Cecilia (Chi) Hurley Weed

Bay Area, United States

What is the one word that describes you? Preservationist

A radical 91-year old who preserves history in California!

When the world-famous author Oliver Stone, was writing a biography of Fremont, he didn't think of calling California history professors. He called a little lady in Mission San Jose who will be 91 on November 19, 2006.

Fremont-based Cecilia Weed is walking knowledge of historical events, places and people in the region. For nearly 45 years, she has been devoting her energies to the preservation of Bay Area history since she arrived with her family in 1962.

Cecilia has helped preserve numerous old buildings that were to be razed to the ground in the name of the Washington Township Historical Society, P.O. Box, Mission San Jose, California, 94539. She is a key spokesperson and activist in safeguarding California's horticulture (saving Chinaberry trees from being cut down and replaced by non-indigenous Maples) for example.

She is a 30-year member of the Alameda County Historical Society as
well as on this Commission of Historical Preservation and a founding member of the Washington Township Historical Society.

It's important to note that what remains of California's Bay Area history is thanks to an historical preservation team that defends the silent old building and artefacts. Cecilia understands how to communicate this love of history to others and to teach them how to appreciate the rich resource of the state's old houses, structures, farms, etc.

She is singularly cultivating the cultural wasteland of suburban parking lots and non-descript housing by insisting on the preservation of some indigenous buildings, Ardenwood Park, refuge centers, to maintain the California character. The Patterson House on Mission Blvd. in Fremont is an example. The Old Mill and Harness Shop are two others.

Cecilia is a pioneer in the grassroot movement of historic preservation to preserve early California houses as national historic sites and monuments. It is too often an ungrateful task and a money-bleeder out of volunteers pockets.

If Oliver Stone can recognize Cecilia Weed's contribution to the community, perhaps the women who step out to defend our history --especially in the heart of the Silicon Valley boom--can do the same.

Thank you.

Written by her daughters, Ann Haviland, Mary K. Weed and Patti Weed
and her son John Weed