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By Kyra Kitlowski, Contra Costa Times
October 23, 2002 --PLEASANTON, CA
-- She's only 8 years old, but by the time
Autumn Whitney is 18, she wants to be a
volunteer for the 2012 Olympics, assuming
the Bay Area is selected to host the games.
This Valley View Elementary School student
already has her volunteer job picked out.
"I want to carry the torch," she
said.
Autumn and other Valley View students are
getting excited about the games. They've
been revved up by members of the Bay Area
Sports Organizing Committee, who hope to
get many students signed up now to be Olympics
volunteers.
The further their point, on Tuesday they
brought in 100-year-old Elizabeth Hall,
a life-long Pleasanton resident and volunteer
extraordinaire.
Hall volunteered in both world wars and
with housing organizations in the Pleasanton
area.
Valley View students were equally interested
in learning about what games she played
as a child, if she had her own books to
bring to school and what Pleasanton was
like in 1902.
Hall told them she would shoot at tin cans
with her brothers, walk to Sunol for fun,
and run in the fields and drink out of the
creeks.
"We had far more freedom in those days,"
she said. "All we had to do was look
out for snakes."
She told them the elementary school she
was to attend as a child burned down, so
kids had to learn in church halls or anywhere
there was room until another school was
built.
By the time she was ready for high school,
there wasn't one in Pleasanton, so she had
to travel to Livermore. "There weren't
automobiles back then," she said, adding
that some children rode their own horses
to school.
Pleasanton's school district is encouraging
its students to sign up to volunteer for
the Olympics if they will be at least 18
by 2012.
Their names will be submitted to a committee
deciding next month between the San Francisco
and New York areas as the U.S. nominee for
the 2012 Olympics. The final decision will
be made in 2005 by the international committee.
Volunteers must register on-line by midnight
Monday at pleasanton.k12.ca.us.
Reach Kyra Kitlowski at 925-847-2123 or
kkitlowski@cctimes.com.
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