Smith: Some will trek to battleground states to honor David Grabill

At the celebration of the life of attorney David Grabill, the tireless Santa Rosa housing and human rights advocate who died in June, his widow suggested something friends and admirers might do to extend his legacy.

Dorothy Battenfeld recalled that just prior to the presidential election of 2008, her husband traveled to the swing state of Ohio for the final push there of Barack Obama’s campaign.

Battenfeld told the gathering at Santa Rosa Junior College’s Shone Farm it would honor Grabill were others to go to Ohio or other swing states the week before the Nov. 8 election and work to elect the Democrat.

Dee Schilling, for one, practically has her bags packed for a tribute journey to the Buckeye State. Said the social-justice attorney in Sebastopol, “I’m calling church friends there and asking them, ‘Can I stay with you that week?’?”

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LADY GAGA PREPARES to take on the Democratic National Convention and so does Santa Rosa’s Chris Snyder, a civically engaged union rep with the Operating Engineers.

There was a tie to determine who’ll be the Fifth Congressional District’s No. 1 delegate for Hillary Clinton, and Snyder won.

What does he most look forward to in Philadelphia? He thought a moment, then answered:

“The speeches and the? after-parties.”

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EL CHAPO’S UNDOING: The History Channel tonight devotes a two-hour documentary to the capture and the crimes and arrogance of Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera.

One of the tellers of the story of how Guzmán got caught in January, six months after his second brazen prison break, is attorney and Montgomery High alum Peter Vincent.

Vincent now counsels the Thompson Reuters mass media firm, but for years he was senior legal adviser to the Justice Department and Homeland Security.

On the History Channel’s “The Rise and Fall of El Chapo,” the former Santa Rosan shares fascinating insights into the mind and weaknesses of the man who was once the world’s most powerful drug trafficker and who now idles again in a Mexican prison and fights extradition to the U.S.

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IT WAS A HUGE HONOR for Jim Underhill, Piner High’s former track and cross country coach and still one of the Santa Rosa school’s best friends, to be presented one of the top peer awards of the California Coaches Association.

For a few, the CCA’s tribute to the life-altering and humble coach may have rung a bell.

A long time ago, in 1970, Underhill’s dad, Jim Sr., was invited to the annual awards celebration of the CCA, also known as Cal Coach. At that time, the elder Jim Underhill had freshly completed a run of 20 years of coaching football and several other sports at Santa Rosa High, and posting ?11 years as its athletic director.

At the Cal Coach ceremony of ’70, Jim Sr. was feted as that year’s inductee into the organization’s Hall of Fame. He died five years later at just 71.

Now his son is honored by the same statewide group for all he did for runners at Piner from the day the school opened in 1966 until his retirement from coaching two decades later.

He’s 82 now, as proud as ever of Piner and as grateful as ever to the coach he called Dad.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.