Several weeks ago, I received an e-mail from Leslie Towns Navarra, a 1972 graduate of Tracy High School who now lives in Sacramento. A former Tracy Press reporter, she said she wanted to share a story with me. Here it is, in Leslie’s own words:

“I just went next door to deliver some Father’s Day chocolate-chip cookies to my almost-93-year-old neighbor, Charlie Cooper. I have lived next door to Charlie for 10 years, and he is the nicest neighbor anyone could hope to have. Gives us buckets of lemons in the winter. Always has his eyes open for an emergency situation. Throws a hose over the fence when our well pump goes out. Never complains when our dogs bark at a squirrel at 5 o’clock in the morning. He is a throwback to a more civilized time. A gentle and caring soul.

“This morning, Charlie told me that he had a call last night from a girl he went to school with, from second grade through high school. She called to wish him Happy Father’s Day and remind him that it had been 75 years since they had graduated from high school.

“Figuring he was a long-time Sacramentan, I asked him what high school he attended. ‘Oh, it wasn’t in Sacramento. I went to Tracy High.’ ‘Tracy High! I graduated from Tracy High, too.’ I replied. ‘I’m a Tracy girl!’

“He told me his Tracy story. Charlie was born in Tracy in 1916 and graduated from Tracy High in 1934. He lived at the corner of Highland and Parker avenues and walked down Highland every day to high school. I told him Pete and I lived at 142 E. Highland when we were first married.”

Charlie told Leslie that he went to Central School when it was located on Central Avenue. Most of the school’s playground was sold in 1926 to the community organization that developed the Tracy Inn. He also said that many streets in the central part of Tracy were being paved for the first time while he was growing up. (In those days, the northern city limits were at Eaton Avenue.)

He asked if Leslie remembered Pat Bone, the legendary “Sarge” with the Tracy Police Department, a cop “who looked out for the high school kids in the old days.” But that was before Leslie’s time.

“I asked what he remembered about the Tracy Press,” Leslie wrote, “and he told me his niece, Mary Harriet, was a typesetter there. I remember Mary. She worked nights with Maggie Juarequi and Ron Usher.”

Leslie concluded:

”So, I guess a person who lives in Tracy and hears stories about the old days and the old characters may not be impressed by an encounter like this, but I am quite surprised to learn that my kind neighbor is a Tracy boy. I should have figured it out a long time ago.”

If I may interject, my best guess is that it was Marge Larsen who called him. Marge, daughter of onetime Tracy Mayor Bill Larsen and a longtime teacher in Stockton schools, grew up across Highland Avenue from Charlie and was in the Tracy High Class of 1934.

So what about…?

Following last week’s column recalling the circumstances surrounding the dismissal of Bev Frye as Tracy High principal in 1983, several readers have inquired about others mentioned in the account.

Jim French, who had originally hired Frye in 1964, served as superintendent of Tracy Public Schools (elementary and high school districts) for 20 years, from 1962 to 1982. The native of Nebraska came to Tracy from Dinuba, in Fresno County, where there was a similar joint-administration arrangement.

French was the first joint administrator of both districts. Although the two districts continued to have their own boards of trustees, they were administrated by a single staff — called Tracy Public Schools — headed by the superintendent. That continued until the Tracy High and Tracy Elementary districts were merged in 1996. Rural elementary schools feeding into the high school district remain independent to this day.

After retiring in 1982, French stayed in Tracy and died Oct. 15, 2005. The administration building for the Tracy Unified School District is named for him.

Robert Baum was the new superintendent whose evaluation of Frye sparked the episode that led to the high school board not rehiring Frye as Tracy High principal in 1983.

Baum came to Tracy from Akron, Ohio, in 1982 to succeed French. He continued as superintendent of Tracy Public Schools for eight years. He then became superintendent of the Mt. Diablo School District, a huge district centered in Concord.

Baum died several years later when he suffered a heart attack while walking across a shopping center parking lot in Concord.

• Sam Matthews, Tracy Press publisher emeritus, can be reached at 830-4234 or by e-mail at shm@tracypress.com.