PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

January 12, 2010

Dear Members,

Happy New Year and Decade! I am eager to start on the opportunities in front of us, and one of them has
landed in our lap already. In December, we began work on accepting an exciting addition to our collection.
'Exciting' may seem a tad hyperbolic when describing historic artifacts, but see if you don't agree.

Beryl (Maclean) Beckwith, a descendent of the Wagoner, Black and Maclean familes of Livermore, contacted
me over email. Beryl herself has had a fascinating life in and out of Livermore, but the Wagoners and Macleans
have been well known here for generations. For example, Gatzmer Wagoner owned land east of town
and one day he saw some unannounced surveyors on his property. That evening he pulled up all their survey
stakes and threw the surveyors off the land when they showed up the next day. But once the Navy properly
identified its intentions, and this being shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the patriotic Gatz gave the
government a good deal on the land that was to become the Livermore Naval Air Station (later L.L.N.L.).
Beryl's Uncle Nathan was Nathan Maclean, the first local casualty of World War II (Nov./Dec. '09 newsletter).

The exciting part of the story is that Beryl's grandmother Henrietta was a careful and efficient collector of
family photos, papers and artifacts. The Wagoner home on College Avenue? Got a picture. The property
description of the Wagoner ranch south of town? Detailed in a family will and a property inspection report.
Family genealogy? Yep. Nathan's letters home from his WWII station? Preserved, including one sent the day
before he was killed in action. Photos, letters, artifacts and certificates, it is a wonderful collection that gives a
great picture of the arc of a Livermore family and we are very fortunate that Beryl has offered to entrust us
with it. Dick Finn is already using the information to help fill in the L-AGS index of founding Valley families.

What an excellent time for me to ask if one of you might be interested in helping us to catalog this material,
and even help us to design some exhibits based on this in conjunction with other material in our collection. I
can imagine an exhibit designed around Livermore's W.W. II vets, or perhaps around Livermore family photos.
Often we pay more attention to pictures of buildings or events, but our collections, including this new one,
also have some excellent shots of long-standing Livermore families (see, e.g., the photo at bottom of page 7 in our January-February Newsletter).

One more highlight from a year that was full of them (in spite of what you might have read elsewhere). The
beautiful Chinese sign from the Chinese settlement at Coast Manufacturing that we had displayed above the
exhibit from the archealogical dig at that site had been on loan from Barbara Adams. With Barbara's passing,
her daughter Lynda inherited the sign. Since she was moving out of town, she had chosen to take it along
with her. However, after some hopefully fond thoughts of Livermore and the Guild, Lyn has decided the sign
will be back on display in the History Center. Thanks so much to Lyn!

It is popular at the moment to be glad to be escaping the last decade with our skin, but the Guild had many
things to be thankful for. One gift I will miss is the assistance we got from our Collections Manager Terry
Berry. Terry is moving out of the country, which should be very exciting for her, but leaves us with some
challenges. Among many other things, Terry guided us in housing our collection with sounder archival
practices and drove adoption of our computer-based collections management system, so we now have our
volunteers helping to make our collection searchable and properly cataloged. Her work will carry on, however,
and already we are making it possible to continue to increase the cataloging work that Terry championed. If
you or someone you know is interested in helping to make our collection more accessible and better protected,
we could make excellent use of your time or donations!

Jeff Kaskey
President

 

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