WILLIAMS, CA (MPG) – Birthdays are a little more fun when celebrated with old friends, and the Sacramento Valley Museum once again gave local octogenarians and other seniors a reason to gather, reminisce and share a meal.
The museum held the annual birthday party in the Alumni Room on Sept. 19, where longtime friends and former classmates caught up over lunch catered by Rocco’s.
Museum Director Elijah Rodriguez said the celebration is one of many events held at the museum, located in the former Williams Union High School. The Antique Bottle Show will be held Oct. 2-3.
The the museum’s building was constructed in 1911 and served as the high school through 1956, when a new high school opened. After sitting unused for several years, local residents transformed it into a museum, which officially opened in June 1964.
That school history made the Alumni Room a fitting place for another reunion.
Jerry Maltby, 82, invited former classmate David Eagleton and Eagleton’s wife, Mickey, from Citrus Heights to join the celebration. Maltby and Eagleton were members of the Williams High School Class of 1962 and were part of the first class to attend the new junior high school.
The gathering soon turned into a trip through school history, with the former students recalling a time when classes were small enough that nearly everyone knew one another.
John Troughton Jr., 87, shared his place in that history. He attended the old high school and was part of the first senior class to graduate from the new campus. The stories ranged from football games, baseball fields and school dances to the kind of pranks that only became better stories with age. One involved students somehow getting Linda King’s Volkswagen to the top of the school stairs, a memory that still drew laughs years later.
“I actually felt kind of bad about it afterward,” Troughton said. “When she saw it, her eyes filled with tears and she started to cry.”
Preserving stories like those is part of what drew Valente Bailey of Colusa, the newest trustee on the Sacramento Valley Museum Board, to the museum.
“I got involved because history, especially California history, is something I love,” Bailey said. “There’s so much of it here, local history, that it just seemed a perfect fit.”
Bailey said she is happy to help wherever needed and spends plenty of time simply taking in the museum’s collections.
For the birthday guests, however, some of the best history was sitting right across the table.
The museum’s next major event will be the Antique Bottle Show, set for Oct. 2-3.