Dear Santa

The Holidays are almost here, which means it's almost time for me to write my favorite story of the year - the annual "Kids' Christmas Letters to Santa Claus."
The story will run in a couple of weeks, but I wanted to give you a head's up so you'll be on the lookout for it, and also because the Oakland Post Office's consumer affairs director, Elma Ramirez, who founded the Santa letters project 24 years ago, needs volunteers this year more than ever.
But they don't make it easy for you. Last year, the Postal Service instituted some new rules to protect the children's privacy. No kids have ever been harmed because of this project, and they want to keep it that way.
In the old days, all you had to do was call Ramirez, and she'd send you as many letters as you wanted.
But now you have to show up in person at the main post office at 2091 13th Street in downtown Oakland (corner of 13th and Alice), Room 226, so they can check your I.D. as a security precaution.
Then they'll give you letters with the kids' contact information redacted, which means if you write back or buy any presents, you'll have to bring them back to the post office to be mailed.
It's a hassle, but it has to be done. A sad commentary on the times we live in.
"But there's been one unexpected upside," says Ramirez. "Before last year, we never got to meet any of our volunteers. It wasn't until they started bringing the presents here that we realized just how generous they were. They showed up with bicycles, hundreds of dollars worth of gifts, and so many toys! And they were high end toys, too!"
And that's the final reason why I'm writing this column: Ramirez asked me to thank you all on her behalf.
In addition to letter writers, she also needs some people to help her staff sort the letters, which are already piling up in her office.
The letters will be separated into two stacks - needy and non-needy. And the kids never lose their capacity to surprise. One year, a little girl wrote, "Dear Santa, Do you know Jesus? Are you friends? Please tell him I said hi."
And a little boy wrote, "Dear Santa, I'm Jewish and I know I shouldn't believe in you, but I can't help it."
And, of course, there's always a wiseacre who writes, "Dear Santa, Can you please make my little brother go away?"
But overwhelming majority of letters aren't funny at all. They're from desperately poor children who are facing another bleak Holiday season. Some have never had a Christmas present in their lives.
What really breaks your heart is when they say, "Santa, you don't have to give me anything, but could you please bring something for my little sister?"
And you'd be stunned by the number of kids who ask Santa to find Mom or Dad a job.
So if you can help sort letters, or buy a present for a needy child, or answer a letter from a non-needy child, please call Ramirez at 510-622-7420 and leave your phone number. It'll be the best Christmas present you ever gave yourself.

It Ain't Necessarily So

(Above: Oakland's newest council member, Libby Schaaf)

What will the historians of the future say when they write about the Great Shellacking of 2010?
Conservatives will say it was a voter revolt against big government and big spending.
Liberals will say it was an outbreak of mass hysteria stoked by cynical politicians who knew how to manipulate people's fears and prejudices.
And those in the middle will say, "It was the economy, stupid."
All three will have a kernel of truth. But it's equally true that the Democrats still might have pulled it out, despite everything, if John O'Connor hadn't been diagnosed with Alzheimer's 25 years ago.
By 2005 his condition had deteriorated to the point where his wife Sandra decided she had to give up her job to take care of him.
Her job was Associate Justice of the Supreme Court; and that seat was filled by Sam Alito, who turned out to be the critical fifth vote in Citizens United case, which opened the floodgates of corporate money and decisively tipped the playing field in favor of the Republicans.
As the old proverb puts it, "For want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost; for want of the horseshoe, the rider was lost; for want of the rider, the battle was lost - all for the want of a nail."
One of the biggest mistakes we make about history is to assume everything was inevitable. It wasn't.
What if St. Paul hadn't survived that shipwreck off the Maltese coast? Would Christianity still have become the world's dominant religion?
What if Robert E. Lee's Special Order No. 191, describing his plans and troop dispositions in detail, hadn't accidentally fallen into the hands of Union soldiers before the battle of Antietam? Would the North still have won the Civil War?
History is full of such what-might-have-beens. The moral, which we keep ignoring all the time, is that nothing is predetermined.
Yes, large overarching historical trends are important. But so are the choices that individuals make. Our actions do make a difference.
To paraphrase Shakespeare: The power is not in our stars, it's in ourselves - for better or worse.
And to paraphrase Scoop Nisker: if you don't like history, go out and make some of your own.
Meanwhile, I was glad to see that Libby Schaaf won the race for Oakland City Council from District 4.
She has a resume as long as your arm, including working as a top aide for once-and-future Governor Jerry Brown. But I remember her as that adorable little girl who was Raggedy Ann at Children's Fairyland in 1976.
The Raggedy Andy was her BFF Leslie Zimmerman, who, years later, was the maid of honor at her wedding. (They were seriously tempted to wear their big red yarn wigs at the ceremony, but they finally decided against it.)
Libby has always given Fairyland the credit for launching her political career.
"It taught me how to speak in front of large groups and to be responsible for the commitments I make," she told me. "But most of all, it taught me to be kind."
Congratulations Libby. Here's hoping you and your generation take over and kick us old folks out of power as soon as possible. I know you'll do a better job than we did.
You could hardly do worse.

Best Boss Ever

(Above: Admiral Clark in his dress uniform.)

A good boss is worth his/her weight in gold.
And the best boss I've ever heard of was Admiral J.J. Clark, who commanded Task Force 58 in the South Pacific during World War II. His flagship was the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, which is now a floating museum docked at Alameda Point.
He was the ideal leader, a guy you would follow anywhere, and he was a second father to every man on the ship.
He didn't stand on ceremony. Everyone down to the lowliest sailor called him by his nickname, "Jocko." And they adored him.
"There was nothing we wouldn't do for the Old Man," said Frank MacDonald of Oakland, "because there was nothing he wouldn't do for us."
There are so many classic Jocko stories, I hardly know where to begin. Like the time a young sailor swung open a door that Jocko was standing behind and knocked the admiral flat on his kiester. A lieutenant commander grabbed the kid and started screaming at him.
"The next thing I saw was a gigantic hand as it reached over and placed itself on the shoulder of the still shouting lieutenant commander," the sailor recalled. "In a loud voice, I heard Admiral Clark say, 'Go back to your work station and leave this boy alone! I was just standing in the wrong place!'"
Or the time another young sailor fell asleep while on watch - a hanging offense in wartime - only to be awakened by a gentle tugging on his arm. Standing over him was Jocko, murmuring, "Boy, boy, boy. You know you're not supposed to sleep on watch."
The kid spent the next few days in abject terror, expecting to be arrested at any moment. But nothing happened. Jocko hadn't even put him on report.
But my favorite Jocko story is the time a typhoon caved in the Hornet's bow, making it impossible to launch planes the normal way, off the front. Jocko simply turned the shop around and sailed backwards at full speed, launching the planes from the rear.
"The guys on the other ships must have thought the Old Man had finally lost his marbles," said MacDonald.
Jocko was unique in so many ways. He overcame prejudice to become the first Native American to graduate from Annapolis. And, since many of his battles were fought at night, he slept on a cot on the bridge so he could spring into action at a moment's notice.
It was a common sight to see him directing the battle wearing his polka-dot pajamas and fuzzy slippers - but with his admiral's hat firmly clamped on his head.
Next Friday would have been Jocko's 117th birthday. He died in 1971 and was buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
But his real monument is the Hornet itself. Stepping onto the ship is like stepping back into history. So many things - the radar room, where they tracked incoming enemy planes; the ready room, where the pilots got their final briefings before battle; the mess hall; the living quarters - are in perfect working order. This isn't an amusement park ride. This is the real deal.
If you're looking for a good way to observe Veterans Day next week, I can't think of a better place to do it.

Cal's Greatest Generation

(Above: G.I.s hit the beach on D-Day)

Rosamond Castle '43 remembers Dec. 7, 1941, like it was yesterday.
"I was walking through Sather Gate toward Wheeler Hall, and I saw people huddling around, staring at newspapers. By the time I got to Doe Library I heard something about Pearl Harbor. Then inside the library everyone was talking about what had happened."
The news was so incredible, Catherine "Cappy" Vail Bridge '42 didn't believe it at first.
"I thought it was a hoax, like Orson Welles' 'War of the Worlds' broadcast a few years before."
So began America's entry into World War II, which ended 65 years ago this summer. To celebrate the end of that terrible war, we talked with some of the Golden Bears who lived through it.
The days after Pearl Harbor were a mix of uncertainty and fear.
"It was the middle of finals," says Jean Heying Rusmore '42. "We didn't have blackout curtains yet, so we couldn't study in our rooms because you couldn't have any light showing outside. So we sat on the floor in the hallways and studied there, instead."
"The great fear was for the young men of our class," adds Rosamond. "The young man I was dating invited me to the Class of '42 graduation ball at the Palace Hotel, even though we were both Class of '43, because he knew he probably wouldn't make it to our real graduation in 1943. And he was not alone."
It didn't take long for tragedy to strike home. In April 1942, Ed Tackle '41, who had been editor of the Daily Cal, was killed on the infamous Bataan Death March.
Four months later, Rosamond's beloved older brother, Gordon Craig, was killed off Guadalcanal when an enemy bomb blew apart the bridge of his ship, right were he was stationed.
"My last image of him was the day he went away, when he turned and saluted me and my mother at the door," she says. "I still miss him every day."
Jean Marchant '45 adds, "Our class had a flag made, and we hung it from the Campanile. Every time we got word that someone from Cal had been killed, we added another star."
A few weeks after Pearl Harbor, tragedy struck the campus in a different way.
"One day, my best friend, Grace Imamoto, who was also Class of '42, asked me if I would keep her tennis racket for her," says Jean Heying Rusmore '42. "I didn't know what she was talking about. I said, 'Grace, don't you like to play tennis anymore?' And she said, 'Jean, I have to go away.'"
Grace and all the other Japanese-American students were sent to detention camps for the duration of the war.
"We wanted to help them," says Clavel Fender '43. "The day before they were taken away, we held a tea party for them, with everyone dressed in pastel evening gowns. How innocent we were!"
As the men went off to war, the women threw themselves into supporting the home front.
"We would pick tomatoes or wrap bandages or make Bundles for Britain," says Jean Marchant '42. "Whatever we could do to help."
"There was such a shortage of men on campus, many of us sorority girls used to go to the USO in downtown Berkeley," adds Gwyneth Caster Page '45. "I asked a Marine captain to escort me to the senior ball. I went out and bought a beautiful black taffeta-and-lace formal and little pearl earrings. I thought I looked very chic. The doorbell rang, and there was my date in full dress Marine uniform. He was prettier than I was!"
Many of the younger faculty also went off to war, which meant the remaining undergrads had the cream of the crop as their professors.
"We had all the big guns," says Margaret Cooney Walton '47. "Glenn Seaborg was my section leader in chem!"
Army Capt. Charlie Fender '41 and his wife, Clavel '43, wrote each other every single day of the war, without fail. Whenever his outfit liberated a new city, Charlie would buy a little charm and send it to Clavel, who put them all on a bracelet that remains her most treasured possession.
Charlie was the military governor of the devastated town of Cerignola, Italy, where he rebuilt the social infrastructure from the ground up, establishing a new judicial system, schools, food supplies, and fire and police protection.
"Every day was a lot of fun because I was being useful," he says. And the locals really appreciated it.
"Twenty-seven years later he took me back," says Clavel. "When we checked into the hotel, the man behind the desk took one look at Charlie and said, "I remember you!" He whisked us to the city hall and shouted to the chief of police, 'Get out of that chair! The governor's here!' You can imagine how that impressed me."
Gordon Binder '40 was an Army field surgeon in Europe, operating under enemy fire only a few hundred yards behind the front lines.
"We didn't have an operating room, not even a tent. Just a field somewhere where we'd put up a sign saying, 'Battalion Aid Station.' We'd just park there and receive the casualties."
Many of the casualties were beyond saving. The best he could do was shoot them full of morphine to ease their agony.
"Nobody can imagine how awful it was. It was just horrible. You assumed you weren't going to make it. You knew you were going to get killed. It was just a question of when."
Bob Breuer '43 served on the U.S.S. Wichita, a heavy cruiser in the Pacific. At 22, he was the old man of the group of 18 and 19 year olds whom he supervised.
"We were like family, and I was their uncle. One day, two of them were killed and several others badly wounded by friendly fire from one of our own ships. I just sat down and cried like a baby."
Chuck Auerbach '42 fought with Patton's Third Army in the Battle of the Bulge.
"Some of the things George C. Scott said in the movie I heard Patton say in real life. Unlike Scott, his voice was high and squeaky, but the pearl-handled revolvers were real. He'd race around in a jeep with a machine gun mounted on it, and he really tore down the road. I said to one of my buddies, 'That man's going to die in an automobile accident,' which is exactly what happened."
Not all the heroes were men. Catherine "Cappy" Bridge '42 was a member of the Women Air Service Pilots, or WASPs. Their job was to ferry fighters and bombers from the factory to the airfields, freeing up male pilots for the actual fighting.
"Gosh, it was fun! We just loved it. But it was still dangerous. Thirty-eight of our girls were killed on the job - mostly accidents, not pilot error. One of us would take the body home to her parents, and we would pass the hat among ourselves to cover the expenses."
There weren't many happy days in the war, but one of them was Aug. 25, 1944, the day Paris was liberated.
We've all seen the pictures of ecstatic Parisians swarming over the American tanks, showering the G.I.s with flowers and kisses.
One of the people in that crowd was Tito Moruza '43, who had already been in Paris for three weeks, waiting for the troops to arrive. Tito was an American special agent on a secret mission: As soon as the city was liberated, he was to make his way to Gestapo headquarters and seize all the documents so they could be used in war crimes trials after the war. Which he did.
Tito had landed in France on the morning of D-Day with the 82nd Airborne. Their canvas-and-plywood glider was ripped open by one of "Rommel's Asparagus" - wooden logs driven into fields along the Normandy coast. The three soldiers sitting next to Tito were mortally wounded.
"The youngest, who was only 18, cried for his mama. The second called for the medics, and the third cussed. That was when I lost my religion. I still haven't gotten it back."
While the others were fighting, Tito's job was to contact the French Resistance so they could smuggle him into Paris. He narrowly escaped capture several times, thanks to a heroic couple named Paul and Marcelle Dufour, who operated a safe house for Resistance fighters and escaping American prisoners of war. After the war, he named his first two children after them.
To this day, Tito refuses to watch a war movie. But he does have one happy memory of the war.
"My greatest blessing was that I never had to kill anybody. I'm not belittling those who did; that was their job. I was just lucky."
The war finally ended on Aug. 14, 1945. Jay Jacobus '43 heard the news as his ship was headed from San Francisco to the Pacific for the expected invasion of Japan.
"We all shouted, 'Turn the ship around!' So the ship made a left turn and headed for the Philippines, instead."
Gwyneth Page Caster '45 heard the news when she was in Cowell Hospital with a raging case of mono.
"Somebody sneaked me a bottle of something alcoholic to celebrate," she says. "It made me sick as a dog."
They have been called The Greatest Generation, a term that makes them distinctly uncomfortable.
"It bothers me a lot," says Dave Stewart '43. "I'm no hero. I just did my duty, like thousands of others. The real heroes are the guys who didn't come back."
Dave is being modest. He was awarded the Bronze Star, two combat medals and two Purple Hearts, the second for wounds suffered when he was hit by a German Panzerfaust anti-tank grenade.
"But I still have all my body parts," he says. "So I got out of it lucky."
But the last word belongs to Tom Mulcahy '43, who served on a Navy tanker in the Pacific.
"My two best friends were killed in the war," he says. "One was my best friend from high school, Danny Hurst. The other was Norm Hennessey, whom I rowed with on the Cal crew. I had a chance to get married to the greatest girl in the world, have kids and grandkids, and have a full life. They didn't."

(This story originally appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of California magazine.)

The Least Of My Brothers and Sisters

(Above: Saint Vincent de Paul)

Every neighborhood should have someone like Bob.
(That's not his real name. I changed it to protect his family's privacy.)
He was one of those guys who know everyone on the block. Parents felt safe letting their kids play outside because they knew Bob would be keeping a watchful eye on them.
But one day he was killed by a stray bullet meant for someone who was running past him on the street. He was just an innocent bystander.
His family was devastated. And, since this was a high-crime area, they kept getting traumatized all over again every time they heard a gunshot, which was almost every day.
The obvious solution was to move, but there was a problem: Bob had been devoted to his dog, a pit bull. And his family couldn't bear to give the pooch away; it was their last link to him. But there aren't many landlords willing to rent to someone with a pit bull.
But Deb Collett, a case supervisor at Catholic Charities of the East Bay, wouldn't give up. She searched and searched and finally found a willing landlord in another city nearby.
They had to leave the kids' swing set and sandbox behind when they moved. So Catholic Charities provided the money to buy another swing set, and Collett personally built a sandbox in their new backyard.
"We finally have a home where we feel safe," said Bob's son.
That's just one of thousands of families and individuals whom Catholic Charities helps every year. Whether you're a low-income patient with AIDS, a working person who needs help getting a tax refund, or a recently arrived immigrant from Cambodia in desperate need of food, clothing and shelter, Catholic Charities is often your last, best hope.
And you don't have to be Catholic. They just want to help, no matter who you are.
Catholic Charities of the East Bay has been doing this since it was founded in 1934, during the depths of the Great Depression.
The organization will celebrate its 75th anniversary on Nov. 6 with a gala fundraiser at the Blackhawk Automotive Museum in Danville. (Call 510-768-3138 to make your reservation.)
Even if you can't attend, you can still contribute by visiting www.cceb.org or sending a check to 433 Jefferson Street, Oakland, CA 94607. (Catholic Charities also gets major funding from Oakland's Measure Y.)
But the heart and soul of Catholic Charities is its volunteers, and you don't need big bucks to do that. Just call 510-768-3121 to sign up.
Get creative, like Dorothy Buckley of Oakland. Back in 1986 she decided to tackle an obvious problem: Some kids never get a Christmas present because their families are so poor.
She started buying toys at sales during the rest of the year to distribute at Christmas time. She named the project "Joybells," and her motto was "Every time you give a child a present, you ring a bell in heaven."
Buckley died in 2008, but Joybells is going stronger than ever, with more than 20 volunteers carrying on in her spirit. For 23 Christmases, they have collected tens of thousands of toys for needy children in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.
They haven't forgotten Jesus' admonition: "As you did it to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me." And neither should we.

Grrr-RAH!

(Above: Joe Kapp back in the day)

Fifty-one years ago, Cal went to the Rose Bowl. And it hasn't been back since.
But some die-hards haven't given up hope - the guys who last did it.
Two weeks ago, that great 1958 team held a reunion at running back Bill Patton's home in Lafayette, and I was privileged to join them.
1958 was a different time, and Berkeley was a very different place.
"The most revolutionary thing that happened was that a non-frat man was elected student body president," said guard Pete Domoto. "That was considered radical back then."
The whole town was football crazy. There were huge parades down Shattuck Avenue featuring the Football Festival Queen and her princesses in formal gowns riding on floats.
On Saturday mornings, geology professor Norman Hinds led his class in football cheers. And before every Big Game, chemistry professor Joel Hildebrand delighted his class by magically transforming a red liquid into blue and gold.
Frequent sideline visitors included Chief Justice Earl Warren, who played clarinet in the Cal Marching Band during his college days (Robert Gordon Sproul was the drum major), and Chancellor Glenn Seaborg, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist who bragged that his name was an anagram for "Go Bears."
"And he was in our locker room after every game, win or lose," said Domoto. "I can't tell you how important that was to us. To be sitting in front of my locker, feeling sorry for myself because we got beat, and have the chancellor come in and talk to me personally for five or ten minutes - it was the greatest experience of my college life."
But there were inklings of things to come in the '60s when the team arrived in Austin to play Texas. The hotel manager told them the white guys could stay, but the black guys had to go.
"Coach (Pete) Elliot turned us around, and we all stayed together somewhere else," said tight end Tom Bates, who still holds the school record for most fumble recoveries and currently serves as Berkeley's mayor.
And that unity was - and is - the secret of their success.
"There's nothing anyone in this group wouldn't do for me, and vice versa," said end Bob Duey, whose identical twin, Dick, played fullback and linebacker. " When my brother died two years ago, all these guys were there for me."
It also helped that the best athlete on the team was also a charismatic leader who wouldn't let them quit - quarterback Joe Kapp.
Kapp, who went on to a stellar career in the NFL and later became the coach who broke Stanford's hearts in 1982 with "The Play," has reinvented himself once again - this time, as a winemaker.
His new vintage, "The Play" Cabernet, is a fundraiser for his charity, the What Do You Want To Be Foundation, which supports grassroots organizations that help kids stay away from gangs and drugs. The wine is currently available at Lunardi's markets. For details, visit his website, joekapp.com/)
Now, cabernet isn't the first beverage that comes to mind when you think of Joe Kapp, but tequila is out - at least for now.
"I swore in 1982 that I would never drink another drop of tequila until Cal goes back to the Rose Bowl," he said. "And I never have."
Memo to Jeff Tedford: Next year in Pasadena, OK? This man has suffered long enough.

How To Get A Butterfly Drunk

It seemed as if everyone in Berkeley was celebrating last weekend's annual Homecoming at Cal - even the homeless people. On Saturday morning, I spotted a homeless man sitting on the curb at Bancroft and Telegraph, holding a hand-lettered cardboard sign that read, "Go Bears!"
Meanwhile, Sal Levinson, the UC Botanical Garden's "Caterpillar Lady," was leading a group of insect enthusiasts searching for drunken butterflies.
"Butterflies don't drink only nectar; they drink all kinds of stuff, including fruit that falls to the ground and starts fermenting," she explains. "And when that happens, they get tipsy and have problems flying."
You can see it for yourself in your own backyard.
"Just buy 10 pounds of grapes, take them home and stomp them," says Levinson, who calls caterpillars "the perfect pet."
"They're so cheap and so fascinating and so much fun. But the best part is that you never have to watch them die. You raise them, see the butterflies emerge, watch them fly away, and that's it. There are never any tears."
The Caterpillar Lady will lead her last butterfly walk of the season at the UC Botanical Garden on Oct. 26. For more information, visit berkeleybutterflyblog@blogspot.com/
Finally, I don't know what you're going to be doing on New Year's Day, but I know where Amit Pande of Dublin will be: He'll be riding an auto-rickshaw (basically, a rickshaw with a lawn mower motor) on a 3,000-mile trip across India to raise money and awareness to help solve the lack of access to clean water for millions of people in developing nations.
"More people in India have access to cell phones than have access to toilets," says Amit, who graduated from Cal last June.
Amit plans to stay off the beaten path and avoid the usual tourist destinations, camping out along the way or asking locals to put them up for the night.
"What would you rather tell your children? 'I took a tour bus to the Taj Mahal?' Or 'I remember the time my rickshaw broke down in the Thar Desert on our way to Mt. Abu, and we had to ride into the nearest town on our camel to get the parts to fix our vehicle?'"
The Rickshaw Run is hosted by a British adventure travel company called the Adventurists, whose philosophy is "fighting to make the world less boring." The goal is to raise money through online pledges for Frank Water, a charity that funds sustainable clean water projects in developing countries. Amit says more than 4,000 children die every day from water-borne diseases.
Each team is trying to raise $1,000 British pounds in pledges. If you'd like to contribute to Amit's team, visit www.bit.ly/dreamteamsupreme/
For Amit, whose parents grew up in India, this also will be a voyage of self-discovery.
"When I was a kid we used to go to India every two years, and I hated it - spending summer away from your friends, relatives pinching your cheeks, being covered with bug bites. having to eat Indian food.
"But now, as I continue to study and grow as a person, I feel an increasing pull to my roots. I want to see how my parents grew up and, more generally, I want to see how India is transforming into a global power and what this looks like for the rural population."