Decaversaries

Jym's Decaversaries

A celebration that continues every 10 years

Well, really, it's very common, especially among men, to have a bigger than usual birthday party every 10 years, at least after the first couple decades. Here is a brief history of Jym's decaversaries.

0 June 10, 1939. James Edwin Clendenin born in Paris [the real Paris!], TN, while his U.S. Navy father was off the coast of China serving in what was then called the Pacific Squadron. First nickname: Jimmy.

10 June, 1949. Jimmy's family living in Newport, RI. Jimmy is just a kid.

20 June, 1959. End of 2nd year at University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Jimmy, now Jim, hadn't yet thought about decaversaries.

30 June, 1969. Now we're getting serious. After marrying Judy (Judith Elizabeth Poole) in December, 1962, daughter Anne Elizabeth was born in March, 1969. Jim was in graduate school (physics) at Columbia University in the City of New York. No time or money to celebrate big.

40 June, 1979. After 3 years as a Research Associate in the Physics Department of Yale University (but collaborating on an experiment at SLAC and living in Menlo Park), Jim begins working for SLAC. Time for a party! The Clendenins had recently bought their first house, on Chester Street in the Willows section of Menlo Park. The party was held in the back yard, about a dozen friends, colleagues, neighbors, and relatives celebrating. Judy's brother, Mike, who had recently moved to California, was the bar tender. The few pictures taken are HERE. Note Jim's nice beard (in lower right photo Jim is standing between sister Helen on his right and wife Judy on his left), started in grad school.

50 June, 1989. The middle years for sure. The morning of the party Jim surprised everyone by having his beard shaved off. The party was held at the Clendenins' second (and present) house at on Santa Cruz Avenue in Menlo Park, about 1.5 miles from Jim's office at SLAC. It began with a cocktail party out front with live classical guitar and flute music in background. It then moved through the house to the back yard for a catered sit-down dinner. This was followed by dancing in the living room (emptied of furniture) to live music until the wee hours of the night. Now there were about 30 celebrating. During the past decade Jim had taken up running (with the Angell Field Ancients), backpacking (with a group of SLACers), and wine tasting. All of these interests were well represented at the party. In addition, Jim's cousin from Fresno, Don Tayloe, joined sister Helen in the relative contingent. Pictures available HERE.

60 June, 1999. The celebration keeps getting better. Now a local French restaurant, Nina's Cafe, is commandeered for a party of about 50 that in addition to many friends and SLAC colleagues, and relatives, included Anne's future husband, George Coughlin, and his parents from Alamo, George and Becky. The party started as usual with a cocktail hour with classical guitar (hard to hear with that crowd all talking), then finally everyone settled down at tables. The senior Coughlins and cousin Don honored Jym at the head table. The number of pictures sky rocketed. Click HERE to see some of them. Note that sometime in the past decade Jim became Jym.

70 June, 2009. Getting long on the tooth, Jym retired in 2008. But he still regularly runs (in fact did a pretty good half-marathon in 2007, time 1:53:49) with the Angell Field Ancients, swims at Stanford, and now bikes in the Santa Cruz Mountains--something for every day to keep body and (hopefully) mind sound. The celebration this time returned to the Clendenin house, which has just been completely rebuilt and re-addressed to Windsor Drive.

The party this year was on Saturday, June 6th. It started with cocktail hour on the front patio in the garden created in 2005-06 (SEE), then moved into the house and back deck: 2 tables inside, 2 outside, accomodating 30 of us in all. The dinner was catered by Butler for Hire (www.butlerforhire.com ). They did a great job. Check out the Dinner Menu . The wine came from the small Russian River Valley winery, Inspiration Vineyards (www.inspirationvineyards.com) operated by friends Jon and Barbara Phillips, who were with us at the party.

Click HERE to see pictures of the party taken by Judy, Lynn and Rita.

Darcy took 92 really beautiful photos of the party and the house. These she had bound into a coffee-table book for Jym that is truly impressive. Be sure to see it next time you're at the house. There are good shots of everyone at the party, plus there are great shots of the garden, the house interior, Marti next to her painting, the Butler for Hire staff, the food table, etc.

80 June, 2019. To party or not to party??? Decided to party: on a warm evening in June (to be exact Sunday, June 23, 2019) 44 of us gathered on the outdoor deck of Kurt Ungar's Trellis Restaurant for an evening of good wine, good food, fantastic cake (cake from Mademoiselle Colette's in Menlo Park), socializing, and of course celebrating.