Los Altos native Robin Chapman, author of “The Valley of Heart’s Delight: True Tales from Around the Bay,” shared stories of the region’s past at the Rotary Club of Los Altos meeting Aug. 3.
Chapman began her career as a TV journalist reporting news from the White House, Congress and U.S. Supreme Court news, and then returned to her Los Altos roots. In addition to “The Valley of Heart’s Delight,” published in July 2022, her local trilogy includes “California Apricots: The Lost Orchards of Silicon Valley” and “Historic Bay Area Visionaries.” She also chronicles the area’s history in her Town Crier column, “Santa Clara Valley lives.”
Chapman recounted how apricots were first introduced to California from New Spain/Mexican missions and developed around 1849 as a burgeoning business when other fresh fruits were unavailable on the West Coast.
Blenheim apricots require only modest irrigation and hold up well for shipping after drying in the sun, so 24,000 orchards flourished between 1870 and 1970 in sunny California. Thus, “Orchardists became entrepreneurs – the forerunners, in spirit, of the innovators who invented Silicon Valley,” wrote Chapman.
Famous faces
Chapman’s tales of crooner Bing Crosby and actress/mermaid Esther Williams and their links to Los Altos merited photos on the cover of “Heart’s Delight.”
Crosby had agreed to appear at the Los Altos Youth Center’s opening day ceremony Jan. 15, 1951, but he and his Pebble Beach golf pals never arrived at the event; it was only later that he was photographed with the commemorative plaque he had finally signed. However, Crosby did offer a generous donation of seed money for the new Youth Center.
Williams was a rising movie star who sought to escape the advances of several men by becoming a “Mrs.” She solved the dilemma by marrying her first husband, Leonard Kovner, at Christ Episcopal Church in Los Altos.
Writer-film director Alfred Hitchcock purchased an estate in nearby Scotts Valley, which allowed him to conveniently take the train from Hollywood to his property. Two photos in “Heart’s Delight” show him photographing actress Ingrid Bergman at his estate and posing with the dark birds that inspired his thriller film “The Birds.” He had learned of a documented event in 1961 when flocks of sooty shearwaters (seagulls) “gorged on anchovies,” writes Chapman, and apparently got confused in the fog and attacked buildings and residents on the nearby Santa Cruz coast.
Chapman’s local history books are available at the Los Altos Library and the Los Altos History Museum.
Marlene Cowan is a member of the Rotary Club of Los Altos. For more information, visit losaltosrotary.org.
