The Tower is Coming Down

It was March 1959 when Sandoe Hanna, a then 48-year-old Gilroy mechanical engineer and machinist, left, delivered a water tank to the Filice & Perelli Cannery on Lewis Street, where the cannery had been in business since 1907. At 20-feet in diameter and 30-feet tall, the welded steel tank would hold about 70,500 gallons of water. At the time, the tank cost $4,620, according to Hanna’s records. This week Hanna, 95, and his wife of 72 years, Mildred, 92, center, visited the tank one last time. It’s to be demolished and scraped as part of South County Housing’s plan to build 210 homes and commercial and retail space on the 12-acre site. And they met the man who’ll take it down, Bill Lynch, right, General Superintendent for Randazzo Enterprises Inc., the firm hired for the complex demolition and salvage operation.