Laura Torkelson
Laura grew up in the Navy, which is to say on both coasts of the U.S. as well as Istanbul and Japan. Her father’s last duty station was Treasure Island at which time her parents bought a house in Lafayette. She came to Stanley in 8th grade from Yokosuka, Japan. After graduating from Acalanes High School, she went off to Cal. She then moved to Seattle where she met her husband and had a son. Her parents still lived in Lafayette, and when visiting, her husband (born and raised on the coast of Washington where 80 inches of rain a year was the norm) would say, “Why do we live in the rainy northwest when we could live here?” They finally made it happen and moved to Lafayette in 1984.
She taught school for 30 years – the last 22 at Orinda Intermediate School in Special Education. She worked with kids who were in regular classes but who needed some support and remediation. When she retired three years ago, she thought about exploring the concepts of roots and community. Neither had ever developed in this Navy kid. One of the things she knows about herself is that she is mostly interested in people – hence her career – and history is all about people: why they came, what they did, how they impacted the future – are all fascinating questions. Learning about Lafayette, and making it her home in a deeper sense, was an opportunity offered by the Lafayette Historical Society.
Laura has been working on the displays in the Lafayette Library as a way of communicating some of our history to the children and adults who use the library. She’s also had input into tours/trips for the community that LHS provides. She volunteers two hours a week on Saturday and has enjoyed the people who are there with her and the visitors who come in. She loves looking at the old pictures, reading old newspapers and letters, and imagining the lives of the people who were here before she was. Preserving and passing on our history is fun and interesting. And, learning about what works and what doesn’t can inform and influence our 21st century decisions. She’s glad the Lafayette community has supported the Historical Society and knows LHS is looking at a bright future!
Ray Peters
Ray Peters (aka Elam Brown) has been a longtime LHS volunteer and Board member.
Ray was born in Missouri where he received his early education. After college he joined the Corps of Engineers, working in “jungle places and iceberg places”, and then ultimately the Presidio in San Francisco where he discovered he liked California better than Missouri. He worked on the construction of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge and met and married the love of his life, Barbara. He taught surveying at UC Berkeley for eight years and then started an engineering-surveying business in Lafayette. He assisted in the construction of the Lafayette Gazebo in commemoration of the bicentennial of the US Constitution.
Ray has served as President of the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce and of the Lafayette Historical Society from 1983-1985. He served on the Board of LHS from 1983-1998.
Ray was once slated to give a talk to LHS about some dull and long-forgotten subject but instead rented a Victorian coat and top hat from the Thrift Shop, hobbled with a cane into the meeting room, and portrayed Elam Brown. He has also appeared as his alter ego for third grade students of Lafayette history.
Ray’s writing career includes an historical novel (The Lafitte Case) and a surveying section for the McGraw Hill Real Estate Handbook,discovering in the process that writing non-fiction is easier than fiction but not as much fun. He is presently researching and writing Thirty Cents an Acre, the story of Elam Brown’s Lafayette, vetted by noted genealogist and descendant of Elam Brown, Brent Rutherford.
-Mary McCosker
Leave a Reply