Bill Lynch: On Vintage House and ‘Saint Jerry’

Honoring 35 years of the Jerry Casson Multipurpose Center for Seniors.|

Vintage House Senior Center is celebrating its 35th anniversary on Nov. 17. The center’s full official name is “The Jerry Casson Multipurpose Center for Seniors,” so named in honor of the person most responsible for its existence.

Because my late father, Robert Lynch, was one of the Vintage House project leaders, I was asked to offer a few comments on how Vintage House came to be, as part of a special video prepared for the anniversary.

While considering what I’d like to say, I kept going back to the image of Jerry Casson sitting at our family dining room table for every Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve dinner for as far back in my childhood as I can remember.

I recall two other things about those evenings. She always arrived late because she was out all day and into the evening personally delivering Christmas food baskets to less fortunate local residents. The second thing was that she always managed to bring a cake that she freshly baked that day in between everything else she did.

And then, as we all sat around the table enjoying the meal followed by her delicious cake, we’d look over and she would have nodded off in her chair, exhausted from what was probably a day that began hours before sunrise in our Valley of the Moon.

Vintage House truly is a legacy of all the kind and generous deeds that Jerry Casson performed during her life here. I hope there will always be someone who, when its next milestone anniversary rolls around, can remind Sonomans who is responsible for its existence.

Of course, Jerry didn’t do it alone. She has a very dedicated group of associates, including my father, Rich Peterson and Bob Stone, to lead the fund-drive and building project that actually led to its opening in 1989.

It was through my dad’s close friendship with Jerry that I came to appreciate how much she did for our community.

She was a 1930 graduate of Sonoma Valley High School, and then earned a degree in social work from U.C. Berkeley, before returning to Sonoma County to work for the social service department. She retired from that job in 1975 after 40 years.

But her retirement was in name only, she spent the next two decades serving our community of Sonoma Valley in so many ways that it would take several pages of this newspaper to recount. She, along with Adele Harrison, Kay Buttrum, Ellen Cook and others started the Christmas Basket Project in the 1950s. Then she was a leader in the establishment of Friends in Sonoma Helping (FISH) in 1971. She was also a founder and board member for Spay of Sonoma, Pets Lifeline and Pet Population Control, and many other causes.

But, the better part of her life her was always focused on helping others quietly, directly and personally. The old station wagon she piloted was always filled with foodstuffs for people in need, or with gifts and decorations for some dinner or other event in which she was involved.

Another old family friend, Henri Maysonnave, who often sat next to Jerry at our holiday meals, once said of her, “Lourdes has its Bernadette. Sonoma Valley has its Saint Jerry.”

My Dad, and his close friends Rich Peterson and Bob Stone, and others who worked with them on Vintage House agreed on one central point: Jerry never thought about herself. She was always doing something for others.

And that’s why they and many other Sonomans dedicated themselves to making sure that Vintage House would become a living monument to Jerry.

Thirty-five years ago they laid down a path, which Jerry trod her entire life, to helping and protecting others – a path that can be followed by us, her friends and fellow Sonomans, for generations to come.

‘A Vintage Evening’ toasts the 35th anniversary of Vintage House Saturday, Nov. 17 at the Barn at Tyge William Cellars.

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