St Helena: A Wonderful Visit and Devastation
From the day we started planning our road trip we knew that St. Helena in Napa Valley was a three-star stop because our dear friends Ada and Stan Press live there. Stan and Ada used to live on Long Island. The short, apocryphal version of how they got to St. Helena is that they took a vacation to Napa in the 90's. They took a look around and loved what they saw, called the kids back in New York and told them to sell the house and send the money. They bought a beautiful home high up on a ridge surrounded by 40 acres of wooded land. Ada opened a shop in St. Helena called On The Vine which she ran for many years. Stan consulted and found time to indulge his passion for fishing. The two of us, our sons and their wives, and the parents of our sons' wives have been frequent guests to their home in this paradise known as California Wine Country.
Stan has created a Garden of Eden here. Hedges of rosemary and lavender ring the house. Figs, pomegranates, oranges, lemons and olives grow in abundance. Both Ada and Stan love to cook and anyone who has had the good fortune to be a guest at their dinner table won't soon forget the extraordinary pleasure of the experience. Evenings full of wonderful food, great stories and lots of laughter shared by good friends are the ingredients that create treasured memories.
Food Lovers United at Copia
Within just a few days after our wonderful visit, Napa and Sonoma Valleys were suddenly hit with the horrific wildfires that we've all been reading about and seeing images of on television. Ada and Stan had to quickly evacuate their home. They had been staying with friends in an unaffected part of Napa, but when the fires moved close, they went to San Francisco. The smoke is so bad in San Francisco that they are moving down the coast to try to find some clear air. So far their home has been spared, but the reports are not encouraging. They know many people who have already lost homes to the fire.
Thousands have suffered terrible loss. But the rising number of dead and missing overwhelm the loss of possessions. The map above shows where the fires are relative to our friend's home on Whitehall Lane (highlighted in yellow). We get periodic updates from our Ada. We keep reminding them that our house is theirs if they want/need it. We're praying with Stan and Ada that the fires are brought under control soon and that the pain and devastation ease as quickly as possible.
While it's hard now to talk about other things in the context of Napa, we do want to share a remarkable experience we had during our visit. Stan and Ada invited their friends David and Deborah O'Malley to join us for dinner one evening, thinking that we would enjoy meeting them. Within just a few minutes of their arrival and introductions, someone asked the ice-breaker "Where are you from?" "I'm originally from Connecticut." "Oh, I'm from Connecticut, too." It turned out that Deborah O'Malley was actually Deborah O'Malley, née Feldman, and that her grandfather was Rabbi Abraham Feldman, who married us 50 years ago in Beth Israel Synagogue in West Hartford. The evening went on from there.
Deborah and David O'Malley