The Duvenecks: Disseminating Kindness at Hidden Villa

This photograph of Josephine and Frank Duveneck, founders of Hidden Villa summer camp, was taken in 1978 on the couple's 65th wedding anniversary. Josephine died 11 days later, shortly after completing her autobiography. Frank died in 1985 at the age of 99. Image courtesy of the Palo Alto Historical Association.

I was very surprised to read Hidden Villa was caught in the middle of a controversy about some Asian tiles on the side of the old Duveneck house. The tiles represent an ancient symbol in Asia and bear some resemblance to a swastika but are not exactly like the ones we associate with Germany. The controversy shut down the Hidden Villa children's camp this summer for the very first time.

I thought perhaps it might be a time to revisit the history of this forward-thinking couple, who made so many lives better during their lifetimes and beyond.

Here's a piece I published recently about them in the Los Altos Town Crier.

CLICK FOR ROBIN'S ARTICLE ON THE DUVENECKS

Soldiers Battled Pandemic in Waning Days of World War I

Soldiers from Camp Fremont celebrate the end of World War I on University Avenue in Palo Alto.

Note all of the soldiers are wearing masks due to the 1918 pandemic. Photo courtesy of "The Story of Camp Fremont" and the Menlo Park Historical Society.

I'm working on a new book, which will be a collection of my articles so I'm going back and making sure they still hold up. When I first wrote about Barbara Wilcox's book in 2018, "World War I Army Training by San Francisco Bay: The Story of Camp Fremont," my article was mostly a promotion for an upcoming talk the author was giving. I grew up right down the road from Stanford and I had never heard about this vanished military base. 

When I re-read the book in 2021, I found its section on the 1918 pandemic absolutely fascinating for obvious reasons. So I wrote a new column for the local paper. Click the link for my report. 

The WW I Pandemic on the SF Peninsula

Quiet Engineer Helped Apollo 11 Speed Safely to the Moon

Henry "Hank" Cole and his dog Mimmi still live in Los Altos, half a century after his work at NASA Ames Research Center was critical to the Apollo 11 mission. Can you see that Mimmi is smiling?

There are always quiet heroes who walk among us. The men and women of the Greatest Generation certainly qualify for that designation, as do the teams of people who worked to successfully launch America's--and the world's--first manned mission to the surface of the moon. These dedicated professionals did their jobs using very early and rudimentary computers, many developed in the early days of Silicon Valley. I have been fortunate to meet one of those who made that moon launch possible.