|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Museum on Main is honoring three people with longstanding impacts on the Pleasanton community later this month.
The 2025 History Maker Awards will be presented to Hacienda visionary Joe Callahan and Make A Difference, Today & Always collaborators Jerri Long and W. Ron Sutton during the museum’s annual Wines & Valentines gala.
The fundraiser from 5-10 p.m. Jan. 31 at the Palm Event Center in the Vineyard at Rubino Estates Winery in Pleasanton features a four-course meal, live and silent auctions, wine pull, fund-a-need, music and dancing to benefit the activities of the Livermore-Amador Valley Historical Society at the museum in downtown Pleasanton.
“Our Wines & Valentines event is more than just an elegant evening — it’s a celebration of the incredible individuals who have shaped our community. We’re excited to honor Joe Callahan, Ron Sutton and Jerri Long this year and invite everyone to join us for an unforgettable night that supports the Museum on Main’s programs,” Tony Cruz, the museum’s first-year executive director, told me earlier this week.
January is a busy month for the museum, which is opening its newest exhibit (“Imagination Expressed 2025” in partnership with the Pleasanton Art League) and is about to unveil the full lineup for this year’s Ed Kinney Speaker Series. A lot of positive energy headed into the gala.
Part of the momentum-building for Wines & Valentines included highlighting this year’s History Makers in an email to museum members and an extended press release for folks like me.
You certainly can’t tell the history of Pleasanton in the last 50 years without a chapter on Callahan.
In the late 1970s, Callahan partnered with Prudential Insurance Co. to purchase and develop land in North Pleasanton into Hacienda Business Park — a move that not only changed the city’s course in terms of corporate and commercial growth, but improved transportation, flood mitigation and housing conditions in that area in the years and decades that followed.
Among his efforts behind the scenes in the community, Callahan supported a number of projects including an important one for the museum itself, paying for a full-time carpenter for a year to help transform the former police station into the Museum on Main.
A fascinating article in our archives by Bob Thomas on Sept. 22, 2000 provides an intriguing checkpoint in hindsight into “The Hacienda that Joe built”.
Of course, if you look through our web archives, you’ll find a slew of articles mentioning Sutton and Long – plus a few penned by the latter.
Sutton, who owns stopwatch and pedometer manufacturer ACCUSPLIT, and Long, the retired public information officer for the Pleasanton Unified School District (and occasional freelancer for the Weekly), have worked together on many popular and impactful community projects.
Those efforts include the likes of the Make A Difference for Pleasanton Festival, the Fourth of July Celebration and the Ed Kinney Community Patriot Awards — which all now fall under the umbrella of the nonprofit Make A Difference, Today & Always.
Sutton also helped create the Walk ‘n’ Talk in Pleasanton outings and the Tri-Valley Turkey Burn benefiting the Rotary Club of Pleasanton North.
To see Callahan, Long and Sutton receive their History Maker Awards, purchase a seat for the Wines & Valentines gala — tickets tend to sell out quickly for this fundraiser that’s so vital to the museum.
The Museum on Main is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays at 603 Main St. in downtown Pleasanton. To learn more, visit museumonmain.org.
Editor’s note: Jeremy Walsh is the editorial director for the Embarcadero Media Foundation’s East Bay Division. His “What a Week” column is a recurring feature in the Pleasanton Weekly, Livermore Vine and DanvilleSanRamon.com.
