Alta Mesa Memorial Park is the Père-Lachaise of Silicon Valley. Like the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris’ 20th arrondissement where novelist Marcel Proust, composer Frédéric Chopin, author and poet Oscar Wilde and, of course, Doors frontman Jim Morrison were laid to rest, the Palo Alto memorial park provides a fitting eternal home for technology’s icons.
Steve Jobs is buried there, as are Hewlett Packard co-founder David Packard and Frederick Terman, the Stanford professor who mentored Packard and business partner William Hewlett.
There are cultural icons as well. I recruited a colleague for an impromptu pre-Halloween visit. He didn’t have a choice as I was his ride back to the hotel, but he was nonetheless intrigued by the adventure into a world of spirits punctuated by notable lives.
We found the grave marker of Tennessee Ernie Ford, the country western singer and television host, framed in Bermuda grass in the Urn Garden near the central mausoleums. Navigating with an app has its hazards, as we found ourselves stepping over planters, locating unlocked back doors and navigating gopher holes in a yard of empty cement burial vaults awaiting future occupants. Two coyotes stared at us as we passed. Flocks of Canadian geese strafed noisily overhead.
Winding our way through maze-like hallways lined with crypts, we located, with the help of a spinning compass on a grave locator app, the tomb of child actress Shirley Temple Black. A color image of her peered at us from a polished stone mount, alongside a colorful bouquet. It was more reminiscent of her Ambassador to Ghana days than the “On the Good Ship Lollipop” performance.
After some work, we located Terman’s brass plaque, in a library-style room of floor-to-ceiling glass cases. The variety and intricacy of the engravings bespoke a dignified and civilized formality that was somberly breathtaking.
The open-air headstone for Ronald McKernan—the hard-living original keyboardist for the Grateful Dead better known as “Pigpen” —channeled a different vibe. A blue harmonica rested beside airline bottles of Jack Daniel’s and Wild Turkey. Stickers of dancing bears and skulls were affixed to the rectangular marker.
A spectacular autumn sunset was framed under the canopy of a mature California oak tree as we left. The sky spirit, frolicking mammals and redwood groves animated the moment, amidst the great lives that preceded us and shaped our present.
A cemetery visit is a homage to history that’s especially relevant in the season of Samhain, Halloween’s predecessor, which celebrates the thinning boundary between the living and the spirit world.
Santa Clara Valley has a number of burial spots rich in history, from Palo Alto’s Alta Mesa to the Santa Clara Mission and Saratoga’s awesome Madronia Cemetery. San Jose’s Oak Hill Memorial Park is imbued with pioneer history, from Mountain Charlie to Paul Masson.
—Dan Pulcrano
Famous Graves of Silicon Valley
Los Gatos Memorial Park
2255 Los Gatos Almaden Rd, San Jose
Bill Hewlett (1913-2001): Michigan-born engineer Bill Hewlett met David Packard at Stanford and the two started Hewlett-Packard in a Palo Alto garage in 1939 with $538. Their first product, an audio oscillator that Hewlett designed as a graduate student, sold to Walt Disney for the “Fantasia” sound system. He ran the company as president and CEO through the 1970s and died in Palo Alto at 87.
Fremont Older (1856-1935): As editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, Older drove the graft prosecutions that brought down corrupt political boss Abe Ruef. Ruef’s allies had him kidnapped in 1907 and hustled onto a train bound for Los Angeles before he was freed. He later reversed course and campaigned for Ruef’s parole.
Gate of Heaven Catholic Cemetery
22555 Cristo Rey Dr, Los Altos
Iris Chang (1968-2004): Chang grew up in Illinois, the daughter of academics, and settled in San Jose. “The Rape of Nanking,” published in 1997 when she was 29, spent months on the bestseller lists and forced the 1937 massacre into Western memory. She followed it with “The Chinese in America.” She died at 36.
Oak Hill Memorial Park
300 Curtner Ave, San Jose
Hal Chase (1883-1947): “Prince Hal,” born in Los Gatos, was the most gifted first baseman of the dead-ball era and the most crooked. He starred for the New York Highlanders before stops with the White Sox, Reds and Giants, trailed everywhere by accusations he threw games. Baseball quietly banished him after 1919.
Brooke Hart (1911-1933): The 22-year-old heir to San Jose’s L. Hart & Sons department store was kidnapped outside the family’s downtown store in November 1933 and held for $40,000 ransom. Two local men, Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes, confessed to killing him and dumping his body in the Bay. When it washed up, a mob dragged both from the county jail and hanged them in St. James Park.
Paul Masson (1859-1940): The Burgundy native came to California in 1878 and went to work for Charles Lefranc, the valley’s pioneering vintner, later marrying his daughter. His sparkling wines won medals in Paris and earned him the title “Champagne King of California.” He planted his La Cresta vineyard in the Saratoga hills in the 1900s. It survives as the Mountain Winery.
Madronia Cemetery
14766 Oak St, Saratoga
Frank Dorsa (1907-1996): The San Jose native and his brothers Anthony and Sam started with mayonnaise in 1932 and named the company Eggo. He invented in 1953 a machine that mass-produced frozen waffles. The family sold Eggo to Kellogg’s in 1966.
Mark Bingham (1970-2001): The Los Gatos native helped Cal win two national rugby titles, earned the nickname “Bear Trap” and later helped recruit and train San Francisco’s first gay rugby team. He was flying home to the valley on United 93 when hijackers seized the plane on 9/11. He called his mother to say things didn’t look good and then joined other passengers in storming the cockpit. The plane went down in Pennsylvania, likely saving another national icon from being hit.
Thomas Kinkade (1958-2012): Born in Sacramento and raised in Placerville, Kinkade trademarked “Painter of Light” and built a San Jose-based empire of glowing cottages and gardens sold through mall galleries and QVC. At his peak he claimed a print hung in one of every 20 American homes. He died in Monte Sereno at 54.
Alta Mesa Memorial Park
695 Arastradero Rd, Palo Alto
Tennessee Ernie Ford (1919-1991): The Bristol, Tenn., native was a radio announcer and bomber navigator before “Sixteen Tons” sold a million copies in 1955. He hosted a top-rated NBC variety show and sold more gospel albums than country ones. Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984.
David Packard (1912-1996): The Pueblo, Colo., native co-founded Hewlett-Packard and served as Nixon’s deputy secretary of defense from 1969 to 1971. He and his wife Lucile started the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, which funded the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1988.
Fred Terman (1900-1982): The son of Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman, he grew up on campus and returned as an engineering professor, dean and provost. He pushed Hewlett and Packard to go into business, created the Stanford Industrial Park and recruited the faculty that made the university a research powerhouse.
Ron McKernan (1945-1973): “Pigpen,” raised in Palo Alto, was the Grateful Dead’s rganist and harmonica player from the band’s 1965 start. His beverage of choice was Southern Comfort, and liver damage sidelined him in 1972. He died in Corte Madera at 27.
Steve Jobs (1955-2011): Born in San Francisco and raised in Mountain View and Los Altos, Jobs met Steve Wozniak through a Homestead High classmate and co-founded Apple in 1976. Fired in 1985, he built NeXT and Pixar, then returned in 1997 to deliver the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. He died in Palo Alto at 56. His grave is unmarked.
Shirley Temple (1928-2014): The top box-office draw of the Depression years took a special juvenile Oscar at 6 and sang “On the Good Ship Lollipop” in “Bright Eyes.” Her film career faded by 22. As Shirley Temple Black she ran for Congress, represented the U.S. at the United Nations and served as ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia, the latter as communism ended. She died at her Woodside home at 85.
Santa Clara Mission Cemetery
490 Lincoln St, Santa Clara
Peter Burnett (1807-1895): The self-taught Tennessee lawyer helped organize Oregon’s territorial government before the gold rush drew him south. Elected California’s first governor in November 1849, he opened the Legislature in San Jose, the state’s first capital. He pressed lawmakers to bar Black settlers from the state, a proposal the Legislature rejected, and resigned in January 1851 after his second annual message drew heavy criticism. He later sat on the state Supreme Court and ran the Pacific Bank in San Francisco.
Tiburcio Vasquez (1835-1875): The Monterey-born bandit led raids across central California for two decades and cast himself as a defender of Californios against Anglo rule. Captured near Los Angeles in 1874 after the Tres Pinos robbery that left three dead, he was tried in San Jose and hanged there on March 19, 1875. He insisted to the end he had never killed anyone.
Stanford Mausoleum
Stanford University
Leland Stanford Jr. died of typhoid in Florence in 1884, two months short of his 16th birthday. His parents founded the university in his name the following year. Leland Sr., railroad baron, governor and U.S. senator, joined him in 1893. Jane Stanford died in Honolulu in 1905 of strychnine poisoning, a case never solved. The mausoleum opens to the public each Founders’ Day.
