San Jose high school brings in $1.6 million as it celebrates 10 years

Los Gatos resident Diane Brandenburg is always full of surprises.

I’ll admit I was surprised last year by the quality and quantity of watercolor paintings she had created for an exhibition at the Triton Museum in Santa Clara. Others may be surprised that in 2022, she took part — shovel in hand — at the groundbreaking of a library for the Dalai Lama in Ithaca, N.Y.  She and her late husband, Lee Brandenburg, met the Dalai Lama in 2009.

So maybe it should have been no surprise when after Cristo Rey San Jose Jesuit High School had already hit its $1.5 million fundraising goal for its Rey of Hope benefit Thursday night that Brandenburg added the icing to the cake with a $100,000 pledge from the Brandenburg Family Foundation to close out the evening.

But I would bet it surprised a lot of the nearly 450 guests who packed into the gym of the high school adjacent to Five Wounds Catholic Church on East Santa Clara Street.

The event celebrated Cristo Rey’s 10th year in operation and was its biggest fundraising event yet, with guests including Cristo Rey Board Chair Nick Noviello; former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Ahmad Thomas; San Jose Chamber of Commerce CEO Leah Toeniskoetter; Phil Albanese; and Jeff and Leann Sobrato. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan also was there, but given that his wife, Silvia Scandar Mahan, is the school’s president, it’s likely he was not about to miss it.

The school also recognized corporate work-study partners who have been around for all 10 years: Berliner Cohen, LLP; Catholic Charities; Cisco; De Anza Properties; Devcon; the Diocese of San Jose; Frank Rimerman & Co.; HP, Santa Clara University; Stanford School of Medicine; the Sobrato Organization; and The Tech Interactive.

BUILDING DISNEY MEMORIES: There is no shortage of creative builders in Silicon Valley, but few would hold a candle to designer Bob Gurr, the last remaining Disney “imagineer” who worked with Walt Disney himself. If you’ve been on Autopia, the Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Matterhorn or the Disneyland monorail, you know his work.

“Anything with wheels at Disneyland, Bob probably built it,” said Winchester Mystery House General Manager Walter Magnuson, a former Disney guy himself who has known Gurr for more than two decades.

Gurr, 92, held court for about two hours last Tuesday at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, where he was invited for a special reception for members of the San Jose Rotary Club and sponsors of its gala this weekend, which has a Disneyland theme. To sponsor the trip, gala chair Heather Lerner connected with Glydways, the company working to develop a pod-transit system between San Jose Mineta Airport and Diridon Station — not too different from the monorail and people mover projects Gurr worked on during his 27 years with Disney.

“Walt would give different people different jobs depending on what their expertise was. Everyone was an amateur from the get-go, but we eventually made it an industry,” Gurr said of the early Imagineers who worked to open Disneyland in 1955. He later designed the King Kong Encounter at Universal Studios, designed lighting for Michael Jackson’s Victory tour in 1981 and was behind the sinking pirate ship at the Treasure Island casino in Vegas.

Gurr never had any formal training and chalks up his success to his case of permanent curiosity, a trait he says he shared with Disney. “We were never afraid and never said ‘no’, ” Gurr said.

WOMEN OF IMPACT: As part of Women’s History Month, San Jose native Darlene Tenes is giving a free presentation at the San Jose Woman’s Club on Monday about some of the phenomenal women who have called the city home. The talk at 75 S. 11th St. is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and that seems like hardly enough time to get through even a fraction of that list from Carmela Castro Fallon and Clara Shortridge Foltz to Janet Gray Hayes and Irene Dalis.

And with Tenes’ work establishing the Farmworkers Caravan in 2020 to bring needed help to the people who provide our food, she should probably be on that list, too. Bring your own lunch, but drinks and dessert will be provided. You can RSVP for the event at sjwc_antiques.eventbrite.com.

A VINTAGE CAREER: Michael Brilliot, deputy planning director for the city of San Jose, was presented with a commendation at last Tuesday’s council meeting in honor of his impending retirement after 28 years with the city.

During the presentation, Councilman Sergio Jimenez talked about Brilliot’s work on neighborhood improvement plans when he was supervisor of the Strong Neighborhoods Initiative.  But he also mentioned that Brilliot, who is also a jazz drummer, has a penchant for wearing vintage suits.

Naturally, he was in a snazzy, brown pinstriped number to accept the commendation in the council chambers, where he was joined by his wife, Reena Brilliot, their son Booker and former colleagues including Ru Weerakoon and Laurel Prevetti, who herself is retiring as Los Gatos’ city manager in June.