Herhold: Sam Liccardo’s roots go back to the beginning of California
Originally appeared in the Mercury News
By Scott Herhold
9/28/2014
If you were to write a story about Sam Liccardo’s ancestry — and that’s what I’m doing — you’d have to begin with Jose Francisco Ortega, a Spanish scout on the Gaspar de Portola expedition of 1769-70.
Having missed Monterey because of the fog, Portola landed on the San Mateo County coast and sent his scouts inland to explore. Ortega was reportedly the first European to see San Francisco Bay.
Ortega’s son was given a land grant in what is now south San Jose, and his daughter, Maria — Jose Francisco’s granddaughter — married a Scot who jumped ship in Monterey and changed his name to John Gilroy (his original name was Cameron).
Through his mother, Laura (nee Aceves), Sam Liccardo is a direct descendant of Maria Ortega. He says he didn’t know the full ancestry until recently — and then only with the help of genealogy buffs like attorney Fernando Zazueta.
Like his rival for mayor, Dave Cortese, Liccardo is often assumed to be all-Italian: The paternal ancestors of both men came from the same area on Sicily’s north coast (In Liccardo’s case, one line can be traced to the island of Salina, where the movie “Il Postino” was filmed.)
MELTING POT
But Liccardo is only half-Italian, and the rest is an American melting pot: His mother’s mother was Irish, which partly accounts for Liccardo’s stints as master of ceremonies at various San Jose-Dublin Sister City events.
And whatever swashbuckling past he may have from his Ortega and Scottish ancestors seems largely absent from the diplomatic and idea-generating 44-year-old who wants to be mayor after eight years on the City Council.
The most important figure in Sam Liccardo’s family — certainly the best known — was his grandfather, also named Sam Liccardo, who was born in New York City in 1907 and grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Grandfather Sam’s birth name was Salvatore, but family lore has it that this was too difficult for his playmates in his largely Jewish neighborhood to grasp easily. So he became Sam. Years later, when he discovered that his birth certificate actually said “Salvatore,” he legally changed his name.
An eighth-grade dropout, the first Sam Liccardo became a grocery manager while in his midteens. Then, at 17, he got into a car and headed across the country for what was supposed to be a temporary visit to California: The visit lasted the rest of his life.
GROCERY BUSINESS
The ambitious young grocer worked for many years for the Peninsula grocery chain, which later became Lucky Stores. He built a house on North Fifth Street, where he and his wife, Rosalie, raised their two sons, Sal and Leonard (Rosalie became renowned in her own right for her pies, which were marketed as “Lee’s Pies.”)
In 1947, Liccardo paid $100,000 for the Notre Dame market in downtown San Jose, which was then beginning to expand swiftly after World War II. The old market, memorialized in a fading wall sign near Notre Dame Avenue and Carlysle Street, figures in the candidate Sam Liccardo’s campaign literature as a symbol of frugality.
It was the elder Sam Liccardo’s involvement with Bellarmine College Prep that probably made him best-known among San Jose’s elite: In 1948, as his oldest son, Sal, entered Bellarmine, the school was going through a rocky financial period: There was even talk of bankruptcy.
FUNDRAISER
As a leader of the Dad’s Club (full disclosure: more than five decades later, I was a member myself), Liccardo became an unofficial leader of the school’s fundraising efforts and an organizer of the Golden Bell Auction.
One of his techniques was to ask a Jesuit to ride with him on a weekend trip up an down the central coast or Peninsula: He would pull into a town, check the directory for Bellarmine grads or parents, and then drive to their houses, explaining that Father So-and-So wanted to talk. It was a hugely successful tactic.
Later, Bellarmine built a cafeteria and student center and named it after the senior Liccardo: Inside the building is a full-length portrait of the grocery man who became philanthropist. When the elder Sam Liccardo died in 2000, the family found out that he had shrewdly invested early in Sun Microsystems stock.
Sam Liccardo — the candidate — grew up in Saratoga, the fifth and last child (he calls himself “the caboose”) of Laura and Sal Liccardo, who became a well-known San Jose attorney. The councilman went on to graduate from Bellarmine, Georgetown and Harvard Law School. But he often hearkens back to the frugal beginnings of his grandfather and namesake.
“I was repeatedly reminded as a child that for the most part of our family’s existence, people didn’t have it so good,” the candidate told me. “At the same time, I knew my parents were very involved in giving, particularly in education.”
“It became apparent there was a connection between the saving and the giving: To be generous in the community meant you had to tighten the belt at home.”
And yes, that happens to coincide nicely with Sam Liccardo’s campaign message. But it’s something his grandfather, like Dave Cortese’s grandfather, would have understood.