Oral History: Patricia Whitehead Wendt — October 6th, 2014

Summary:

In the late 1940s, Patricia’s grandfather purchased 4 acres, and her father one acre, in Happy Valley. They chose the location because they wanted to live in the country, with walnut trees and plenty of land.

She discovered a fossilized turtle on the property. The industrialist Henry J, Kaiser, along with other neighbors, attended horse shows on the Whitehead property.

Patricia was active in dance and cheerleading at Acalanes High School. She rode in a convertible with Jerry Brown, then the son of California’s attorney general and himself a future governor, during the ceremonies to mark the opening of Highway 24 in 1957.

Oral History:

Jeannine Kikkert: Today is October 16, 2014. I am Jeannine Kikkert of the Lafayette Historical Society Oral History Project. My son Patrick will assist me with the interview. Now, what is your full name and the spelling, and do you have a nickname?

Patricia Whitehead Wendt: My full name is Patricia Nancy Whitehead Wendt, and P-A-T-R-I-C-I-A Nancy Whitehead Wendt, W-E-N-D-T.

JK: Good. Do you have a nickname actually?

PWW: I do, “Pattio” and “Patrish”.

JK: When and where were you born?

PWW: I was born in Lake Merritt, which I like to tell people. Actually, Merritt Hospital in Oakland, California.

JK: Now how long did you live in Lafayette?

PWW: Oh, let’s see. We started out..

JK: When did you…

PWW: …living in Walnut Creek, and then moved back to Oakland, and then finally moving back to Lafayette on acres that my grandfather had purchased. Four acres for himself and then my father purchased one acre in Happy Valley Pine Lane Area of Lafayette in the late 1940’s, and then I married in 1960 and moved away from Lafayette.

JK: Why did you and your family choose to live in Lafayette?

PWW: They wanted to get back to the county again. In Walnut Creek they had some outbuildings. We raised chickens, and there was a horse area, arena, but it went unused, but there were walnut trees and land, and that’s what they wanted again. But my mother was lonely, her mother just passed away so they moved back to Oakland and my father always wanted again to live in the country, and we had walnut trees and a whole acre of land and he built our home there.

JK: A very nice home. Very nice. What do you remember about Lafayette when you first came or were growing up here? Say the house, the neighborhood, transportation, schools, friends…

PWW: Yes, the house I helped by gathering up shingles and stacking them, that was my part, and building the house, and I loved Lafayette because you could jump ditches, you can hide in waist-high mustard plants, you had dirt-clog fights, you had horseshoes, tetherball, playing in the creek, often getting poison oak, climbing the golden hills, family vacations nearby Tahoe or Oakland Camp, near Yosemite, playing horses, joining Girl Scouts, earning badges, and one day on a hike in Happy Valley, I found a fossil which my dad took to UC Berkeley Paleontology, and it remains there today. They declared it a fossilized turtle. So that’s what I remember doing.

JK: That’s very nice. Do you have any siblings?

PWW: Yes, I have two siblings, two sisters.

JK: Two sisters.

PWW: And they went to Acalanes High School, as did I.

JK: Are they older than you, or…

PWW: No, I’m the oldest, and my next sister Joan is four years younger, and my next sister Vicki is seven years younger than I.

JK: How did you celebrate the holidays?

PWW: The holidays in my home?

JK: Did you do cooking, yes, cookies…

Patrick Kikkert: Interesting memories of those days.

PWW: Yes, oh yes, preparing walnuts. Husking them, getting our hands all brown, and then roasting them, making fudge, always having our grandparents come, or family members for big dinner…

JK: And did they live in Berkeley?

PWW: They lived in Berkeley, yes, and El Cerrito. For a while they lived right below us in a house that my father got for barracks, he another man-made house for my grandfather with barracks. It was unlike our house, but my grandmother was ill at the time, so they did move back into Berkeley/El Cerrito area, and my grandfather remarried when she passed away.

JK: All right. Let’s see here… do you… what about schools? What activities were you in?

PWW: I think I was just a typical girl at Vallecito, the grammar school where the Bentley School is now, and I remember though probably being a little mature, immature because I loved horses and we’d go out and play horses, you know clapping our hands on our hips and running around the playground.

JK: You needed a horse!

PWW: I know, I did, from that early age! But I was a fairly good student, I liked having Mrs. Shipley, the fourth grade teacher, and also Mrs. Summers, who taught fifth and sixth grade to me, read from books and we could rest with our heads on the table and use our imaginations and I don’t know if the children do that now as much. It was a quiet time, which I think was very important, although my daughter and my daughter-in-law have homeschooled their children, so it’s quite different. So then, I went to, like, a Christian catechism at Lafayette Grammar School, it was across the street where the Masonic Lodge is now, it used to be a church, and that was important then. We also had a health education teacher that taught us about the birds and the bees. I had Mrs. Meisenheimer, she was a wonderful teacher, and I enjoyed learning, and that’s when, though, I had one of the first horse shows in Lafayette. That summer, right before going in as a freshman to Acalanes.

JK: You had one of the first horse shows, tell us about that.

PWW: Well, it was the product of my girlfriend, Carolyn and Diane, we just planned it. We wanted to have boots, we couldn’t have horses, well, Diane and I did not have horses of our own, Carolyn did, and we just wanted to put on something good, and my father tractored the land in back of our home into a ring. It was very rough looking, some of the other horse shows that were held in Happy Valley were held in fancy estates, but this had a lot of the good riders come, and so it was very successful, and our neighbor, Henry J. Kaiser did came to that too, so it was fun and it was written up in the Lafayette Sun in 1953.

JK: So we have the 1953 Sun here that we could see about that, couldn’t we?

PWW: Okay, yes, or I could give you a picture.

JK: Also now…

PWW: Oh, high school, you wanted to know?

JK: Oh yes.

PWW: Let’s see, I really enjoyed CSF when I was a freshman, and studying Spanish, I liked that, I held off on Algebra for a year because I guess I’m not the best in math, although becoming a real estate agent later on in life I had to use that. Simple math, which I did learn, but then I was chosen for what is known as the Modern Dance Group at Acalanes, and that’s a very high honor. Ms. H. was known as a very good teacher that we put on performances called the Musance in the spring, and then of course a Christmas program as well, with a capella groups and so forth, so that took up a lot of my time, with practices in the afternoon, every Tuesday afternoon as well as at the dance class and then practices for the performances where we would go out an fix dinner up in the home ec. room for ourselves, then we’d run through the halls down to the gym to do our practice, and then come home late at night, so it was wonderful to get to know the olders, the juniors and seniors in the dance group, and she held us to a high standard, we had to get mostly B’s. A’s or B’s, nothing other than that was very acceptable.

JK: So it did take a lot of time to…

PWW: It did.

JK: But it was good for you.

PWW: It was very good…

JK: And kept you busy, and also that…

PWW: And then in my senior year, I was a pom-pom girl, and so we’d practice and lose our breath at the high-spirited rallies. And…

JK: So you were in very good shape then, by being a dancer.

PWW: That’s true, that’s true, I’m not so sure that would have happened.

JK: It goes hand in hand, being a dancer and being a cheerleader.

PWW: It does, yes. In fact I think mostly hardly pom-pom girls and cheerleaders were dancing in the class, if not the dance group.

JK: So that was high school.

PWW: And after high school that summer is when the Lafayette Freeway Fiesta happened.

PK: (inaudible) learn about that. What was your experience about it?

PWW: It was wonderful because Mrs. Farah Richardson, the Dean of Girls, chose three of us girls to be princesses, and then we would get a modeling course for the one who got the princess title. We went out and had dinners and lunches with local politicians and we learned how to wait until the man opened the door for you to get out, you know, I can remember trying to get out, and my friend said, “No, no, wait for him to do it!” and so we laugh about that.

JK: Well, that was a very exciting time of your life, I’m sure, wasn’t it?

PWW: It was an exciting time, and did you want me to mention, it is on the DVD I’ve given to the Historical Society, but Jerry Brown, the son of the to-be governor Edmund Brown was sitting in the convertible with us the day that we officially opened the freeway.

JK: That’s a historical picture, definitely.

PWW: It is!

JK: I wanted to ask you how you went to school from Pine Lane to Acalanes. Did you walk?

PWW: Oh, yes. I did not have a car, and I didn’t have friends nearby that had a car, so I always took the school bus, and we would walk up to where the Potter’s Wheel was, and the El Meter Rancho that they tore down was nearby, and wait for the bus there, and there were big acacia trees I remember there, just lovely.

JK: Did you go to movies, do you remember…

PWW: Oh yes.

JK: And you a fan of…

PWW: Yes, in the Park Theater, in fact I almost, my mother wanted me to get a job, and so without her knowing I went down to the Park Theater and they hired me as a ticket person, and I went home and told her and she said, Absolutely not, I will not take you there”, So I had to say. “I’m sorry, I can’t do this”, and I went back to, that’s another thing I did, I worked for Mrs. Lochmann who had a nursery school in Happy Valley and I worked for her after school taking cars of children, she was a German lady and very official caretaker.

JK: So after school, or graduating from high school, what did you do with your life then, Patty?

PWW: Well, I wanted to go to UC Berkeley, but I wanted to join a sorority, like my other friends would, and my family told me I could not so I just didn’t want to go then, so I went to DVC, and there I did some modern dance for their programs, their T’s, and actually Katharine Ross, she was an actress, I don’t know if you remember that name, she was a dance student as well at my college.

PK: I remember from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”.

PWW: Yes, oh yes. She had a 19 inch waist, I remember that, which I didn’t, but I did a lot less then I am today.

JK: We were all slim in those days as a teenager (inaudible).

PWW: So then, in the summertime, I became a dental assistant. A UC professor at the dental school hired and trained me in Berkeley, and it was good, It was a wonderful experience…

JK: That was your career.

PWW: …and I did everything, billing, it was four year, and I left to get married, well, first I went to San Francisco State, then my husband-to-be said, “Well, why don’t you go back to work if you want?” and so I did. Well, I was pregnant, and then stopped and it was a mother and homemaker full-time when my children were born.

JK: Was your husband from Lafayette?

PWW: No, he was from Diablo. The Diablo County Club area.

JK: Oh, yeah. All right, I was just wondering if he grew up in Lafayette as well.

PWW: No, he went to San Ramon High and we lived in Diablo in the guest house when we were first married and so that was a wonderful place to be and I had tea when I had my little daughter and we would go up to the little post office there, walk up to the country club, get our mail, and then, and then come back and have tea with Mrs. Maury, she was in her nineties, hard of hearing, and she was a living resident at Mt. Diablo. She would come out on the train from Berkeley where her husband was a dentist, and so she lived there in a summer house, but then as her real house.

JK: Nifty area as well.

PPW: It is very interesting, yeah.

JK: The Post Office (inaudible) that still there, isn’t it?

PWW: Yes.

JK: And I think it’s still operating, this post office.

PWW: I’m not sure. I haven’t been up there, but Mrs. Stott was the post mistress for a long time, and that was the exercise that I would take, going down the 17th green going up to the post office and coming back with my baby daughter.

JK: We need to ask you, what are the biggest changes that you’ve seen in Lafayette, you know, your life here.

PPW: Well, let me see. I like the way it stayed for quite a long time. It wasn’t known as a gas station town like Danville, but the freeway changed it a lot, I believe, but still you’d have the dime stores and more diversity than Danville. And…

PK: When I was growing up in the 1960’s of course, Lafayette was known as the gas station town, there was a gas station on every corner, yes.

JK: In the ‘60’s, right?

PK: Yes.

JK: Well, that was the same as Danville then, because that’s when I lived at the Diablo Country Club. So…

PK: ‘Cause I think we got the traffic from both the San Ramon Valley area and the Walnut Creek and Concord area funneling through what would be 24, and so there was just… became a gas station boom that was a but controversial at the time, and most of them have gone, that was just a few stations, a (inaudible) number.

PPW: Well, in the 1950’s, I became a member of Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church when I was fifteen, and meeting in the Park Theater. It was before the big sanctuary was built, and Pastor Carl Thomas was so wonderful a pastor, I loved him teach and explain the love of God, in Jesus Christ.

JK: Well…

PPW: So I would go back to the Lafayette-Orinda Church and indeed that’s where I was married in 1960 in the Fellowship Hall, they didn’t have the main sanctuary at that time.

JK: We lived just down the street from there, in Hidden Valley.

PPW: Oh, you live in Hidden Valley! Great! Well, see, I remember the Lazy K in Hidden Valley and friends’ homes, you know I remember that more about Lafayette than the actual business…

JK: Oh, I see.

PPW: …section, so you know I would go to places I liked. One thing though, is I remember the Henry Kaiser Estate on Timothy as a wonderful house with a waterfall in the entry and a walk-in freezer room, and a gorgeous pool and cabana, and later on, it was destroyed because of termites, and I was so grateful for my little townhouse which I lived in later at the time.

JK: You would imagine that that would have gone to a point being Kaiser Estate to let that be destroyed…

PK: …ran away with termites…

JK: I wonder if they realize here, do they?

PPW: Well, we’ll find out.

JK: We don’t know. So the biggest changes you’ve seen in Lafayette because you, I’m sure, you don’t come down here as often, but there’s parking problems.

PPW: Oh, yes, I’ve gotten a ticket just for running in for a minute into Chico’s.

JK: And you can’t even find parking places easily in Lafayette, so that’s certainly one of the big changes in this population exploding, I think, in Lafayette. Do you miss anything about the way Lafayette used to be?

PPW: Well, yes, of course, the countryside, but… and riding, the freeway took away the lovely riding that I would do with Aubrey Daiden who came out from a private school in San Francisco to stay with her parents who lived across from Heather Farms on a beautiful ranch house where John Muir is right now and we loved to go riding there, and we would ride up all the hills in Lafayette, and we’d go on moonlight rides and look over to the reservoir with no freeway there.

JK: You had a lot of freedom there then, and were able to see all of the beauty of the…

PPW: And when we would play outdoors when we were young, we’d go explore creeks and…

JK: Everything was safe.

PPW: Everything was safe, and I don’t think we appreciated that.

JK: No.

PPW: Our parents would just let us go and then we’d come back later for dinner.

PK: Of course, everyone knew everyone in the neighborhood. It was not like you’d know two neighbors, but there’s a lot of people that you know nothing about, but at that time we knew everyone in the neighborhood, or at least knew of them, not necessarily that closely, but we knew there wasn’t anyone dangerous around, or potentially dangerous.

JK: Yeah. So where do you see Lafayette going in the future?

PPW: Well, I’m not in on the active planning, but I hope the Lafayette Historical Society will remind the political powers that be what a beautiful town it was and hopefully will continue in some respects in the quote-end quote “old way”.

JK: Do you have any other questions, Patrick?

PK: Well, just, because I also attended Vallecito and Acalanes, but most people have forgotten about Vallecito, certainly the contemporaries around here, just curious about how it was like in the early days of Vallecito before it became cut off by the freeway essentially and…

PWW: Well, it was a quiet area, but safe, you could walk to school, I could…

PK: You were pretty close by…

PWW: I was close by, and so I could walk to school, but, I don’t know, our teachers were so impressive, and our studies were important, and our smaller groups, or maybe Girl Scouts, which I was a member of a troupe with that, and of course we had animals at home…

JK: Several?

PWW: Well, a dog or a cat.

JK: And they lived together, dogs and cats?

PWW: Yes, they did.

JK: That’s, what is this? Biblical times?

PK: Well, yes, the lion lays down with the lamb.

PWW: It was really a wolf, though, it should be translated in scripture.

JK: Is that right?

PWW: Uh-huh.

PK: Something that shouldn’t be, so when you get concerned…

JK: So if you can think of anything, Patty, you want to leave…

PWW: Well, you know, I’ve incorporated in my answers and talk with you what I had written, a group of our girls, fourteen of us, have decided we wanted to write out some of our experiences with each other and how out lives interacted, and so some of the things that I have told you about myself are in this, and I of course was looking at it to make sure I would have something to say to you, and I think that probably, your interview of me is quite sufficient, although I want to let everyone know that I will be seventy-five in two weeks, so that’s important to know, my age, I think you didn’t ask me that.

JK: In…

PWW: 1939.

PK: Happy birthday!

JK: Well, your, these springs are from Lafayette as well, could we make a copy of this and put that in the files?

PWW: I’ll tell you, the book is not out yet, the person who has been gathering all the information is finally getting it together in a flash drive for us, but it won’t be available for about a year.

JK: All right.

PWW: We really did it for our children so our children would know how we felt maybe coming that first day in high school and not having a social group and eating quietly on a bench in the corner of the lunch room, so it takes a while to get acclimated, and that’s why my Christian faith was important to me as a young girl ‘cause I could count in His being with me and, you know, if I didn’t have instant friendship, but when you think of going from that, this has always amazed me, that lunchroom experience which I remember, to having a group 60 years later of popular or so-so people now, a group of fourteen of us, you know, and we still get together with the class above, 1956…

JK: You’ve blossomed, didn’t you?

PWW: That’s right. Well, we’ve realized the importance of sharing our lives and treasure our experiences together.

JK: Did you know Reverend Little at the Presbyterian?

PWW: No, that came after, when I was in Danville Presbyterian.

JK: I see, all right.

PWW: Danville, and I also went to Bible Study Fellowship for a long time, and Ms. Johnson started that at Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian, but then it went on to Concord and Danville…

JK: Have you been up to the church recently, it has so many new buildings and it’s just amazing, it’s a beautiful church. Of course you have heard the organs?

PWW: Yes, of course. I love that about it because Danville gave up its organ a while ago, once in a while they will come back and play, and I love to hear that music, you know, I enjoy the new music too, but being a dancer with Orinda, Dance Circle in Orinda, and liturgical dancing, I have danced at Lafayette-Orinda, and before some of their groups.

JK: I see.

PK: It is sort of the community center for the Hidden Valley area…

PPW: Yes…

PK: …going on socially as well. Major site in Lafayette itself.

JK: Many organizations have their meetings there. We went to a book organization, remember, with Cheryl, and so on.

PK: Reading club.

JK: Reading club, yes, so they use it all the time.

PPW: I was confirmed in the Christian faith at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church on Carol lane in Lafayette, went to confirmation every Saturday for a year, and there were two gals that were in the group now that we went to confirmation together in the eighth grade…

JK: You were closer than sisters, probably, weren’t you?

PPW: That’s right! And then I don’t think you mentioned, or I mentioned Dr. Sidney Garfield was our neighbor, as well as Henry J. Kaiser and Dr. Garfield developed Kaiser Permanente along with (inaudible)

JK: Lafayette resident!

PPW: Yes, and he designed the first hospital like a patio hospital in Walnut Creek where, I was in it once for an operation, where guests could just visit you through a sliding glass door and then it was like you looked out on a patio…

JK: Very familiar!

PWW: But they were wonderful neighbors, they had a swimming pool, my family did not, and we could go over there anytime and learn to swim, I learned how to dive from Mrs. Kaiser.

JK: There were a lot of very wonderful people from Lafayette or still, you know, all through the past, I mean, it’s a great place.

PPW: Helen Garfield had gone to school with my mother, and also Allie Kaiser, there was kind of that tie-in there, but just no name recognition, and I mentioned about Dr. George David, our medical director, I believe I did, for thirty years, and he was the father of my friend Aubrey, who would come out and ride horses with me, and he let us look at three operations for my biology class. We went in and we had to wash up and put masks on and got to watch three operations.

JK: What an experience!

PWW: It was, I did it for my biology class, and of course I got a good grade. I had a cutting needle in the report from the operation.

JK: Is there anything else in here you want to (inaudible)

PPW: I just remember taking a bus to Walnut Creek Creamery and then we’d go out to the ranch to ride on Ignacio Valley Road.

JK: All right.

PPW: And I learned to drive out there too.

JK: Well, speaking of horses, your horses were near… where were they stabled?

PPW: They were… I didn’t tell you that story. They were on the land behind our home on my grandfather’s three acres that had a well on it and he had a huge vegetable garden on his acre, but there was a fence up and they pastured there, and then when the pasture wore down, I had to pay for hay from my babysitting money and I couldn’t keep up with the horses. They started to eat the fence, and so my dad said, “I’m sorry, Patricia, but we’re going to have to give the horses back to my friend.” He gave us two, one trained and one that was, that would bite you, so that was difficult. I could join 4-H and all that while I had to horse and then my wonderful friendship with Aubrey.

PK: Now you learn about being eaten out of house and home.

PPW: Yes.

JK: That was a real farmer ranch or plantation or whatever you want to call it.

PPW: Well, actually, we made it into one, my dad tried to construct a lean-to for the horses, but he really tried to please me but… and I appreciated that about him, and I’d go in and watch him work on his cars like his Jaguar, he was really good at that, and have talks with my daddio in the garage. So I think that’s pretty much what I remember. There were all sorts of things, of course, that happened that comes to mind, and you think, “Oh, I should have said that!”

JK: You can always add, if you ever want to, or type it and send it to us, and we’ll put it with the rest of the material.

PPW: Did I say I was glad to end that I was a homemaker for the years for my children, my son is now a two-star general and a commanding general in the Army Special Forces, and my daughter of course home-schooled her daughters, and my granddaughter went to Oxford this summer for getting her master’s degree in International Politics, so… and the other one is a horse trainer, the other granddaughter, and married to a horse trainer, and they’re Christian horse trainers, so you see how your life reaches out.

JK: Again and again, through the generations.

PPW: Yes.

JK: Really.

PPW: That’s why history is important. Thank you for your job, Patrick, and…

JK: We want to thank you so very much, Patty for coming here and…

PPW: Thank you, Jeannine.

PK: It’s an honor that you’re able to contribute to the Oral History Project. Every little bit from people, no matter how long they lived in Lafayette adds to the knowledge for future generations that have no idea, really how people lived day to day, That makes it important.

JK: So we want to thank you for sharing your memories with us, and we really appreciate giving us your time.

PPW: Well, thank you so very much, both of you for your interest too.

JK: If there’s anything you want to show us in the future, we make copies of it or we just want to have as much as you want to share with us.

PPW: Oh, I’ll probably be telling you about my grandchildren.

JK: I’m sure they’re doing fine, they are doing very well. And speaking of horses, I went to the Kentucky Derby with my husband when Swaps, the California horse, won, what was that, 1955? 1956?

PPW: Wow…

JK: And, I’ll tell you something funny–