Since most of our Yosemite Region members were not part of the club 50 years ago, it would be interesting to get an appreciation of what the club was like “back in the day”. Dale’s input meshed with Norm Swanberg’s input that first populated our Yosemite Region History page in our website.
Dale Burnham, who was part of the club back then, communicated to the region about helping sell his brother-in-law’s 1984 924 Turbo. Of course we were happy to help and the “ad” is posted in our classified section! But, we asked a favor of Dale — could he give us a short recollection of what it was like to be in the Yosemite Region in the 1960″s. Dale, being a true Porsche and Yosemite Region fellow to the core, gave the following remembrance. Thank you Dale!!
My name is Dale Burnham. I joined Yosemite Region, PCA in January 1966. My car was a 1955 356 (not an A) Continental sunroof coupe. I believe Walter Rupple, of Rupple Imports, was president. Some of the members were Johnny and June? Knight, Bob Romans, Jim Burt, Bud and Mary Ann Behrens and Bob and Gladys Ikeada( they won one of the first PCA member raffles). We were a small region but we fathered many others in the beginning of PCA.
I believe the 1970 issue that highlights Yosemite region covers our history. I had a copy but it was stolen at one of our dinner meetings. We are the parent region for Sac Valley, Golden Gate, Monterey Bay and Loma Prieta.
We were a small region when I joined with a lot of our Stockton members belonging to Sac Valley. I became president either 1969 or 1970. Our membership kept declining because people felt the was more activities in Sacramento. About 1972 I advised we were going to dissolve the region unless they helped us. They forced the Stockton people to Yosemite region and they decided to get active locally. Helped a lot.
We had a couple of tours to San Simeon on some 3-4 day weekends. Stockton to Hollister, south on Hwy 25 to the end. Turn right to 101 over to US 1 to San Simeon. Spent 2 days at Hearst Castle and then home. Had 20 + cars. We started doing rallies put on by our own people and by John Cleaver ( rallye master supreme). We had auto crosses all over the local areas from Turlock to Stockton. We used small airports, wineries, fairgrounds and the Stockton Gun and Boccieball club. We had dinners at Dave Wong’s when it was located south of the Cross town freeway in Stockton ( complete meals were not on the menu). We would travel to various places for dinner( down to Dos Paulo’s for basque dinner).
I moved out of the area in 2007 and transferred membership to Heart O’ Dixie.
During the many years I belonged to Yosemite I served as president, vice pres, sec/treas newsletter publisher and historian. My wife designed our regional badge that was used until late 2000.