Summer is the season for movies, so it’s great to see some classic San Jose theaters get their due in the latest sets of enamel pins from the Preservation Action Council.
This collection of eight pins includes historic gems like the Century 21 dome, the Garden Theatre in Willow Glen, the Towne on The Alameda and the Mexico on East Santa Clara Street. Two of them — the California and the Jose — are still used as live performance spaces.
PACSJ Executive Director Ben Leech, who designs the pins, said this is the first set that has included parts of the historic building facades in addition to the signs, so you get a sense of the different architectural styles of each era.
Like the earlier pins, all the signs represented are still intact and either at or near their original locations, so you can still see them “in the wild.” (The Century 21-22-23 sign was moved from Winchester Boulevard closer to the Century 21 dome). They can be purchased in pin form for $15 each or $45 for a set of four at www.preservation.org, and they also should be available at Recycle Bookstore while supplies last.
CHEERS TO A CAR COUPLE: Recently, Mike Hennessy has been fielding calls about San Jose’s Rose, White and Blue parade, the July 4 event that he has helped manage the past few years. He’s had to let people know he doesn’t have a management role this year — but he and his wife, Susan Hennessy, are riding in the parade as this year’s Lifetime Community Contributor honorees.
On top of running an automotive repair and restoration shop in Santa Clara, the couple has had their hands in just about every big event in San Jose that involves moving vehicles — organizing the annual Hot San Jose Nights car and air show and playing key roles in San Jose’s annual Veterans Day and Memorial Day celebrations. They can often be found interviewing people on the route of the Rose, White and Blue parade, but someone else will have to take up those duties this time.
“I am very honored to be in it,” Mike Hennessy said, adding that they’ll be riding in Big Red, a 1958 Chevy truck they just finished restoring. You can get more information on the parade at www.rwbsj.org.
It has been a challenging year for Hennessy, who has been battling cancer and has surgery scheduled on July 6. He was moved when his shop staff shaved their heads after he lost his hair undergoing chemo treatment and says he wants to help promote cancer awareness in anyway he can. “I look at all this being done around the Fourth of July as my new Independence Day, a new lease on life,” he said.
FOUNDATION JUST GOT WILDER: Former Valley Medical Center Foundation Executive Director Chris Wilder is still recovering from the massive stroke he suffered in March 2021, but that has not stopped him from taking on a new role on the board of the Stroke Awareness Foundation, which was announced Thursday.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, members of the foundation’s board saw the big gap in vaccinations for Latino, Asian and African American communities compared to their white counterparts. It turns out there is a disparity when it comes to strokes as well, the foundation has noted, with those ethnic communities having a higher rate of stroke and being less likely to seek early treatment.
The foundation offers stroke information on its website in six languages and has enlisted community “ambassadors” to spread the word. A push to reach the Latino community brought an additional 20,000 Spanish speakers to its website, www.strokeinfo.org. Now it’s expanding that campaign to Asian audiences, especially to Vietnamese and Mandarin speakers.
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