Longtime San Mateo family celebrates heritage

Having had some of the same teachers and participated in various student groups in the decades since the family put down roots in San Mateo, the family has plenty of stories to share when they gather at the home Gladys and Albert Norton purchased in 1947 at the intersection of North Humboldt Street and Indian Avenue, said their granddaughter Mika Podlone. The 36-year-old, who graduated from San Mateo High School in 2001, said the Foster City home of Lax, her 83-year-old aunt, is also a gathering place for family meals.

“It’s actually really cool because I can talk to Ada about things that happened in ’47 and talk to Alexandra about things that happened to her today,” she said. “We have … a lot of stories, everybody has a different dish that they cook that they bring to the table.”

Lax said her parents were seeking better job opportunities when they moved their family from Taylor, Texas, to San Mateo in 1947. She said she was 12 years old when she made the move with her sister Dorris, and remembered her father coming home for lunch every day while he worked as a mechanic for a Burlingame auto shop.

When the family grew to include Lax’s brother Kevin and her sister Kandice, Lax said her mother began providing day care for not only her children but also other children in the neighborhood, where many from Louisiana and Texas had settled.

Growing up in Texas, Lax could remember being called racial slurs and said her family also experienced discrimination when they moved to San Mateo, noting there were certain areas where black individuals were discouraged from buying homes. She said black people tended to live in the same neighborhoods because of the discriminatory practices preventing them from buying homes wherever they wanted to, but acknowledged the atmosphere in San Mateo was very different from what she experienced in Texas.

“It was different because you [knew] you had your rights here,” she said.

Lax remembered being one of some six black students who graduated from San Mateo High School in 1954 and also recalled when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People advocated for teachers who were minorities to be hired at the school years later. In 1957, Lax married Chet Lax, who graduated from the high school in 1948 and was later inducted to the high school’s Athletic Hall of Fame for his accomplishments in track and field and football.

Lax said black student groups didn’t exist at the high school when she was a student, but her nephew Doug Stewart, 48, said many from their neighborhood participated in the Black Student Union when he attended San Mateo High School. Having graduated in 1988, Stewart remembered playing tennis and basketball in a gym students called “the pit,” adding he felt like he knew most of the other kids in the neighborhood because so many of them had been taken care of by his grandmother. Now an Oakland resident, Stewart was born in San Mateo and grew up in Foster City and San Jose before coming back to Foster City during his high school years.

But he said he always felt his roots were in San Mateo, and he still comes back to the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center at 725 Monte Diablo Ave. to work with San Mateo youth in the hopes of instilling in them pride in their community. Even though his father was a physicist at NASA, Stewart said his parents, Bill and Dorris Stewart, were discouraged from living in Palo Alto and ultimately moved to Foster City, where home-buying discrimination was not allowed.

Doug Stewart could remember a few instances in which he felt racially profiled when he was growing up, and said he is focused on creating educational and cultural programs to ensure young people of color know where they come from and take pride in it.

“Every kid in the city … we knew one another,” he said. “It’s part of that make-up and identity of who we are and so we’re very proud of that.”

Stewart and Podlone said many of the students they went to high school with have moved away from the area and settled in the East Bay and other nearby cities.

A member of the San Mateo High School Dance Team, Alexandra Norton said she has seen the school recognize the student body’s diversity through events featuring dances and foods from other countries, such as the Philippines and Mexico. Though she noted black students don’t seem to be represented in the school leadership as much as they might have when her family members attended the school, she said through travels to other states and parts of California for college dance team auditions, she’s seen even fewer black students and families.

“I realize that there’s places outside of here that are not as diverse,” she said.

Podlone, a photographer, said she’s enjoyed staying in touch with teachers like Ann Dieye and former San Mateo High School principal Charles Douglas and giving back to the community by tutoring students. She is also focused on documenting her family’s history and the line of at least 17 family members who have graduated from the school, soon to be 18 with Alexandra Norton’s graduation in May.

“We’re a very close family,” she said. “We keep the traditions alive … we make sure to remember the people who have gone before us.”

anna@smdailyjournal.com

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