Some of the people who knew Hugh Codding best and knew him the longest will share tales at a celebration of his life at 1 p.m. Monday at the Wells Fargo Center.
There will be plenty of talk about all that the super-sized builder did in, for and to Santa Rosa, and what more he'd have liked to do.
Gaye LeBaron will recount long-forgotten details of how Codding sought repeatedly in the 1950s to transplant Santa Rosa's civic center several miles to the east -- to what really was, 60 years ago, Codding-town.
Codding entertained a vision of his Montgomery Village becoming the governmental focal point in Santa Rosa, an ambition he pursued with characteristic vigor by several times offering up land for development as Santa Rosa's new City Hall complex or as the new county courthouse.
He proposed a number of different sites: at Montgomery Village proper, at Fourth Street and Farmers Lane, at Sonoma and Yulupa avenues, on Summerfield Road across from Howarth Park.
He argued, compellingly and cleverly, that Santa Rosa should rightly be centered in the Montgomery Village area because the town was after all born in that vicinity, at the Carrillo Adobe off Montgomery Drive.
But neither the city nor county elders would bite. Codding won a seat on the City Council in 1964 and five years later bit his tongue as the council celebrated the opening of a new City Hall, downtown.
Henry Trione will share stories at Monday's celebration of Codding's bold and bountiful life, as will Codding's son David, nephew Jim Codding, attorney Bill Smith and longtime colleagues Reg Bailey and Jackie Wilkie Simons.
DOUBLE-HEADER: Maybe you'll recall that early on in the 2007 baseball season, Sonoma County YMCA chief David Brown arrived at his buddy Rick Surlow's season-ticket Giants seats behind first base and immediately took a foul ball to the nose.
Brown spent the entire game in AT&T Park's first-aid clinic, marveling at how much a nose and upper lip can bleed.
The other day, seat-holder Surlow and daughter Samantha were enjoying the first inning from those same seats. Surlow's attention was on a taco when a screamer of a foul ball nailed him in the side of his head.
He was hurting but conscious as Samantha, 18, drove him home. A trip to the emergency room revealed that the ball had fractured his skull.
Surlow, who publishes magazines, is better now. He may ponder if it might be best for users of his Giants seats to wear helmets.
NOTHING PERSONAL: A pollster with the Debora Fudge for north county supervisor campaign phoned a residence in Healdsburg and a gracious woman answered.
Erika Fremault answered a couple of questions, then offered an insight into why she probably won't be voting for Fudge in June.
Erika, a high school teacher, is so fond of Fudge's opponent, Mike McGuire, that pretty soon she's going to marry him.
LUCKY DUCKLINGS: A commotion in the parking lot of Santa Rosa's Hyatt Vineyard Creek Hotel turned inter-species when passerby Joy Bell noticed crows dive-bombing nine motherless ducklings.
Bell grabbed a box from her car and was plucking up ducklings when three tumbled into a storm drain. She and a fellow who'd been walking his dog couldn't budge the drain cap, so Bell flagged down a cop, who shot her a "Why me?" look -- but complied with her request to summon Public Works.
A couple of city workers scooped the panicked quackers from the drain, and Bell ducked back into her car with a box containing all nine orphans.
What will she do with them? She trusts that a good idea will occur to her just any moment now.
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: