New exhibit explores full lives of Lucile and David Packard

Most family albums don’t include photos of Dad with Queen Elizabeth, and Mom at the hospital that was named after her. But the Packards weren’t your run-of-the-mill parents.

Between them, Lucile and David Packard easily amassed enough photo-worthy moments to fill a new exhibit at the Los Altos History Museum. In “Lucile and David Packard: Valued Partners,” a large room is replete with photos and objects of the milestones and simple moments that made up two remarkably rich lives.

One area, of course, is dedicated to that iconic Palo Alto garage where David and Bill Hewlett started Hewlett-Packard in 1939. Wooden walls, shelves and a work bench recreate the space, complete with examples of the company’s first product, an audio oscillator.

On the wall is a replica of the first HP advertisement. Readers interested in the oscillator are instructed to write to Department A of the tiny company. “Department A” was Lucile.

Photos also abound of the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford; the couple donated $40 million for its construction, and Lucile was board president. The exhibit also focuses on the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which had its construction paid for by David and Lucile (their daughter Julie is executive director). And there’s a large section on the duo’s time in Washington, when David was U.S. deputy secretary of defense under Nixon.

In one quote on a wall, Lucile is merrily self-deprecating about the difficulties of life in the capital: “Not long ago I found the perfect dinner dress at 5 in the afternoon to return wearily home to open the evening paper to a picture of Mrs. Agnew looking just lovely in my dress.”

In another, David speaks a simple sentence that became a sweeping philosophy: “Communities must be better for our presence.”

“Valued Partners,” though, is also an affectionate look at the couple’s everyday world. David’s fishing hat and boots are on display in a glass case near Lucile’s Delta Gamma sorority pin, and a whole section of photos recaptures bucolic days on the family’s ranches. In one homey snapshot from 1965, David and Lucile show off a prize-winning bull. In other pictures, Lucile volunteers with the Red Cross and David — who was 6 foot 5 — sports a basketball uniform.

“These people were from very ordinary backgrounds but just had extraordinary lives,” exhibit chair Nan Geschke of Los Altos says on a recent afternoon at the museum.

Near her, children experiment with a play circuit board, and adults watch videos about the Packards in a closet-turned-theater. An older gentleman, presumably a former HP employee, shouts to another: “Remember when we had the cutbacks? We went to four days a week.” (During a recession, HP avoided layoffs by having its staff take off every other Friday.)

Geschke never met Lucile and David, who died in 1987 and 1996, respectively. Still, she felt like she got to know them through researching and planning the exhibit with her co-chair, the late Julie Cummer. “Valued Partners” is dedicated to Cummer.

When you’re trying to trace two such busy lives, where do you begin? “You make a lot of phone calls,” Geschke said.

She and Cummer worked with the Packard Foundation and also interviewed Packard friends, relatives and business associates. Geschke wove many of the interviews into “Memories of Lu and Dave,” one of the videos shown in the theater. Overall, a group of volunteers and professionals worked for more than two years to create the exhibit.

“It’s a little bit like Jell-O: You don’t know when it’s going to set,” Geschke said of the exhibit. “But it does set.”

Geschke’s favorite photo is a picture of Lucile standing by the sea in the bright sunlight, wearing a blue dress that matches the exhibit walls.

“She just looks so natural,” Geschke says, strolling up to the picture.

Paula Tuerk, who does public relations for the museum, gets a laugh out of a photo of David and Queen Elizabeth taken when the monarch visited Hewlett-Packard in 1983. David had injured his foot working on a project not long before the visit — he dropped a bucket of hot bronze on it — but he gamely limped through the day, Tuerk said.

Tuerk and Geschke also enjoy pointing out a glass case displaying an old HP 35 calculator, which replaced the slide rule. Nearby is one of the baby blankets that Lucile used to give to Hewlett-Packard employees with new babies. Presumably, that was easier in the days before there were thousands of staff members.

And in the center of the exhibit is a reconstruction of the place where the Packards’ everyday and extraordinary worlds met: their 1930s Palo Alto kitchen, with an oven that looks like the one that they and Bill Hewlett used to bake enamel panels for the first audio oscillators.

In a quote on the wall, Hewlett muses, “I often wondered what cookies tasted like that were baked in the same oven that night.”

What: “Lucile and David Packard: Valued Partners,” an exhibit featuring photos, artifacts and videos.

Where: Los Altos History Museum, 51 S. San Antonio Road, behind the Los Altos Library.

When: Through June 22. Museum hours are Thursday through Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.

Cost: Free.

Info: Go to http://www.losaltoshistory.org or call 650-948-9427.

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