By Jondi Gumz
When people said the tornado that touched down Dec. 14 in Scotts Valley was a first, that was just part of the story.
In fact, a tornado blew through in the same location before Scotts Valley became a city, according to eyewitness Beverly Graham Forson.
Beverly Graham Forson with her collection of shark’s teeth found in Scotts Valley.
She’s 91 and lives in Oregon today.
She wanted to set the record straight.
She doesn’t know the exact year but figures it was during the 1930s or 1940s when she was growing up on a ranch, the daughter of Jack and Lola Graham.
She said the tornado picked up their barn without any warning and sent it across Mount Hermon Road.
The roof was made of 4×8 pieces, and some sailed away — “it looked like a checkerboard,” she said.
The location: Where the Target shopping center is now, and 7-Eleven painted “Graham and Son,” recalling the days when sand was sold.
The Spring Lakes Mobile Home Park had not been built; it was a peat bog.
Beverly recalled, “My dad bought some adjoining property to our ranch from a Mr. Locke. He paid $100 an acre. But the interesting part is that Mr. Locke had acquired that property from a gentleman (don’t remember his name) by a swap — the land in exchange for a team of horses!”
According to the Santa Cruz Public Libraries, the David Locke Victorian home was built circa 1880, near where Target is now, and was destroyed in 1929 by a fire that burned from Zayante to Camp Evers in Scotts Valley. So picturesque, the Locke home appeared on postcards.
During World War II, Beverly was in 4-H, about age 12.
She raised day-old baby chicks in batches of 200, one after the other.
She sold the males and kept the females for the eggs.
“I sold out the first day,” she said.
“My Dad kept my money I made for me, and my husband, Bob and I, used it as a down payment on our first home outside of Auburn,” she added.
Forson recalls an idyllic childhood hunting for shark’s teeth in the sand.
“I still have my collection,” she said.
A boy by the name of Keith Roynon got her interested in hunting the teeth.
He gathered so many petrified animals and relics from all over that he opened a museum to show them in Escondido.
Her first school was a one-room schoolhouse, then in 1940, “the new school,” going up to the eighth grade, opened.
That’s Scotts Valley Middle School today.
After eighth grade, she went by bus to Santa Cruz High School, graduating in 1952.
Beverly looked up to her sister Helen, who was eight years older and became an All-American swimmer at Stockton College.
Helen’s sorority sister: The soon-to-be famous actress Janet Leigh.
One of Janet Leigh’s early roles was in “The Romance of Rosy Ridge,” with Van Johnson, filmed along Graham Hill Road.
Beverly, admiring her sister, learned to swim in a swimming hole behind where Valley Gardens used to be.
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” she said. “A spring would bubble up.”
She was something of a daredevil.
Noticed by Skip Littlefield, a competitive swimmer who created the Plunge Water Carnival at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in the 1930s and 1940s when she went with her sister for swim training, Beverly became a trapeze artist.
“It seemed natural to me,” she said.
She also appeared in the Ring Ballet and the Aerial Human Triangle.
How old was she?
“Eight to 12,” she recalled.
The Plunge was where Neptune’s Kingdom arcade is now.
Her mother sewed her swimsuits out of material that was glittery to add to the act.
Today, those swimsuits are at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, donated by Beverly to share her memories of a very special time.
Look closely and maybe you will see the brass likeness of Beverly outside.