Many vestiges of the logging legacy are still on the property
By Barbara Wood
Special to the Almanac
Elwood Veliquette, who for close to half a century had lived next door to the Woodside Elementary School in a home built by one of the town’s founding families, died suddenly while working in his rose garden on February 24. He was 94.
Mr. Veliquette was born in La Junta, Colorado on Nov. 25, 1911, and spent his childhood on a farm in El Centro, California, the oldest of six children.
He worked his way through the dairy science program at U.C. Davis, graduating in the late 1930s.
He worked for Golden State Creamery and then spent 33 years at the Dairy Products Laboratory in San Francisco, retiring in 1980 to care for his wife, Norma, who had Alzheimer’s disease.
In 1959 Mr.Veliquette moved to Woodside with Norma McArthur Veliquette, to a Victorian home her grandparents, Hugh and Elizabeth McArthur, had built in 1900.
The McArthurs had first moved to Woodside around 1870 and built an earlier home on the property that was destroyed in a fire. They owned a sawmill on Bear Gulch Road above Skyline Boulevard along with 600 acres of redwoods and pasture.
Many vestiges of the logging legacy are still on the property in several 1870 barns, including wooden oxen yokes, two handled saws and a shingle-bundling machine, which were lovingly maintained by Mr. Veliquette.
Norma, who he had married in 1948, died in 1992. Mr. Veliquette was remarried, to Susanna Yip, in 1996.
Much of the 3-1/3 acre property has been kept by the family in its original condition and was intensively gardened by Mr. Veliquette. He had 400 rose bushes (200 standard and 200 miniature), several dozen fruit trees and prolific vegetable gardens. He was a longtime member of the Peninsula Rose Society, and held most of its offices, including president.
Mr. Veliquette, assisted by Susanna and by daughter Judy Rice, did almost all of the gardening himself. He also froze much of the produce, made preserves, jams, tomato sauce and applesauce, and was famous for his persimmon cookies.
In an interview a few days before his death, Mr. Veliquette conceded that he had slowed down a bit and now sits in a chair to prune the 400 roses. “I’m not as fast as I used to be,” he said. He stopped pruning his own fruit trees only recently after his doctor ordered him to stay off ladders.
None of that stopped him, however, from growing even more roses from cuttings in his garden shed.
Judy Rice said Mr. Veliquette loved his home and garden immensely. “He was a homebody,” she said, and didn’t like to travel much. “He was forever doing stuff.”
Son Ted Veliquette said his father was generous with the bounty of his garden. “Anybody who came to visit left with something,” he said.
For 23 years, the Rose Society had its annual summer picnics in the redwood grove at the back of the Veliquette property, a magical place surrounded by the creek on three sides and containing two bark-sided summer cabins built around 1925.
Two weddings have also been held in the grove.
Mr. Veliquette also volunteered at the Woodside Village Church rummage sale, where he presided over the Bric-a-Brac room, and in the ministry at the Devonshire Oaks nursing home in Redwood City. He had also served on the board of the First Congregational Church in Redwood City.
He is survived by his wife, Susanna; daughter, Judy Rice of Redwood City; sons Bud Veliquette of Jenner and Ted Veliquette of Truckee; brothers Chester Veliquette of Vacaville and Raymond of Newport News, Virginia; five grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held Sunday, March 26, at the Woodside Village Church at 1 p.m. The family requests memorial donations be directed to the WVC fund for landscaping.
Barbara Wood is a freelance writer and photographer from Woodside who was at work on a feature story about her neighbor, Elwood Veliquette, when he died.
