When Woodside resident and super-volunteer Karen Seiko Peterson attends her Woodside High School Class of 1964 reunion in the fall, there may be dancing, she said. Or there may not be. “The older you get, there are fewer dancing out there,” Ms. Peterson told the Almanac.
The group holds reunions yearly, usually at Rossotti’s (the Alpine Inn) in Portola Valley She and her classmates are 71 or nearly so. But with Motown sounds being on the radio in 1964, if the mood is right, doing the Twist at the reunion — swiveling your torso to the music, often while standing in place — may not be all that demanding.
It’s a good time to renew friendships, “and then, of course, to be saddened by your fellow classmates that are no longer around,” Ms Peterson said.
For her, being around has been a way of life. She taught social studies for 35 years over her 40-year career at Woodside Elementary School and has never missed a May Day parade, she said. She spent 20 years helping the Woodside High School foundation raise money to keep class sizes small, to support college counseling and to provide tutorials for kids who need them.
“Class size is very important,” she said. “We’re fortunate to have such public support.”
On Woodside High’s Shared Decision Making Council, she assisted in trying to figure out whether there was a connection between a student’s academic performance and where the student lived and the student’s ethnicity.
In April, she was inducted into the Woodside High School Hall of Fame for her many contributions to the school, including through the Athletic Boosters, the PTSA, the Drama Boosters, and the Music Boosters.
She recently participated in the planning of Redwood City’s sesquicentennial celebration, and she’s active in the San Mateo County Historical Society, where she helps out with the gallery on the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
In 1941, Ms. Peterson’s grandfather, a local leader in the ethnic Japanese community, made his living by growing flowers on 17 acres in Redwood City, she said. At noon on Dec. 7, the day that Japanese air forces attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, her grandfather was arrested by FBI agents, she said. “To the best of our knowledge,” he was interned in Chicago, then transferred to an internment camp in North Dakota, she said.
Her mother was sent to the Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno, then to the Topaz War Relocation Center in Millard County in Utah, where she met her future husband, Ms. Peterson said.
When her grandfather returned in 1945, his 17 acres were intact, Ms. Peterson said. A Chinese family watched over it during the war, she said. Her grandfather then used his land to provide a safe place to stay for formerly interned people.
“I make sure that when there is speaking about Japanese Americans, that story gets told,” Ms. Peterson said. “I keep telling the story so that relatives after me will remember.”
Her deep associations with Woodside High and Woodside Elementary have had consequences: two awards in her name. Woodside High has the Seiko Award for Community Service, and at Woodside Elementary has the Karen Peterson Community Service Award.
Ms. Peterson was herself an honoree in 2012 when then Woodside mayor Dave Tanner chose her as Woodside’s candidate for the Mayors’ Diversity Celebration Award in recognition of the diverse cultures in San Mateo County.
She is a member of the Recreation Committee for the town of Woodside and is instrumental in the run-up to the Taste of Woodside celebration of wine and the Day of the Horse, a celebration of the equestrian lifestyle in town, though she does not drink wine and does not ride a horse. “I just like to help,” she said.
