2011 Lifetimes of Achievement cover story (Palo Alto ... - Avenidas

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Cover Story Avenidas acknowledges seniors with 2011 Lifetime of Achievement Awards Avenidas acknowledges seniors with 2011 Lifetimes of Achievement Awards Engagement, ingenuity and service Each year, Palo Alto nonprofit Avenidas honors senior citizens age 65 and older who’ve made significant contributions to the community, professionally and through volunteer service. This year, the honorees are former Mayor Jim Burch of Palo Alto, career-adaptation expert Betsy Collard of Mountain View, environmental and education volunteer Jan Fenwick of Los Altos Hills, Foothill College Celebrity Speaker Series Director Dick Henning of Mountain View, League of Women Voters leader Veronica Tincher of Palo Alto and senior-housing advocates Bill and the late Carolyn Reller of Palo Alto. The honorees will be celebrated at a public reception Sunday, May 15, from 3 to 5 p.m. at a garden party at a local home. The event is sponsored by Avenidas, Palo Alto Weekly and Palo Alto Online. Tickets can be purchased for $75 by contacting Avenidas at 650-289-5445 or online at www.avenidas.org. Proceeds from the reception benefit senior programs at Avenidas. ■ photographs by Veronica Weber by Karla Kane BE T S Y CO L L A R D HIGH-TECH CAREER PIONEER Growing up, Betsy Collard moved 19 times and went to 21 different schools. Adaptability was important. Throughout her years of service, Collard has worked tirelessly to help others adapt to changes in the ever-evolving world of Silicon Valley, in addition to her roles as community volunteer and educational administrator. Collard moved to California from New York during high school, attended Scripps College in southern California and then went to grad school (studying counseling) at Stanford University, which subsequently hired her as assistant dean of women. She was working as acting dean of students when, in 1965, a new University of California campus, set in the coastal redwood forests of Santa Cruz, opened. “I was the token woman,” she said of being offered the position of associate director of student affairs. “It was an incredible time, being part of something brand new, with wonderful professors. It was exhilarating.” But two years later she was moving on again, getting married and moving to Mountain View. In 1967 she took a job with the State of California, working as a career counselor in Palo Alto. The electronics industry (as the developing field of computer technology was then known) was new. Companies needed workers and part of Collard’s job was to help career seekers gain the skills and networking they needed to match the opportunities opening up in Silicon Valley. “I was interested in helping people, not computers,” she said. It just so happened that she was in the right place at the right time — and had the right kind of flexible thinking — to work successfully with emerging tech companies and the people who sought jobs with them. “I learned a lot,” she said. “I worked with people from high-school dropouts to Stanford PhDs. With people who were having to change careers and with ones who needed training,” she said. She helped usher some who were skilled at abstract thinking, such as graduates with music degrees, into the field of computers. In 1979 Collard moved on again, this time to the Resource Center for Women (later renamed Career Action Center), which was originally set up by a group of Stanford-educated women to help other women re-enter the workforce. Collard worked with tech companies including Sun Microsystems, HP and AT&T to develop guidelines. She eventually published “The High-Tech Career Book” to help introduce newcomers to the corporate world. As companies turned toward outsourcing in the 1980s and ‘90s, Collard also coined the phrase “career self-reliance” to describe the responsibility individuals need to take in their careers, as corporations could no longer be counted on to promise long-term employment. Though the concept first was criticized for the way it shifted responsibility from corporation to worker, the idea is now prevalent. “Now it is commonly accepted, but when we introduced it, it was viewed as revolutionary and widely adopted across the country,” she said. Collard retired after 20 years with the Career Action Center when her husband died. But in 1999, her alma mater came knocking once again. Collard became Stanford’s director of alumni-volunteer relations, helping to recruit volunteers out of Stanford’s thousands of successful alumni and bring them into service roles for the school. Collard, now 71, officially retired four years ago. She keeps busy, volunteering for the Community School of Music and Arts in Mountain View, where she interviews students and writes profiles for the school’s website. After serving on many boards and committees (including the Mountain View School Board, the Palo Alto chapter of the American Red Cross, the Mountain View Human Relations Commission and the Day Worker Center of Mountain View), “It’s nice to do direct service and not sit in a meeting,” she said. Despite an honorary doctorate from Golden Gate University and several lifetime-achievement awards, Collard named her son (a San Francisco doctor) and her three grandchildren as her proudest achievements. And, still in (continued on page 18) Page 16 • May 6, 2011 • Palo Alto Weekly
Cover Story Di c k He n n i n g Bringing luminaries to the locals by Chris Kenrick Bil l an d Ca r o l y n Rel l er Senior-housing advocates and entrepreneurs In 2007, three years into Carolyn Reller’s battle with a brain tumor, she and her husband, Bill, were approached to be honored with the Avenidas Lifetimes of Achievement award. As board president of Avenidas decades earlier, Carolyn Reller had been among the creators of the award — and firmly disagreed later when the qualifying age was dropped from 70 to 65. “She was a person of a lot of things, and one of them was principle, sometimes expressed as stubbornness,” Bill Reller recalled of his wife, who died a year ago at 68. “When they approached us for the award in 2007, I said, ‘You know, Carolyn, this might be our last chance.’ “The handwriting was on the wall,” he said, referring to her terminal diagnosis. “It was a hard thing to say to her. “But she said no, she was not yet 70 — it didn’t make any difference.” This year, when Bill Reller again was approached for the award, Avenidas agreed that his wife, posthumously, could be honored along with him. The award presentation is May 15. Carolyn Reller would have turned 70 in June. “She still would have turned it down — I’m sure of it,” he said. Born and educated in the Midwest, Bill Reller had stumbled upon Palo Alto as a Gray Line Bus Tour passenger during a brief stopover as he prepared to ship out for a U.S. Army stint in Korea. The short bus tour was all it took. Thirteen months later, Reller was back as a student at Stanford Business School — and has never left. Upon graduation he turned down an East- Coast corporate job to strike out in Palo Alto real estate and recalls that “life wasn’t easy, business wise.” He remembers meeting with downtown landlords who seemed powerful to him at the time, wondering what it would feel like to have lived in Palo Alto for five whole years. “I thought if anybody had been here five years, they must be really established and really know the community,” he said. Reller borrowed a down payment from his mother to buy his first house — priced at $11,000 on Palo Alto Avenue. It turned out to be a honeymoon cottage when he married Carolyn in 1963. By 1982 — three children and two houses later — the Rellers landed in a gracious center-hall colonial on a huge Crescent Park lot. Carolyn ran the household while Bill developed condominium projects in Palo Alto (continued on next page) by Karla Kane As the founder of Foothill College’s Celebrity Forum Speaker Series, Dick Henning has hobnobbed with everyone from movie legend Cary Grant to the late Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. But it’s the education he had received growing up in Taft, Calif., a rustic yet wealthy oil town west of Bakersfield, that served as early inspiration for his own long career of educational and community service. It “formed the foundation of where I am today,” Henning said. “I appreciate it more and more.” Henning worked summers in the Taftarea oil fields before earning a “teeny” boxing scholarship to San Jose State University. He eventually completed two master’s degrees and a doctorate in education administration. After working seven years as a high school English and speech teacher in Sunnyvale, Henning said he “jumped” at the chance in 1967 to apply for the job of Foothill College’s director of student services. At the time, the college was struggling with dwindling interest in its student-services card. Job seeker Henning proposed a bold idea: To make the card more valuable, he suggested creating a series of compelling cultural events open to card holders. The $20 card would have a more than $400 value. It was a big goal, and one that Henning figured he would not get the chance to deliver on. “There were more than 100 applicants. I knew I wasn’t going to get the job,” he laughed. To his surprise, “I got a call the next day that says, ‘You’re hired.’” Henning made good on his idea, and the Celebrity Forum was born. Luminaries such as archaeologist Louis Leakey and broadcaster Alistair Cooke were among the first to take the stage. And though Los Altos Hills may not be known as a hipster haven, during Henning’s early tenure many seminal rock bands also visited Foothill College. Acts including The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and The Fifth Dimension performed. “The Doobie Brothers were a nice group. It was an incredible job,” Henning said. But it wasn’t all peace, love and feeling groovy. “People forget, it was rough times,” Henning said of the turbulent years between 1968 and 1970, which saw student demonstrations and a campus-wide shutdown in 1970. But Henning remained with the college (he retired in 1997) and his beloved forum, which outgrew its space at the college and now takes place at the Flint Center in Cupertino. The wildly successful series, which features seven speakers a year, is now self-supported by ticket sales (admission costs $290-390 per year). It routinely sells out. “The series is now in its 43rd year. I don’t see it weakening; it’s a real service, a free exchange of active ideas. I think it’s here to stay,” he said. Henning is particularly proud to have had Cary Grant as a speaker in 1978, as the shy actor had never done a public-speaking event of its kind before. Henning’s also brought every president from Gerald Ford to Bill Clinton to the series. One speaker he would love to get that he hasn’t yet? Nelson Mandela. Henning has also served on the boards for (continued on next page) Palo Alto Weekly • May 6, 2011 • Page 17
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2011 Lifetimes of Achievement cover story (Palo Alto ... - Avenidas

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