News

From humble beginnings as a poor, barefoot, cotton-picking Georgia farm boy, Robert Shipp rose to become an engineering specialist who helped build nuclear power plants around the world—and a beloved family man.Indeed, when the Fukushima plant in Japan he worked on was hit by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011, his whole being focused on one thing only—his granddaughter, Jessica Brewka.She worked in Japan as the liaison with Gilroy’s sister city; for several days, no one knew if she was dead or alive.“He wanted her to come home, he said she should come home,” recalled his wife, Eileen Shipp, of Gilroy.The young Morgan Hill woman, a former Garlic Festival Queen, stayed safe and unharmed in the small northern Japan town of Takko-Machi, where she worked for the rest of her yearlong assignment.Shipp had faith the power plant would not fail. Indeed, it only went out of service when seawalls were breached by the tsunami wave, according to Eileen Shipp, a retired Santa Clara Valley Water District project coordinator.After retiring from a career as a metallurgical engineer, Shipp kept his hand in consulting, helping to restore an antique airplane, building a water system for a mushroom farm and doing metal failure analysis.An inventor, avid gardener and inveterate tinkerer, Shipp was building a souped-up golf cart to ride with his grandson in the Boulder Creek July 4 parade. He collapsed and died of a heart attack May 25 while planting tomatoes with grandson Anthony Heinz, 20, of North Fork, California. Shipp was 79.Family members, including the second family that came when he and Eileen married, each for the second time, said he was the most decent of men, supportive, positive and genuinely caring; a brilliant engineer and happy adventurer who loved life and had a great sense of humor.He would greet the day by walking out his front door every morning singing, “Good morning America, how are you” from the song, “City of New Orleans.”Shipp spent years showing his children the world and reveling in watching grandchildren grow up, his family said.“He was a natural grandpa,” said daughter Linda Brewka of Morgan Hill.Her daughters, Jessica and Julia, she said, were his first grandchildren and were “Papa’s girls.”When they dressed up for children’s theater “Bob would sit in the family room and be entertained for hours,” she said.That she was a stepdaughter never entered anyone’s mind, he was just “Papa” to everyone, she said.Son John Shipp of Boulder Creek, from his first marriage, said, “He did an amazing job of opening the world for me.” He described numerous family side trips to foreign lands while his father worked for General Electric building nuclear plants overseas.Robert Shipp also is survived by children Melanie Richards, John Heinz and grandchildren Grace, Skyler and Anthony.The family returned from Europe to settle in the Almaden area of San Jose. Shipp took an engineering job with Newtech in South San Jose, was divorced from his first wife, then met and married Eileen in 1983 in a backyard ceremony.She was attracted to Shipp, she said, because he was “A good guy and a nice man, plus he was funny.” They moved to Gilroy in 1996 after he retired.After moving to their new, rural home, Shipp tended a garden with grapes and fruit trees, devised gadgets, kept the swimming pool clean and helped his neighbors,“He was always building or designing,” Eileen Shipp said. “He never really threw anything away. If I had a mixer that went out, he would take it [to his workshop] and end up using it for something.”He worked so much on cars and repairing things with welds, he became the go-to fix-it man for the neighborhood, she said.“He was that way from the day we met, an innovator and willing to be an entrepreneur, that always fascinated him,” said Bud Van Cott of Lincoln, California.They’d been friends since their days as engineering students after Van Cott left the Army and Shipp left the Navy, which he had joined at 17 at the end of the Korean War.While in the service, Shipp was an airplane mechanic, for a time at Moffett Field in Mountain View. Later the friends worked together at Newtech.John Shipp says his dad’s time in the military was the turning point in his life.He used the GI bill to get his engineering degree, which transformed the Georgia farm boy into a world-class metals engineer, according to his family.“It was a blessing that he joined the Navy,” his son said.“Just think of it,” said his son, John, who inherited his dad’s creative and inventive abilities and works with poppy jasper rock and others for a jewelry booth each year at the Gilroy Garlic Festival. “For a poor, cotton-picking Georgia farm boy he did an amazing job. His cousins are still in the same little town [Hiram, Georgia]. He opened up the world for me; we went to India, South Africa and Australia, Nepal, Thailand and Malaysia.“He really had a sense of adventure; he was the right dad for me, I’ll tell you,” he said.Even after his death, Eileen Shipp marveled at his creative capacities and the breath of his interests and curiosity.“He was always making things. Like with all our tomatoes, he was making something that would take off the peels and he was coming up with a machine to squeezed out the seeds,” she recalled.Shipp was cremated. A life celebration will be held in July.In the meantime, Eileen Shipp said, he’s in the garden in a birdbath specially designed to keep ashes.“What could be more appropriate?” she asked. “I don’t think he’d want to be in the house overlooking his garden. And he loved birds, so he is out there.“I opened it up and put a little tiny bottle of Crown Royal in there,” she said, “and some vodka for when I join him.”

We were horrified to learn recently that the Republican Convention in Cleveland next month will be a gun-free zone, violating the Second Amendment and endangering thousands of delegates to the threat of Radical Islamic Terrorists or Democrats.The party of Guns and God is mysteriously turning its back on one of its biggest planks: speak loudly and carry a big assault rifle.We are particularly surprised that the presumptive nominee would lay down while the Obama-run FBI forbid firearms during the nominating process. Donald J. Trump made his strongest pro-gun statement after the murder of 49 Orlando night clubgoers.“If some of those wonderful people had guns strapped right here—right to their waist or right to their ankle—and one of the people in that room happened to have it and goes ‘boom, boom,’ you know that would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight, folks,” Trump told supporters a rally in Texas.We say, yes, Donald, yes. Americans need to be armed everywhere they go at all times, preferably each with her or his own AR-15 or comparable military assault weapon. There are already more guns in this country than people, but we so rarely see them out and when we do, it’s usually in the hands of crazy people or law enforcement, who could at any time turn against the country and enforce communism on the great unarmed masses.The only way to stop gun violence is with more guns—this we have realized after an onslaught of pro-gun messages following the most recent of 1,000 mass murders over the past four years since 20 children and six adults were shot to death in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.Think of how different the world would be had those children been trained and armed. More guns. We need more guns. After all, guns don’t kill people. Terrorists kill them with box cutters, bombs or guns. But if we were all armed, they would cower. They would be defeated. We would be safe.We are even more surprised that the Cleveland convention will be a gun-free zone, and as such, a fun free zone. Back in January, Mr. Trump made a strong statement about such zones in a Burlington, Vermont, campaign stop.“I will get rid of gun-free zones on schools, and—you have to—and on military bases,” he said. “My first day, it gets signed, okay? My first day. There’s no more gun-free zones.”Uhh. Mr. Trump, sir, why are you going to be nominated in a gun-free zone? Are you breaking an election promise even before the election?Stop the madness, please.The Senate took aim and hit the target this week, murdering Democrat proposals to put restrictions on weapons. They shot down all four proposals, to limit assault weapons sales, to require stronger background checks and to prevent terrorism suspects who aren’t allowed to fly on planes from buying guns.It’s a slippery slope. The minute you stop suspected terrorists from buying guns, you might encourage them to use bombs instead. Give them their guns, and give us guns, too. There are more of us, right?Back to the Republican Convention, which should be the best political entertainment since Chicago in 1968: We say let the people bring their weapons and bear them proudly. Can you imagine if a terrorist infiltrated the hall and pulled out a gun and 30,000 people pulled out their own weapons and fired away? That would send a message all over the world. Don’t mess with us. We are armed and willing to shoot first.

Gilroy’s urban growth boundary (UGB) initiative has more than the required number of signatures needed to qualify for the November ballot.

Gilroy Library is running a reading program that will make kids feel like they are on a gameshow.

Nathan Bonsell is living the dream of every young baseball player: To stay up late playing ball and no one—not parents, not school and not work—telling him he can’t.

Ariane Lussier thought about taking up field hockey when she entered Gilroy High School until a little advice from her older sister Alexia put her on a different path.

Looking for love? Hitting the poker tables in Vegas this summer and want some extra luck? A shop in downtown Gilroy has got you covered.S.M. Mexican Imports, a botánica shop at 46 Martin Street, a few doors down from O.D. Café, carries powders, scented oils, candles, amulets, lotions, and even shampoo designed to do everything from bring good luck to protect you from bad spirits. But before you go out and buy the candle and powder that promises virility and great wealth—please note—there is a correct method to follow before you get the intended results.“It’s not just about lighting a candle, but how you light it,” says proprietor Carlos Mascoro, who moved the store from another building on Monterey Road to its current location in February. His first botánica in San Jose’s Berryessa neighborhood has been open for 16 years. “You need to prepare the oil—there is a whole process.”Some regular customers are given shopping lists by healers or spiritual teachers with directions to follow.Traditionally a place to buy medicinal plants and herbs, botánicas have exploded in popularity in the last 10 years and can now be found anywhere with a significant Latino community.“Some of my customers have been coming back for over 10 years,” Mascoro says, as we take a stroll through the shop, the front graced by a row of statues of Roman Catholic saints, the walls decorated with crucifixes.In indigenous parts of Central America, the mix of long-held beliefs with Roman Catholic traditions and iconography are a part of everyday worship.Mascoro points out an ominous, skeletal figure holding a scythe in one hand: Santa Muerte or “Holy Death,” a prominent female folk saint in Mexico who personifies death and, according to Wikipedia, is associated with healing, protection and safe delivery to the afterlife.While the worship of Santa Muerte is not necessarily condoned by the Roman Catholic Church, the melding of Catholic traditions and figures with pre-Columbian beliefs have persisted and flourished since the days of Conquest.Mascoro carries an assortment of the “Holy Death” statues in a variety of sizes and colors.“Red is for love, rainbow is money and purple is for good health,” he explains.Many of the products follow similar color lines or are grouped together to produce a particular effect, so if it’s riches you are seeking, you can buy the soap, lotion, perfume and candles, which come with or without special powders already included.The shop also carries amulets, incense, bracelets and packets of dried herbs. One, “Witchcraft Breaker,” is labeled as an aromatic herb bath with instructions to “stay in tub about 7 minutes while bathing & reflect on desires.”Burning a candle in the shape of a black hen is supposed to remove bad luck. A powder sachet illustrated with a woman holding down a bare-chested man by the back of his neck promises the bearer dominion over their man. There are also dried rolls of tobacco and sage used to cleanse homes of bad spirits.A pair of miniature hand-woven dolls in rainbow threads—boy and girl—called “fetiches” come with directions on how to use them to inspire love in another person. Interestingly, in France during the WWI, as German warplanes dropped bombs overhead, the residents of Paris were reported in an international newspaper at the time to have taken up wearing miniature fetish dolls around their necks for protection from the evils of war. The dolls, named Nenette and Rintintin, represented two Parisienne children who, the story went, were found wandering on the side of the road alone when a villager came upon them and invited them inside her house. The children were discomfited inside and begged the woman to go outside, as the house reminded them of their home where their mother had been killed by “bad soldiers.” They had not gone 20 feet, when a German shell fell from the sky and destroyed the house.Card reading is also available at the shop—currently in Spanish only.Picking up a bar of soap that reads: Quita or “sales” on the label, Mascoro smiles. “This is my favorite,” he said. 

I had just passed the 16-mile marker in the Utah Valley Marathon on June 11, and the reality of setting a personal-record (PR) was slowly going by the wayside. The 3-hour, 25-minute pace runner faded out of view, and with that so did my main pre-race goal of producing an all-time best in the marathon.

Two new lawsuits were filed Wednesday against the Gilroy Unified School District for its handling of a teacher who was allegedly “sexting” with students. Los Angeles lawyer Gloria Allred announced the suits Wednesday during a late afternoon press conference—in time for the nightly news—outside the GUSD office on Arroyo Circle.