Stewart Wade, 103 years young, used a walker to get from the car to the stairs, but he climbed the six wooden stairs to the restored Daniels School with only a little assistance.
Now living in Hawaii with his younger wife, Wade came to Healdsburg Saturday, to revisit his youth and to be honored as the oldest living student of the historic one-room schoolhouse, which he attended from 1921 to 1929.
Wade’s memory is excellent and he is the subject of numerous articles in Healdsburg Museum & Historical Society publications (see sidebar on a typical day at Daniels School).
The Wade family lived in Venado, a wee community on Mill Creek Road. After his father died unexpectedly when Wade was a teenager, the family moved to Healdsburg. After his mother died, he managed to purchase a boarding house in Berkeley and used that income to put his brother and sister through college.
On Saturday, he was surrounded by family, friends and fans. Once he found a comfortable seat inside the restored schoolhouse, he posed for photos and visited with everyone who cared to bend a bit to hear his quiet voice.
Wade is also known for supplying a sense of living history to Healdsburg. “My family was friends with the Hills,” he said Saturday. “They owned a hotel downtown where Julius Alexander lived.”
Alexander was a descendant of Cyrus Alexander, for whom the valley is named. Wade said he was a colorful character, who wore a flowing black bow tie and wrote poetry.
Alexander also had an idea to commemorate the great redwood forests that once dominated the area. He gave Wade and his brother 10 cents each to procure and deliver 30 redwood saplings. Some of those tiny trees, planted in 1927, survive today as massive redwoods in Plaza Park. “The entrance to Healdsburg was once lined with redwoods,” said Wade.
A highlight of Wade’s trip down memory lane was a conversation with Holly Hoods, curator of the Healdsburg Museum. When the Daniels School closed for good, Wade retrieved the 46-star flag that flew outside on a rough-hewn flagpole or was nailed to the wall inside during bad weather. He donated the flag to the museum and Hoods brought it back to the school so Wade could see it and reminisce.
The afternoon ended with a festive lunch at the nearby Pitkin home, where Wade received a framed proclamation from the State of California, arranged by another Healdsburg native, State Senator Mike McGuire.
The Venado Historical Society formed in the 1990s to preserve the old school. Floramay Cootes Caletti, one of the founders, has died and her son, Steve Caletti, carries on the tradition. He helped organize Wade’s visit.
