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Publication Date: Friday, July 27, 2001

George Lydiksen - His name is on the school

When people first meet George Lydiksen, their reaction is always the same: "Lydiksen? You mean like the school? I didn't know you were alive!"

Lydiksen laughs heartily and his icy-blue eyes warm with the memory. "I still have trouble telling kids at Lydiksen School I'm not dead when I go out to see them."

Of course, the old-timers in town know very well who George Lydiksen is.

"George is from a generation in our Valley's time when hard work was the norm and service and generosity were trademarks," declares Ed Kinney, a Pleasanton resident who has known Lydiksen for over 20 years.

So, while many of the well-known names of Pleasanton lore are merely memories, not only is George Lydiksen living - he is a living history of a distinguished generation here in the Amador Valley.

George Christian Lydiksen was born in 1917 in the Dougherty Hotel in Dublin to Agathon Lydiksen, a Danish immigrant and his wife, Helen Bonde, a California native whose parents owned the hotel. He grew up in Livermore, where his father owned a tire business. His boyhood days depicted Norman Rockwell bliss - going to school, hunting, fishing, building things out of plans printed in Boy's Life magazine, and working with his dad after school.

One of the most vivid memories of Lydiksen's youth is of the speak-easy located next to his dad's shop. When the visiting tire salesmen invited his dad next door for a drink, young George tagged along, sitting at the bar drinking a soda while the men enjoyed their highballs and cigars. Because it was during Prohibition, they were always on the lookout for raids, however, which would mean quickly dumping all the booze in the bottom of a deep well in the back to destroy the evidence.

Lydiksen also remembers high school summers, when he drove a delivery truck for Livermore Cleaners. One of the more notorious stops along the route was Camp Comfort, a little house where five ladies of the night lived. They were special customers - all with silk pajamas for the cleaners.

"During the Depression," Lydiksen recalls, "they were the only ones that paid their bills."

In those years, Lydiksen also remembers hearing his mother and father talk about the stock market crash and the possibility of the bank foreclosing on their house and the business.

"I knew we were going through tough times, but everyone was. We always had food to eat, good clothes and we always went to school, so all I remember growing up was wonderful."

Lydiksen met Gladys, his constant companion and wife of over 60 years, in high school in the 1930s, and they were married in 1940. The war broke out, but Lydiksen was granted a deferral because he was doing electrical work that was deemed critical for the war effort. Later, Lydiksen went into sales and rose to the position of president of Simplex, a company that manufactures packaging machines, where he remained until his retirement in 1983.

Although he had a successful business career, it was for his service on the board of the old Murray School District for which Lydiksen is immortalized. Lydiksen served on the board during its period of great growth from 1957 to 1966. At that time, the Murray District covered a large area encompassing what is now both Dublin and northern Pleasanton. The area was rural and the school district consisted of just one small two-room schoolhouse with a single teacher.

But that was soon to change. In the late 1950s, developers Volk and McLain purchased property in the Valley and started building tract homes where ranches and farms once stood. Lydiksen and the other board members had the vision to foresee the dramatic growth in store for the sleepy little school district.

"We realized that if Volk-McLain succeeded in building the number of homes they wanted to build, we, as a school board, would be overwhelmed with grammar school children," says Lydiksen. They planned to build only 60 homes at first, but Lydiksen realized the Valley was a popular location. Lydiksen knew that if the builders started with 60 homes, they would build 120, and then 300, and more. He knew it would be something that you couldn't stop.

"We knew we had to do something to prepare ourselves for this onslaught of people," Lydiksen said. "We had a group called the Dublin Community Club, made up of the citizens of Dublin, and we got them together for a meeting at the school. I told them there's only one way to battle this thing. We've got to go to the state and float a bond issue, and that bond issue is going to have to be large enough to buy a certain number of pieces of property (in our district) to cover the growth."

"At the time, the tax rate was only 80 cents a hundred ($100 of assessed valuation)," he added. "We needed to raise the tax rate to $2.50 or $3 per hundred, (to buy enough property). The state didn't think we could do it and the Alameda County School System didn't think we could do it - that we couldn't get these people to vote for something that large. But, ultimately we put it to the voters and it passed by 92 percent."

"George was very influential in getting the bond passed," remembers Robert (Bud) Nielsen, a Dublin resident who's known Lydiksen for 50 years and who served with him on the school board. "He was good at explaining things and people always trusted him and took his advice."

The school district took the money from the bond issue and bought eight pieces of property on which seven schools were eventually built. The last piece of property, which wasn't needed, was later sold. The schools were built sequentially, as the housing developments grew and, Lydiksen recalled, "It worked perfectly. There weren't any double sessions for any of the years even with all that growth."

And, growth in the district was phenomenal. In 1960 the district enrollment was a mere 54. By 1968, it had exploded to 4,347. The money from the bond issue ensured that all those new students would have schools in their neighborhoods.

In recognition of Lydiksen's dynamic and devoted service, the board bestowed the great honor of making him the only living person in the district for whom a school has ever been named. Lydiksen Elementary School, on Highland Oaks Drive, was built in 1967. In 1988, Lydiksen and Donlon Elementary Schools were transferred to the newly formed Pleasanton Unified School District, where they remain today.

After Lydiksen's only child, Marcia, graduated, he resigned from the school board, but he continued to work for the community. He was active in the establishment of the Dublin Cemetery, where many of the original Valley families are buried. He also served 12 years on the Zone 7 Water Agency.

"George provided strong leadership in controlling our destinies in terms of water management," says Kinney, who served on Zone 7 with Lydiksen. "We probably wouldn't be in as good a shape as we are now in terms of our water supply if it weren't for George - and his hard head," Kinney added, admiringly.

"George was a leader," Nielsen said. "He was instrumental in a lot of things here in the Valley. People always looked up to George Lydiksen."

The Lydiksens are familiar sights at events at the school that bears his name. They especially enjoy meeting the students who are often surprised to see that there is a real, live Mr. Lydiksen. "To go out to school and see all these wonderful and happy children - that is a pleasure," says Gladys Lydiksen.

Their daughter, Marcia Lydiksen, is a pharmacist at the Medical Center in Coer d'Alene, Idaho. As for her parents, they now spend their days in their home in Pleasanton and the lovely garden that Gladys tends in the backyard, looking back on their wonderful life together so far. "The first 80 years," George reminisces, "have been absolutely spectacular."