Shaping the Community Hall

Community 2 STORIES ABOUT PEOPLE AND EVENTS IN THE COMMUNITY SECTION Bill Lane at a party to celebrate his 90th birthday in 2009 in Portola Valley’s new Shaping the Community Hall. West Photo by Dave Boyce Bill Lane’s COMPELLING ACCOUNT OF THE HARD-WON SUCCESS OF SUNSET MAGAZINE By Dave Boyce t’s a safe bet that few can now say what these four things have in com- his parents’ role in the development of years, in any activity I’ve been involved mon: asparagus, the sliding glass door, a wilderness vacation, and teach- the Eskimo Pie. The story takes off in in with my children, I’ve heard them say, I 1928 when the family left their Iowa ‘Dad, you’re always looking at the bright ing teenagers to cook. According to the new book “The Sun Never Sets: farm and came to California in a new side,’ because I’m always saying that out Reflections on a Western Life,” Sunset magazine introduced and gained Packard automobile. In the car with Bill, of adversity almost inevitably comes age 8, were his mother Ruth, his younger opportunity.” acceptance for all this and much more in Western households. brother Mel, his grandmother, and the Mr. Lane developed deep roots on the farm caretaker, who drove the car. On Peninsula. He went to elementary school This memoir by the late Bill Lane, the at Sunset magazine and how he and his the outside — on the running board and in Burlingame, high school in Palo former publisher of Sunset magazine, brother Mel carried the torch lit by their roof — was baggage. The family dog, a Alto, college at Stanford University (and is published this month by Stanford father Larry to transform Sunset into German Shepherd named Cleta, came Pomona College), and was instrumental University Press and co-written with an institution that helped define subur- later. in incorporating Portola Valley in 1964. Bert Patenaude, a research fellow at the ban lifestyles in the post-war American Laurence Lane, Bill’s dad, had quit Hoover Institution and a lecturer at Stan- West. his job as an advertising man for Better ford University. The 200 pages are packed with analysis Homes and Gardens and was already in The book is a tour de force of the many and anecdotes from a man with a relent- San Francisco to complete the purchase and significant accomplishments of less desire to succeed. The headlong pace of Sunset. His mission: transform it Laurence William Lane Jr. Prominent covers Mr. Lane’s 92 years, starting with from an Atlantic-Monthly-like literary among them are events from his 44 years his early appreciation of ice cream and magazine to a how-to journal covering what were to become the “four wheels” of Sunset’s content: gardening, travel, home life and cooking, Mr. Lane writes. A pen- etrating and perhaps lucky strategy; the Roaring Twenties were still roaring, but the Great Depression was right around the corner. Jean and Bill Lane in 2006. Tough times for business were, of course, inescapable but — and this With his wife Jean, the couple had three will not surprise anyone who knew Bill children. He also took much pride and Lane — optimism and perseverance joy in playing Santa Claus at Christmas permeate the book. In Mr. Lane’s telling, at Sunset and later at the Ladera shop- those qualities also fit his brother, father ping center. Mr. Lane died July 31, 2010, and mother. The memoir is one man’s at Stanford Hospital. inside story of a family wresting suc- In addition to being Portola Valley’s cess from difficult circumstances, with first mayor and a member of its first a leg up from his parents’ effort when Town Council, Mr. Lane served as U.S. he and Mel took ambassador to Australia and Nauru, and over the business. U.S. ambassador-at-large to Japan. While Over the decades, at Sunset, he orchestrated a shift toward with notable pauses environmental advocacy in the world as for military service well as at home; after the 1990 sale of the and foreign service magazine for $225 million in stock and in Japan and Austra- cash, he became a busy philanthropist. lia, Mr. Lane says he The book mentions many notable applied the lessons of friends, acquaintances and officials his experience widely instrumental to Mr. Lane’s accomplish- — to publishing, to ments, including President Lyndon environmental advo- Johnson and his successors up to and cacy and to philan- including Bill Clinton, key members of Bill Lane at the entrance to the Menlo Park headquarters of Sunset in thropy. the administrations of those presidents, 1989. On the right is the cover of the February 1929 issue of Sunset At one point, California Gov. Pat Brown and several magazine, one of the first under Lane family ownership. he addresses his upbeat (Cover reprinted by permission of Sunset Publishing Inc.) attitude: “Over the Continued on next page April 10, 2013NTheAlmanacOnline.comNThe AlmanacN29 COMMUNITY Continued from previous page the control of handguns.” “We became very opinion- He says he tried to instill in ated, but always the opinion of his successors, environmen- editors the idea that Sunset was based on an emphasis in tal pioneers David Brower and reflected public behavior, not the article to get the reader to Martin Litton, members of private. “We were creating an visit the place,” Mr. Lane writes. Congress, and others. image there, and it had nothing And, not forgetting the maga- It was President Ronald Rea- to do with whether we ourselves zine’s focus, “our credo (was) gan who appointed Mr. Lane as drank or smoked or hunted,” he that effective environmental U.S. ambassador to Australia writes. “The image of the maga- awareness begins at home.” and and the island nation of zine had to reflect what you After the oil price shock of Nauru in 1986. would expect of your minister, the late 1970s, the magazine cut regardless of what his personal back on stories about wilderness Door-to-door habits were. ... For example, pre- travel and new homes and shift- Such acquaintances were sumably you trust your garage ed to remodeling and garden decades away in 1928, when Bill mechanic as a mechanic, to get clubs — and water conservation, Jr. and Mel were in elementary the job done on your car. You including the smart use of water school and sold Sunset door-to- really don’t care whether he’s and drought- and fire-resistant door on one Saturday morning a sleeping around or not.” plants. Sunset collaborated with month. Mr. Lane writes that he Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. to saw “husbands and wives both Advocate for nature build solar panels at the Menlo grabbing for the magazine. I saw As a young man, Mr. Lane Park headquarters building. firsthand, flesh and blood, how slept in the mountains, a place he “We are excited about the Sunset was a tool — not just a would return to throughout his future but concerned that we leisure pastime but a tool that life. At 15, he got a job as a handy- stay down to earth and useful,” was used to help these people in man with a pack-mule outfit that he says he wrote in a 1978 edito- their lives.” worked for the U.S. Forest Ser- rial. “Perhaps the biggest chal- “I think as a family we were all vice. Many times, he says, he led lenge for all of us will be to shift committed to making Sunset suc- eight-mule pack trains carrying from a habit of plenty to a disci- cessful, and we were keenly aware milk cans full of baby fish to stock pline of limits.” A of the seriousness of the Depres- At Sunset headquarters in Menlo Park in 1985 are Joan and Mel Lane, mountain lakes, with no one for “The Sun Never Sets: Reflec- sion and the dire conditions that left, and Jean and Bill Lane. They are standing in front of a painting of company but the mules. At night, tions on a Western Life,” by L.W. Laurence and Ruth Lane, the father and mother of Bill and Mel. existed,” he writes. “If you look the cans had to be unloaded and Bill Lane Jr., with Bertrand M. back at the early Lane Sunset, you set down in streams to aerate the Patenaude, and with an intro- see that the underlying editorial competitions, and advocated for Lane quotes a letter from his dad water inside and keep the fish duction by California historian message has to do with courage solar energy, the backyard bar- inviting two Midwest editors alive, then repacked on the mules Kevin Starr. 200 pages, 75 illus- and fortitude and looking on the becue, and teaching teenagers to come west and collaborate: in the morning, and rocked back trations. ISBN: 9780804785112. bright side of things.” to cook. Sliding doors, skylights “Certainly in these states there is and forth at trail stops during Trade paperback, $27.95, avail- Sunset became a family insti- and other means of “erasing the an abundance of money, motor the day. able online through Stanford Uni- tution, according to this account. line between indoors and out” cars, country homes and desire Naturalist John Muir, the versity Press (sup.org), Kepler’s Sunset brought to the Western were big, as were homes with hot and ability to have the best of champion of preserving Yosem- Books and Magazines in Menlo dinner table asparagus, arti- tubs, eat-in kitchens and kitchen everything,” he writes.

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