Portola Valley history book reflects 40 years of research Portola Valley history book reflects 40 years of research (April 30, 2003)

By Marion Softky
Almanac Staff Writer

"Life on the San Andreas Fault: A History of Portola Valley" is dedicated to the late Dorothy Regnery, who began researching history in Portola Valley, the Peninsula and California in 1959. She never stopped until her death in 1990.

Mrs. Regnery conquered the maze of county, state and national history bureaucracies to obtain official preservation status for 57 places, including the Alpine Inn, the Historic Schoolhouse, and Our Lady of the Wayside Church in Portola Valley. Farther away, she obtained bronze plaques for Filoli, the Menlo Park train station, the Squire House in Palo Alto, and virtually the whole town of Pescadero.

"She was just a towering figure in California history," says Nancy Lund, who succeeded her as town historian for Portola Valley, and co-authored the book. "She interviewed people who are long gone."

Mrs. Lund became interested in California history as a teacher at La Entrada School. She took a course at Foothill College and did a project on Ladera, where she had previously taught for 12 years before the school closed.

"It was an interesting story about interesting people. It was like a detective exercise to root out all the information," Mrs. Lund says. "It was like doing a jigsaw puzzle -- finding the pieces and putting them together. There's always a missing piece."

Mrs. Lund became interested in writing as well as history, and joined Portola Valley's Archives Committee when it formed in 1982. "I wanted to combine something I love with writing," she says.

Mrs. Lund became friends with Pamela Gullard, her co-author, when they were close neighbors in Los Altos, and their husbands commuted together to Intel. Later the Lunds moved to Portola Valley (in 1980) and the Gullards moved to Menlo Park.

Mrs. Gullard did a series of "soft tech" writing jobs while her children were small. She also became interested in writing short stories. "After many, many, many rejections, I began selling some," she says. Now she has a book of short stories in print, "Breathe at Every Other Stroke." As the Palo Alto Centennial approached, Mrs. Lund saw an opportunity to combine history with writing, and approached Mrs. Gullard, who hesitated at first. "I was not sure history was very interesting," she says.

Now Mrs. Gullard loves writing history. "You just can't make things up," she says. "These are wonderful stories about real people."

Their first joint effort produced a "History of Palo Alto: the Early Years," published in 1989 for the Centennial.

When they joined again in 1998 to write the book that Dorothy Regnery never finished, they brought complementary skills to telling the stories that Mrs. Regnery had researched so exhaustively. Mrs. Lund brings deep knowledge of local history, and Mrs. Gullard loves to tell a story.

And they get along together. "Here's a test of collaboration and friendship," Mrs. Lund says with a laugh. "We show a first draft to each other, and say what we really think."

The book features wonderful pictures, present and past. Besides historic photographs from the archives, the pages sparkle with color photographs by Susan Thomas, Ken Gardiner, and Sheldon "Woody" Woodward; paintings and drawings by Jane Gallagher; and elegant wildflower paintings by the late, much-loved Herb Dengler.

The extra cost of making the book so lavish were supported by Bill and Jean Lane, Bob and Pat Brown, the Friends of the Library, and the Cultural Arts Committee.