Community

The annual Freedom Fest Run is set to return July 4 with a couple of twists.

GILROY—As day two of the Northern California Golf Association South Bay Zone Championship came to a close, the team representing Gilroy Golf and Country Club headed back to their vehicles feeling defeated.

GILROY—Caryl Simpson, the dynamo Gilroy businesswoman who designed t-shirts while living in a log cabin, accidentally created a gourmet food company that went global and was the guts and gumption behind the city’s iconic downtown garlic mural, died May 29 after a four-month battle with cancer. She was 67.“Everything has kind of dimmed. She brought amazing color to the world for a lot of people,” said her daughter, Heather Simpson-Bluhm of Hollister.“We’ve lost a person who gave the world an amazing gift of food and an appreciation for good food and art and gardening.”Simpson also is survived by a son, Ted, of San Jose, and his wife, Janda, and Heather’s husband, Greg, and their daughter, Hannah Caryl.Born in Columbus, Georgia on June 21, 1947, Caryl Lee Simpson was what her daughter described as an Army brat who moved about with her family in the United States and abroad, including Germany and Asia.The family settled long enough in Monterey County near Ft. Ord for Simpson to attend junior and senior high schools in there before going off to college in San Jose and San Francisco.In the 1970s, Simpson, a single mother of two, bought a piece of property off Hecker Pass Highway in Gilroy and built a log cabin with a garage studio for a fledgling t-shirt screening business that supplied garments to high school sports programs, banks and others.Soon, she was in such demand as a graphic artist and designer that she moved her business into the city as a full-fledged advertising agency with graphic design and screen-printing services, according to her daughter.Married and divorced twice, Simpson devoted herself to her children and her businesses, which ultimately included the popular Garlic Festival Store and Gallery, where she sold gourmet foods and cooking equipment and insisted on filling an entire wall with art for sale, much of it by local artists.“She was a single mom for much of our lives,” said her daughter. “She worked hard to raise us and make sure we did all our school work and also were exposed to things outside Gilroy, to travel and the big city.“’Can’t’ wasn’t an option for her, it didn’t matter that she was a woman, it didn’t matter than she was a single mom; it was like, ‘I can do whatever I want to do’, and that is what she always taught us.”When Gilroy decided to launch its homage to garlic, Simpson signed on and her booth became a popular mainstay of the Gilroy Garlic festival.Known for her quick wit and keenly honed sense of what is right, she even locked horns with festival organizers early on when she was sued for using the name “Garlic Festival.” Simpson prevailed.Her enthusiasm for promoting Gilroy through garlic became so infectious that downtown merchants and others rallied behind her idea to create a huge mural to celebrate the history of garlic in Gilroy. After a local artist designed the mural, Simpson imported muralists from Italy to render the work on a wall at the corner of Fifth Street and Monterey Road. Last year, twenty years after the original work was painted, she brought the same muralist back to give it a fresh coat.“She called it ‘Gilroy’s postcard to the world,’” her daughter said, “she was always all about promoting Gilroy for the festival and the garlic.”A artist, creative cook and Renaissance women who was always eager to explore, Simpson also founded Garlic Festival Foods, a 30-year-old firm that sells gourmet cooking items all over the world, including a cookbook she authored and published when she could not find a publisher. It has sold in the thousands.The gourmet food line was an accident, her daughter said.It started when Simpson concocted a huge batch of seasoning for a friend to take to a Bay Area zucchini festival in the 1980s. It was a big hit.That recipe became her signature gourmet condiment, Garli Garni, and when Simpson put it on the market it took off, leading to a line of foods and seasonings sold worldwide.Billed as ‘The flavors that made Gilroy famous,” the line includes seasonings, sauces, mustards, garlic, salsas, olives and more.Simpson also was among California’s first certified olive oil tasters and served for years on the state’s olive oil board.Along with way, she established and ran Café Aromas just south of Gilroy, where she also ultimately moved into a spacious home filled with a collection of eclectic, curious and always joyful art, and a beautiful garden where she enjoyed hosting parties for friends.Simpson loved beauty and friendship and, when she died, her family asked that, in lieu of flowers, people honor and remember her by planting a tree, smiling at a stranger or performing a random act of kindness. A memorial “party” will be held in July to celebrate Simpson’s life.Simpson was diagnosed in January and by April, after chemo treatments failed to halt the disease, she was told she was terminal.“We were shocked,” her daughter said. “We were kind of lead to believe she was going to beat it, that was our attitude all along.”

SAN MARTIN—The 71st U.S. Women’s Open is more than a year away, but the United States Golf Association released special ticket packages for the tournament Tuesday.

GILROY—As Bert Mar walked the grounds at South Valley Middle School, he was met with big smiles and warm greetings at every turn. Cars that whizzed by the school turned around when they saw him, the drivers eager to say hello. Mar recognized each instantly and answered them with a bright smile, a wave and a unique nickname he’d undoubtedly given them several years ago. He’s a familiar face in Gilroy—and for good reason.

GILROY—Under Construction outlasted Old City Hall 25-15 Friday to leave both clubs at 5-3 in the Men’s EE League standings at Las Animas Veterans Park.

For the second straight year, Tiffany Verbica won the Henry W. Coe 10K Fun Run and was the No. 1 overall female runner. Verbica is the wife of the great grandson of Henry W. Coe, Peter Coe Verbica, who said his wife’s victory was “especially meaningful for the family”. The course, which begins at the Hunting Hollow trail head, is an out-and-back near the Gilroy Hot Springs. The win is the latest in a long list of victories for Tiffany. She finished as the No. 1 women in her age group of 30 to 39 and No. 2 overall for the women at the 2015 Nisene Marks Half Marathon in Soquel on June 6 in a time of 1:46:30.

GILROY—A “bustling” life was cut short on May 9, when the car Natalia Salcido, a Christopher High School sophomore, was riding in struck a tree. She was killed on impact, exactly one week before she was to celebrate her 16th birthday.

GILROY—Garlic City Computer stormed to a 7-0-1 record in the Men’s DD Softball League June 16 by upending the Borrachos 16-5 at Las Animas Veterans Park.

GILROY—Classes that teach high schoolers the agricultural arts and sciences just received a big boost in Gilroy, where farming and ranching dominated life for more than a century before subdivisions and industrial development moved in.Spurred by a resurrected parent booster club, Gilroy Unified School District trustees have approved renovation of a sprawling but decaying greenhouse at Gilroy High School where in better times members of the school’s Future Farmers of America chapter grew a sea of red poinsettias as their annual holiday fundraiser.“I’m very happy to see it grow, said Hannah Komin, 16, of the greenhouse plans and renewed emphasis on programs that cater to the many students who dream of careers in ag-related industries.She is one of about 170 members of Gilroy High’s booming Future Farmers of America chapter and also one of its officers. FFA is a nationwide organization.“I wish I would be around to see it,” said FFA member Dallas Lafond, 17, a Texas transplant who was graduated from GHS yesterday, June 11.The resurrection of a greenhouse that has been a dilapidated target of vandals, graffiti artists, ground squirrels and the elements for more than four years is the story of parents with a cause, a supportive school board, help from local ag companies and the Gilroy Rotary.“They were a huge help,” said FFA member and graduating senior, Ashley Bonesio, 17.Kurt Ashley, president of Gilroy High’s FFA Booster Club, said that by the time his daughter entered GHS four years ago the ag program “was dying for lack of support” and the boosters club had vanished.Regular fair goers with their family at the annual Santa Clara County Fair, Ashley and his wife noticed other high schools had better ag programs and larger and better equipped FFAs.They sought out other parents and together in 2013 kick-started the boosters club that, with a donation of $500 from Mayor Gage, applied for and secured nonprofit status and set its sights on supporting a program the school district no longer can afford to fund as it has in the past.“We’re not just doing the greenhouse,” Ashley said. “That’s just one piece of the project. Our goal is to support the entire FFA program, including the school farm out on Kern Avenue.”FFA member and chapter officer Kimberly Potman, 16, gives all the credit for the rebirth of interest in farm and ranching subjects for the benefit of students to the involvement of parents.“It was the boosters, they pretty much fueled everything,” she said.Financial help also has come from Christopher Ranch and Uesugi Farms, among others, Ashley said, enough so that the boosters’ club will contribute $10,000 of the nearly $50,000 cost of renovating the greenhouse with new heating, cooling and electrical systems, new roof and siding materials and other upgrades to be ready for classes in August as long as the new ag teaching staff is in place by then.In addition to horticulture and floral design, new course options for students interested in agricultural sciences in 2015-16 will include Ag Chemistry, Ag Communication and Leadership, Soil Chemistry and Biotechnology.For more information on the FFA club and boosters, go to facebook.com/gilroyffaboosters.