – I really enjoyed that. I did that eighteen years. I’m still in touch with a few kids. That was fun. Had lots of five minute milers, it’s a rare day when you get a superstar, but that was fun. They enjoyed it. I mean, they had a good time. PW:It seems that you’re still really close with your sons currently. Is that right?

CC: Yes. Brian, the older son, lives in Massachusetts – he actually lives where he went to college – in Williamstown. He’s a farmer. Unfortunately, I think he got some of that from me. [Chuckles] He took it to the next level, and he’s a market farmer, kind of a starving farmer really.Backbreaking work. But he’s really involved with his community. He’s on the Agricultural Commission. He’s on the Land Trust board. He’s doing good stuff. It’s a great community. Little New England town. It’s just a beautiful place to live. I mean, it’s like living here except there’s more diversity in the town. We’re in touch, but I don’t see them very often. They just had a baby girl in December. So I’m my grandfather. Then, Tristan and his partner, Katrina, live in Trinidad, in Humboldt County. We were just up there for Easter. Yeah, we’re close. He actually graduated in botany, so he’s a botanist. I should say they’re both really good birders. Tristan’s still running, he runs with a running club up there. Botany was kind of a dead end for him, so he is now working as a forester. He got his forester’s state license, so that’s what he’s doing now. He likes that.

PW: You guys seem to have a lot in common with loving nature, it’s super cool.

CC: Yeah, when we get together, we go for hikes. We do normal family things, we make big meals, and then we usually go for hikes. Then we work on projects. We’re always working on projects.

PW: I know that you like doing a lot of volunteer work.How did you get into volunteering in Saint Helena, or outside?

CC: Through our children. You start in the school system, and then that leads to other things. Wendy’s very active in the Napa Solano Audubon group, and I’m kind of a tag along with that. I’ve actually done professional work on all three campuses. You get to know the teachers and they need help, they always need help with stuff. I was just at Mr. McClain’s [current RLS Middle School science teacher] classroom a few weeks ago. He asked me to do a project with him, which was interesting. [Chuckles] Eighth grade girls… I’m used to high school kids, so this was really different for me. I think I prefer the high school kids to the other groups.

PW: Yeah, middle school kids can be funny sometimes.

CC: Yeah, for sure. But it turned out okay. Yeah, so, you got involved through your children and then that usually leads to other things. Then, you get involved with stuff professionally. Like [clears throat], I’ve done a lot of work with the Napa Land Trust. But I’m trying to lay low. I’m trying not to get overcommitted right now.

PW: Did you ever have a favorite project that you worked on for volunteering or just a good memory of one? CC:I’ve had favorite surveys, professionally. It’s always difficult to name a favorite because your favorite is always the one you’re doing right now.My favorite project that keeps me day-to-day is the garden. It’s pretty dynamic because our garden is really different depending on the season.

PW: Yeah. I’m trying to think of what else…

CC: Well, you haven’t asked me about my family… I told you a little bit. My parents met at Berkeley.My mother’s parents, I don’t think they met at Berkeley, but they went there. My grandmother – we call her Mimi – graduated from the School of Agriculture, at Berkeley. The Curry sisters of Camp Curry in Yosemite were in her class. When she graduated, I think it was 1918, she went on this huge expedition through the backcountry of Yosemite on horseback with the Curry sisters.She had these connections, and she had a love for the Sierra. Later on, she got this cabin at Pinecrest, near Sonora Pass, and you could only get there by boat. That’s where I spent many of my summers, because my parents would farm me out up there because my grandmother needed somebody to be with, and I liked being there. Then various cousins would pass through, and I would just stay with who was there and help my grandmother cook and make the run to town. The summer that my youngest sister was born, I went up there, probably in late June, and she was born on July 27th. I came home in mid September, just a few days before school started, and met my sister for the first time. I was farmed out the whole summer. My youngest sister’s quite a bit younger than me, and my mother just shipped me up for the whole summer. I got the phone call, but I didn’t see her for like six weeks. So, you know, it was just different.My grandmother’s grandfather was a California pioneer, Captain Weber, and there’s been numerous books about him. He came overland to California in 1841 and he got, in 1843, a Mexican land grant because California was a part of Mexico until 1848. He got this land grant in what is now San Joaquin County. I won’t bore you with the details, but he built this home [see image 7], that’s 1850 on the San Joaquin River. He founded the city of Stockton. Stockton became important because it was the launch point for the gold rush. You could take a tall ship all the way up to Stockton Channel, to Stockton, and then head off for the gold country. That’s kind of what Stockton looked like in the 1850s [gestures, see image 8]. Actually, the channel got just completely jammed with tall ships because people would bring their ship there and then they’d abandon them. You probably heard those stories. This is the Land Grant [see image 7]. “El Rancho Campo de los Franceses,” and it’s named because there’s a town called French camp. French trappers came there prior to the gold rush, and that’s why the Land Grant got its name, but it was roughly 144,000 acres. That’s five generations ago. In early California, land was influence. When he came overland to California – the important part is that he came overland from St.Louis, over the Sierra near Sonora Pass – and went to Sutter’s Fort. He knew Captain Sutter, who actually discovered gold at his sawmill in the motherlode. If you had land and you were here earlier, you had influence. So, that has been an important part of my history. Captain Charles Weber married the Murphy girl, I think there were six boys and one girl. Weber came in 1841. In 1846 was the first overland party with wagons that found the crossing at Donner Pass.This was before the Donner party. They had crossed before the Donner party with wagons. They were the first overland party with wagons: the Townsend-Murphy Party.Weber was in the Bartleson-Bidwell Party. Bidwell, who founded Chico, was on this party. Joseph Chiles, of Chiles Avenue, and the Chiles house down at the Coppola Winery. Chiles was on this party with Weber. They were friends. Then the Murphys came, and there were a bunch of Murphy boys and the youngest one was a girl, Helen Murphy, and Captain Weber married Helen Murphy, and that’s kind of the start of this. The Murphys made a lot of money in the gold rush – mining – and there’s a town of Murphys California, up in Calaveras County, that’s named after them. So, the Murphys took their money to San Jose, and they started Santa Clara University [and] Bellarmine High School. They had Land Grants extending down past Gilroy, and then the Webers were in Stockton. There’s 200 acres left. It’s a tenant farming situation, so I managed that for twenty years and my sister manages it now. It’s in walnuts and cherries. We still have a bit of that. My grandmother, she married a Kennedy, and the Kennedys came to San Francisco by ship in 1856, I think. This is a book about the Kennedy clan [see image 9], some of the Kennedys left San Francisco and homesteaded down towards San Luis Obispo. My grandfather – so this is probably a little confusing for you, but – Gerry Kennedy, he died just before I was born. This is his father [gestures to image 10], he came from Ireland during the potato famine. Everybody in my family keeps all their correspondence. Nothing goes away it seems like. He kept all the correspondence that he got from his father, and they were transcribed into this book. Of all the books, this is my favorite one, because it’s all these letters and it tells you about the time.

PW: It really allows you to see into their life on a more personal level.

CC: Yeah, it tells you about his visit to Ireland. This was [gestures to book] Patrick, he went back to Ireland in 1910 to Randalstown [County Meath] to meet the Kennedy family. I actually went there myself in 1978. Wendy and I were cycling, we cycled all around the British Isles one summer in ’78, and I went to Randalstown. It’s just a crossroads, so I arrived on my bike and somebody told me “Oh, yes, Robert Kennedy, he just left on his bike,” and I pedaled down the road and overtook him on my bicycle and spent a few days at their house. They were living in poverty, really, compared to their California cousins. So this is interesting [gestures to book, see image 11] and there’s a great passage in here about motorcycles. This is to my grandfather from his father in 1914. “The motorcycle is the best skullcracker.” I actually photocopied this and gave it to my kids because I did not want them to ride motorcycles. [Chuckles] But, Brian has a motorcycle anyway. He didn’t take it to heart.

PW: Yeah. All these books, it’s like you have so much memory of your family’s history and so much knowledge that carries on. CC:It’s unusual. I’m old enough now that I know [that]. This book was given to me in 1962 from Dale Morgan, one of the co-authors, so I met a lot of these people, and my grandmother knew her ancestors and I spent a lot of time with her. Our history, because they were pioneers, it’s well documented. There’s many side branches. There’s the Kinseys who had a gold mine in Juneau, Alaska, where my grandmother and Gerry Kennedy went for their honeymoon. They went to Juneau where this gold mine was. I can talk about that all day, but I won’t, because we’re off topic, I think, a little bit.

PW: But you just hold so much history and it shows that you’re tied to St. Helena and just California and so many ways through the land and family and it’s really interesting.

CC: Yeah, I have deep roots in California. My wife, Wendy, is English, born in England, and she has roots in England, so we’re kind of divergent in that sense. Anyway, I brought my high school jersey. Oh, I never showed you the pictures. Yeah, I should show you the pictures [see image 12]. I’m waiting for somebody to break my school record, and then I was going to send this [track jersey] to the high school [see image 13], because I don’t really have a relationship with my high school. But, nobody has broken the record, but now that you prompted me to look at a few older things, I’m just going to mail it to the coach.

Corinna Schlatter: You might be waiting a long time. [Chuckles]

CC: I can’t wait any longer, it’s been over fifty years.

PW: It seems we’ve covered the majority of things:we’ve talked about your high school career, track, high school, families… I think we’ve covered all the topics.

CC: Okay. Have we been an hour?

PW: About so. Overall, how do you think your life experiences have shaped you as a person throughout everything we’ve discussed?

CC: Well, it’s been full of rich experiences, mostly because the things that I like to do are not expensive, they’re easily accessible. In fact, we were all together as a family with my boys and their families earlier in March and Ellington, Brian’s partner, suggested that maybe I should write some of this down, because over generations – I can see now that five generations – things are almost lost in that 170 years. For example, when I was in college, I got a job at a sawmill one summer – which was the worst job I ever had – and following that summer, I hitchhiked through Mexico, for about three months. A lot of things happened on that trip. I got a ride south to Oaxaca with this guy who was going down there to pick up marijuana to smuggle back, and [I] got abducted by gunpoint in Chiapas, down by the Guatemalan border and stuff happened. That would be a good story to tell for my kids. Yeah, none of that’s kind of what we talked about here. In fact, if I may, this is Wallace Stegner. [See image 4] I was reading this after I knew that we were going to have this. “If I kept a journal, I could go back through it and check up on what memory reports plausibly, but not necessarily truly, but keeping a journal then would have been like making notes while going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.And it may be just as well that I have no diary to remember by. Henry James says somewhere that if you have to make notes on how a thing has struck you, it probably hasn’t struck you.” I thought, oh, that’s kind of a perfect thing for an oral history. Because who has a journal, you know? We have travel journals, but…

PW: Yeah, it’s important to take down these notes.

CC: Well, is it important? That’s what I’m wondering. I don’t know. I don’t know how much time I’ll spend on it. I was influenced by Steve Prontaine, because he was just a few years older than me and kind of setting the world on fire. I was following him in 1972, right after I graduated from high school. I did borrow my parents’ car and my friend Brad and I went up to the Olympic Trials where he was – it was a great Trials. Steve Prontaine [see image 14]. Everybody was there. I was pretty nuts about it back then, but got over that in college. Anyway, I have things you can look at if you like. Let me know if you want to wrap it up.

PW: Yeah, we can finish up just, yeah, this was amazing. Thank you so much.

CC: Well, thank you for asking me.

PW: Of course.