Keeping local history alive

<p>The Indians of Northern Mexico believe that no one truly dies until that person is no longer remembered. So, they have various rituals to keep those ancestors alive by keeping their memory alive.</p><!-- Nothing to do. The paragraph has already been output --><p>In our culture, we do pretty much the same thing, although we may not think of it as a clearly defined aspect of our religious beliefs. Flowers on grave sites, for example, keep alive the memory of the departed.</p><p>Perhaps more important in our culture, however, is the role of the historian, who can reach back and retrieve stories of personalities, deeds, ideas, and the flavor of a bygone era, to preserve as best we can the fragile memories so much in danger of being lost forever.</p><p>Last week, the Sonoma County Museum revived a program begun a dozen years ago, and then shoved into hiatus. The museum folks had a Sonoma County Business Hall of Fame induction ceremony to recognize four people whose efforts in business have had a profound and positive impact on this County.</p><p>This year's inductees are Henry Trione, whose business interests include finance and wine; Willie and Carlos Tamayo of La Tortilla Factory; and Marv Soiland of Soiland Co.</p><p>A past honoree is Petaluma's own Gene Benedetti, of Petaluma Cooperative Creamery and Clover-Stornetta fame.</p><p>The names of these people, and those who will be recognized in the future, are featured in a permanent display in the museum in the hopes that their names, and their deeds, will not be forgotten.</p><p>Closer to home, this is the time of the year our own museum recognizes those who keep the flame of local history aglow by bestowing the annual Good Egg award on a worthy recipient, and this year's honoree is indeed worthy.</p><p>Harlan Osborne, whose narratives on people and places of the past have been a central feature in this newspaper every other week, is getting some richly deserved recognition for his efforts to keep our past alive.</p><p>Interestingly enough, it is not just those who have gone before whose memories must be kept fresh and vital, but often the danger is that the memories of the historians themselves tend to fade.</p><p>Osborne's efforts in the Argus actually continue a pattern set by one of this town's most notable historians more than a half century ago, Ed Mannion. A back-shop employee of the Argus-Courier, Mannion's passion for local history led to a voluminous effort to learn and document precise facts and details of this town's history. With his wife, they produced a column in this paper throughout the middle of the last century.</p><p>Mannion's house on Keller Street was a museum in its own right, crammed front to back with artifacts, books, documents, files, and stuff, stuff, stuff. When Mannion died in the early 1990's, most of the artifacts were dispersed to destinations unknown, but the precious historical files and documents, a product of decades of research, were secured and placed in the new Petaluma History Room at the Petaluma Library. Here, the work of Mannion and other bygone historians such as Ed Fratini is available to keep their memories fresh.</p><p>It is a local oddity that for more than a century and a quarter, Petaluma had no local written history that was just about Petaluma. A few Sonoma County histories were written in the late 1800s that contained Petaluma chapters, as well as inaccuracies and unsubstantiated tidbits of folklore.</p><p>It was not until Adair Heig (aka Adair Lara of San Fran-cisco Chronicle fame) came to town in the early 1980s and decided to produce a thoroughly researched story of our early days that the picture of our past finally came alive. Ed Mannion was a principal adviser for the book.</p><p>It was a wonderful book, and its success owed a great deal to Mannion's guidance as well as Heig's hard work, dogged research and writing skills.</p><p>Both Mannion and Heig are recipients of the city's Good Egg award. Harlan Osborne is in some pretty good company.</p><p><i>(Don Bennett, a business writer and consultant, has been involved with city planning issues since the early 1970s. He serves on the Sonoma County Planning Commission. His e-mail address is dcbenn@aol.com.) </i></p>