THE VALLEY OF HEART’S DELIGHT

A few months ago, Sandy Clint and I were rummaging through antique stores in Gilroy searching for “goodies” when I came across a faded print of “The Valley of Heart’s Delight” signed by it’s creator Ralph Rambo. The tattered old piece depicted the Santa Clara Valley at the turn of the last century with it’s small villages, farms and orchards years before the area was re-branded “Silicon Valley”. 

I paused for a moment to allow the memories to flood back about working briefly with Ralph at Muirson Label Company in San Jose in 1965 where I was just beginning my graphic arts career and he was wrapping up his nearly fifty year career as Art Director designing labels for the South Bays once abundant agricultural and canning industry. In addition to designing hundreds of classic labels, Ralph was also a prolific writer and illustrator of 14 self published books about life in the Santa Clara Valley. His highly detailed books recounted his experiences and memories of growing up during the pioneer days in the area. Ralph merged history and humor with comical line illustrations and hand lettering. The old Valley of Hearts Delight print that I stumbled across hidden in the corner of an antique store in Gilroy reflected a more sedate time in the South Bay with it’s small towns like Coyote, Los Gatos and Morgan Hill, orchards and family farms and the growing village of San Jose decades before IBM, Hewlett Packard, crushing traffic, high rise million dollar condos, Google buses, social media and Tesla quotas.

Ralph Rambo was a self-proclaimed “nostalgician”, with the skill to intermingle local history in the context of current day events. As our congregation moves ahead into the next phases of the life of the of our church we too have the opportunity to celebrate our past accomplishments with a bit of nostalgia and a dash of humor, and look forward with anticipation to the challenge and joy of perpetuating the legacy of the United Church of Hayward. -Bill Ralph