In the late ’60s, San Jose State was a rocking place, even though it wasn’t yet called a university.
One only needs to look at the 2026 Distinguished Alumni Awards, announced last week. Two founding members of a Grammy Award-winning band—Doobie Brothers and Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Pat Simmons and Tom Johnston—will be recognized with lifetime achievement awards. The same night, at the same party, Krazy George will take home the Spartan Spirit Award and Old Navy founder Jenny Ming will be crowned SJSU Alumna of the Year. Lastly, the Spirit of ’68 Award will go to San Jose Taiko founders Roy and PJ Hirabayashi.
The event, to be held on campus next March, recognizes exceptional Spartans who have made a profound impact in their professions, their communities and the San Jose State University family. This is going to be a serious party.
As a third-generation San Jose State graduate, I am now honored to contemplate a few of the ways these individuals have intertwined with my own life trajectory in this town. I’m blasting the Toulouse Street album as I write this.
As a kid, I don’t even remember which phenomenon I discovered first—Krazy George or the Doobie Brothers. George started cheerleading for San Jose State before I was even born. Then, by the time he went to work for the original San Jose Earthquakes team in 1974, the Doobie Brothers were splitting town for more lucrative gigs. My parents took me to Quakes games not too much later, so we saw George all the time, but my first up-close experience with the guy was probably when I saw George driving his yellow Lotus into the Spartan Stadium parking lot.
Or maybe that was later. It’s all a blur.
In any event, it was probably just before I watched the Doobie Brothers’ unprecedented cameo appearance on a 1978 episode of the sitcom What’s Happening. It wasn’t even just one episode. It was a two-part masterpiece. Nothing as rocking had ever happened on a prime-time TV sitcom.
Those of us little tykes who loved What’s Happening will always cherish that episode where Rerun got busted for bootlegging the Doobie Brothers concert and the message it taught all of us. Played by the late Fred Berry, Rerun was the lovable bulb-shaped character who couldn’t get into the Doobies gig, so a few thugs set him up with free tickets in trade for illegally taping the show. As the gig unfolded, the tape recorder fell out of his overcoat during the song “Taking It to the Streets.” That’s right—back in the ’70s you could actually go to jail for recording somebody’s gig.
Watching that show as a kid, I did not realize the Doobies had started out as a San Jose biker band at 285 S. 12th St., the house where they wrote some of their most successful tunes. Nor did I know that Krazy George would later be acknowledged in the same 2026 ceremony, nearly 50 years later.
As if that wasn’t enough, Roy and PJ Hirabayashi attended San Jose State at the same time that Pat Simmons, Tom Johnston and Krazy George did. Just a few years later in 1973, Roy and PJ founded San Jose Taiko, at the time, only the third Japanese drumming group to form outside of Japan. I first saw them perform in 1992, when I attended San Jose State myself.
I’m not forgetting Jenny. Originally from China, Jenny Ming graduated from San Jose State in 1978 with a bachelor of arts in clothing merchandising and a minor in marketing. After rising through the ranks at The Gap, she led the team that started Old Navy and eventually presided over more than 800 retail stores.
Old Navy can be a great place for $6 T-shirts, when the sale happens. I’m wearing one as I write this column. And I am still blasting the Toulouse Street album, most of which the Doobies wrote at the 12th Street house. If you walk by that house, pull out your phone and listen to the music. (See what I did there?)
Man, what a time to be alive in San Jose, California. I feel more connected to my alma mater than ever before.
