In 2001, Stephen Chiapella visited the students at Dunn Middle School, and shared the colorful story of his family’s adventures in Mexico and the United States. It's a classic California saga about ethnic diversity and the need to accept and embrace change, told with his characteristic humor and modesty. He passed away in 2014 at the age of eighty-eight.
An anthropologist with deep roots in the central coast region of California, Larry Spanne probably knows this part of the country as well as anyone. He worked for many years at Vandenberg Air Force Base, where his role was to help protect, interpret, and preserve cultural resources. In this interview he talks of boyhood memories, local history, archaeology, and making peace with the past.