A Bronze Plaque Discount

Speaking before the Board of Supervisors and a crowded board chambers, Chavez said it was crucial to remember past struggles while continuing to work for Latino civil rights.Chavez’s audience at Tuesday’s board meeting appeared overwhelmingly sympathetic to his call for preserving the historic jail building constructed in the 1930s that was once and perhaps still is slated for at least partial demolition, with Supervisors Luis Alejo and Simon Salinas noting their own links to the late labor leader.Alejo, whose family walked besides Chavez when he marched to the jail to turn himself in after a warrant was issued for failing to call off a lettuce boycott, called the historic jail building a “sacred place” that should be preserved before it is lost because it can never be replaced.Salinas, who grew up in a migrant farmworker family and was invited by Chavez to help hand out benefit checks to farmworkers from the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation, said it was entirely “appropriate” to honor Chavez on the 48th anniversary of his incarceration in the former jail and noted what Chavez’s legacy meant to the migrant farmworker community.Supervisors Mary Adams and John Phillips said they both hoped that a request for proposals to be issued by the county for adaptive re-use of a building that Chavez described as similar to a cold and leaky farm labor camp nearly half a century ago would yield financially and technically feasible proposals.Adams compared the jail to historic adobes on the Monterey Peninsula, while Phillips described the site as a “complicated piece of property to do something with.”Association of Monterey Area Preservationists president Nancy Runyon, whose organization presented the plaque, also made a presentation at Tuesday’s board meeting that noted a number of precedents for adaptive re-use of old jails. Runyon said her organization would like...

The field, named for the longtime Modesto High School and Davis High School coach, was dedicated 10 years ago.Former players raised funds for the field and scoreboard, but one piece of the plan, a bronze plaque of Windemuth on a brick wall near the backstop, wasn’t completed.Local sculptor Betty Saletta was commissioned this year and produced the likeness of Windemuth, known by many as “Mr. Baseball” and “The Mad Russian.”A “party” or recognition of the completed field will be held next spring. The organizers promise plenty of “Russian peanuts (sunflower seeds”) for everyone.

A massive bronze plaque honoring scores of World War II veterans was donated to the museum at a ceremony in late October at Carlo Lorenzetti’s in Chicago hosted by the Spaghetti-Os.There to accept the donation were IAVM board members Paul Basile, Steve Corbo and Mark DiSanto.The plaque was commissioned by Società Filarmonica Bella Italia and contains the names of 125 mostly Italian-American veterans. It had languished in the garage of a Far South Side printer until 2014, when it was discovered by local historian Tom Shepherd and his friend Don Bovino.Shepherd oversaw the plaque’s restoration and then worked with the Spaghetti-Os to host the presentation ceremony.Word was spread by Fra Noi columnist CJ Martello, yielding more than 140 attendees, many of whom were family members of the men listed on the plaque.The guest of honor was Peter Roy, whose name is emblazoned in bronze on the plaque. “All these guys are gone,” Roy wistfully noted. “A plaque that big, with that many names.”And now they’ll be forever memorialized at the Italian American Veterans Museum. (iavmuseum.org) ...