Milton Dixon Hare at the Harvard Radio Research Lab, the move to Stanford in Fred Terman's orbit, the family that worked with Ellen G. White — and the widowed grandmother who landed among the concrete lions of Los Gatos
The paternal line runs through the founding circuitry of Silicon Valley — the Radio Research Lab, Terman's Stanford — and through the founding generation of the Adventist church; and when the grandfather's death fractured the household, the line scattered to an SDA minister's house with a room-sized train set, and to a storied Los Gatos estate guarded by eight-foot cats.
The trail exists so that people who were there can reconstruct their own memories, recognize what they helped incubate, and add to or correct the record — or forward the few pages that belong to someone they know.
My father, Milton W. Hare, was born in Massachusetts in December 1944. My grandfather, Milton Dixon Hare, was stationed at the Harvard Radio Research Lab during the war, working in the immediate orbit of Fred Terman. The family briefly lived in Lincoln, Nebraska, before my grandfather followed Terman to Stanford, moving the family into faculty housing in Palo Alto.
The Hare family's ties to the Seventh-day Adventist Church go straight to the foundation: Margaret Hare, a family member, actually worked directly with Ellen G. White, the pioneering co-founder of the Adventist movement.
When my grandfather died, the shockwave fractured the household. My father went to college young, around seventeen, and he and my Aunt Linda went to live with my great-uncle Harold Hare and his wife, Marjorie. Uncle Harold was an SDA minister. We remained incredibly close to their family — my cousins Dodi, Anne, Helen, and their brother — and my defining childhood memory of their house was a massive, room-sized miniature electric model train set complete with towns, rivers, and mountains. Aunt Marjorie eventually lived to be 104; my cousin Dodi used to arrange her birthday dinners up near Pacific Union College in St. Helena.
My grandmother, Joy Avalon Stansberry, was adrift after the death. She relocated to a small house situated on The Cats — a sprawling, historic 34-acre estate in Los Gatos in Poets Canyon, famous for the two massive, eight-foot cast-concrete felines, Leo and Leona, guarding its entrance. Decades later, that estate was subdivided into luxury homes, one of which was purchased by my close friend Doug Merritt during his SAP or Cisco days.
Joy eventually left Los Gatos for Willows to join my great-grandmother Stansberry. Together, the two women owned and operated a 25-room motor motel right off Route 99 before settling into a tract house.
Terman's lab to Stanford faculty housing; Ellen White's co-worker in the family tree; a minister's house with a train-set kingdom; a widow among the concrete lions; two women running a motor court on Route 99. The paternal formation, in five rooms.
Episodes are building blocks. The same material appears in more than one where it belongs in more than one, and every claim traces back to a primary source.
Radar, chaff, and the Stanford lab at the center of Silicon Valley
Open →In the graphSelma, 1965 — and the promise
Open →In the graphThe father of Silicon Valley — and Hare's grandfather's mentor
Open →In the graphThe pioneering SDA co-founder; Margaret Hare of the family tree worked at her side, which puts this record's faith arc at the foundation
Open →In the graphThe family's node at the Adventist foundation
Open →In the graphThe SDA minister and the aunt who lived to 104; the house where Milton and Linda landed, with towns, rivers and mountains in miniature
Open →In the graphHare's grandmother: widowed to The Cats estate in Los Gatos, then to Willows, running a 25-room motor court with her own mother
Open →In the graphThe historic 34-acre Los Gatos estate in Poets Canyon, Leo and Leona at the gate; subdivided decades later into the luxury homes where a best friend landed
Open →In the graphMet at the PC Forum lunch table
Open →In the graphMilton's sister; raised alongside him at Uncle Harold's; married Meredith Hendricks; mother of Laine Joy and Misty Jill
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