Please tell us about your Coronado Memory
By Julia Viera

Late one winter afternoon in 2013, I answered my doorbell to find a lovely young woman holding a copper-colored volume, which I immediately recognized as my mother’s favorite cookbook.

I had not seen the book in uncounted decades, and Sarah Dickey, then Registrar and Archivist at the Coronado Historical Association and Museum, was a complete stranger. How in the world…?

When I opened “A TREASURY OF GREAT RECIPES” by the late actor Vincent Price, I found in my mother’s hand the menu for our 1965 family Christmas dinner. On the opposite page, holiday thoughts in their own writing from both of my parents, my sister, and my husband, all since passed on, and from myself and my daughters, then 9 and 19.. Ann, the youngest, says, “I’m hungry.” Her big sister says, “Happiness is living in Coronado.” Clipped to the page was the Yanquell Christmas Card for that year, picturing this distinctive Alameda Boulevard house—Federal American cottage with the gilt eagle by the door—which is how Sarah knew where to start her search.

1965 was the year my husband had command of an Underwater Demolition Team (i.e., SEALs), which would soon be leaving for Viet Nam combat. My father was a pioneer Navy Flight Surgeon on carrier duty in the South Pacific for all the years of WWII. That family holiday with everyone present was such a blessing at the time, and then to have it come back to me this way after 48 years was an indescribably touching miracle.

Sarah explained that the Coronado museum received the book from the San Diego Air and Space Museum. (No clue as to how it got there.) The local Museum Preservation Committee deemed it not important enough to be kept with the permanent collection. She saw that it was a family treasure, and set out to return it, with just that Christmas photo for a clue, and no way of knowing who would answer the door bell.

I have had a lifetime of wonderful memories in Coronado, starting with, oh 1928, but opening that door to Sarah Dickey is one of the best, and absolute reassurance that my decision to return as an elderly widow to this house, this place, was the right one.