Mary Malech, 78, continues to volunteer at the Sierra LaMar search center
Published in the Jan. 7 – 23, 2015 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Robert Airoldi
Photo by Robert Airoldi
Mary Malech relaxes in her Morgan Hill home. The home is 75 years old and she was raised in the Del Monte Avenue home.
Mary Malech has seen a lot of changes in Morgan Hill throughout the years. Born 78 years ago – the city boasted about 1,500 residents back then – Malech recalls riding her bike through the countryside where she and her friends would have a picnic, watching the trains stop in town at the lumber yard or prune drying facility or going to the movies at the old Granada Theater. For kids younger than 12, the movie cost 12 cents.
“The seats were so bad kids would go home with torn jeans from the springs sticking through the seats,” she said. Her allowance of 25 cents a week forced her to save for those special outings. But when school was out, things changed.
“We spent the summers cutting apricots and picking prunes,” she said, “That was for clothes money for the new school year.” She recalls her mother taking her to San Jose to get clothes and other household goods that were unavailable in Morgan Hill then. The town was so small she knew just about everyone.
“No matter where you went you saw someone you knew,” she said.
Today Malech lives in the 75-yeaer-old house in which she was raised. She and her husband Paul Malech – who died eight years ago – purchased it from her mother in the mid ‘60s. There they raised their three boys. Despite its growth, Morgan Hill is still a wonderful city to raise children, she said.
“People come from a lot of different places to be a part of Morgan Hill,” Malech said. “It’s just a great place to raise a family.”
Malech met her future husband while both attended the old Live Oak High School, which was just steps from her Del Monte Avenue home.
Even though the home was close to the school, Mary said she had a hard time making it to school on time.
“I was always late,” she said. “I was too busy socializing. My father wasn’t real happy about it.”
After high school, she and Paul went off to different colleges, but after two years she transferred from Oregon State to San Francisco State where she graduated with a degree in elementary education. The couple married in 1957. Paul was in the Navy and for the most part stationed at Hunters Point in San Francisco. The couple bought a small house in Coyote and she became a stay-at-home mom who volunteered in her children’s schools.
Malech’s father, Skipper Hale, worked at a lumber yard but really wanted to join the service when World War II broke out. But he was too old, she said. So he got a job at FMC Tanks in San Jose to help the war effort.
After the war he founded Hale Lumber where he worked until he sold the business in the 1960s.
“During the war, there was a little cabin atop Nob Hill where local men would volunteer to keep an eye on the skies looking for Japanese planes,” she said.
At the end of the war, the city celebrated with a parade that was a lot of fun, she said.
“It was hard to get ice cream during the war, but at that parade the police gave out ice cream to all the children,” she recalled fondly.
Now Malech volunteers at the Sierra LaMar search center every Saturday, helping cook meals for about 40 people who continue to search for the teen who has been missing almost three years.
“It’s just something I need to do,” she said. “There’s still a core of dedicated and diverse people who show up every Saturday. They get poison oak, ticks and ward of snakes. They have to find some evidence to make sure he’s found guilty,” she said of the local man arrested and in custody awaiting trial.
As she approaches 80, Malech said she’s slowed a bit. Toward the end of 2013 she learned she had stage four breast cancer and instead of undergoing chemotherapy, she opted for a double mastectomy. She also endured back surgery and a condition that left her bedridden for months. Despite the recent setbacks, she’s looking forward to the new year.
“That set me back as far as my activities,” she said. “Now I’m a bit lazier than I used to be. But I’m hanging in there.”
