Ruth and Tom Berghoff

I was born in Brooklyn, NY. I attended school in three states prior to high school graduation. ln one of those states I met the finest man I have ever known. Tom Berghoff was from a large wonderful mid western family in Fort Wayne, lndiana where we married in 1961. Our first year of marriage was spent in a lake side cottage in Orlando, Florida, then Tom accepted a job with United Technologies in Sunnyvale, California.

ln 1970 while camping at Henry Coe Park...we saw signs 'lots for sale' on the way home. The following weekend we returned to explore the area further. At that time the only road up the hill was Thomas Grade and the only trees in Jackson Oaks were oaks. We drove thru Holiday Lake Estates where we saw people playing golf on the nine hole course, others playing tennis...boats were in the marina - in short everything looked great!

We then stopped at the Jackson Oaks sales office...(aka Jackson Oaks Clubhouse.) Jackson Oaks appealed to us as it featured underground utilities, natural gas, city water and sewer and was completely within the Morgan Hill city limits. Holiday Lake had above ground utilities, privately owned roads, part in city, part in county.

Since the paved road ended at Oak Hill Court where the clubhouse ls located...Tom and I WALKED across the muddy greenbelt to Lot 37, unit 2. The view was lovely...and we were under contract to buy the 1/3 acre lot...l believe it was $7300 at the time with financing. The developer was Castle & Cook out of Hawaii. Thought the lot would be a good investment.

Tom accepted a job at lBM, plans were drawn by David Gilchrist, and Monis Jones was the contractor. We moved ln in September of '72. Believe we were the first of six or seven homes at that time...

Bev Mercurio

Five simple words brought me to live in Morgan Hill ln 1978: "Let's go for a ride," my husband, Richard, suggested to our ten-year-old daughter, eight-year-old son and me. We piled into our Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser and headed south leaving our San Jose tract home with its city-sized lot. We lazily explored Morgan Hill and then happened upon a new development called Dunne-Hill Estates that boasted homesites on approximately one acre lots that were dotted with walnut trees, remnants of the former walnut orchard. My husband was smitten and since we were approaching 40, I attributed it to his "manopause". I was hesitant but my husband and our kids were enthusiastic about the possibilities: a horse, a pool, a farm, etc. Though I was not fully invested in the idea, during November of that same year we sold the only home our children had known and moved to a cul-de-sac with a street address of Morgan Court, off Morgan Avenue, in Morgan Hill. 

My husband began work on a barn and corral that would house our daughter's newly purchased horse, Ginger. We then had a pool put in followed by secured enclosures for our rabbits, chickens, ducks, turkeys and sheep. A large garden was planted that supplied us with vegetables and various fruit trees were planted plus grape vines all of which eventually bore delicious fruit. 

The mini farm was a delightful experience for all of our family and l, too, had all fallen in love with Morgan Hil! There came a day, however when our children were grown and had left the nest, my husband and I had aged, and we decided the acre was still nice .....but a lot of work.

"Let's go for a ride," Richard suggested one day.......ln 2000 we moved to my present home in Morgan Hill. I am thankful that I have been able to live in such a delightful community.

Gail and Ameer Tozy

My name is Gail Tozy, married to Ameer Tozy. I am a native Californian born in San Francisco and raised in Monterey until I was 13, then we moved to Pato Alto. Ameer came to the United States in 1960 from lraq to finish college. We met in January 1963 after being pen pals for a few months. We married on April 6,1963. We both worked and bought our first house in San Jose where we raised out three daughters in the ten years we lived in that house.

The way we found out about Jackson Oaks was because Ameer, a Senior Examiner at Ticor Titte lnsurance in San Jose, was working on the Oceania subdivision project in 1969-1970. We decided to go took at the subdivision and drove up scary Thomas Grade. I thought at that time l would never be able to drive up that road. Of course, once I did it was fine. We found the sales office in the club house and fell in love with the beautiful pool and views of Lake Anderson. A sales agent, Jim Lindsey, who worked for Oceania drove us around to see available lots. We didn't buy at that time but went home and thought about it. I thought it was too far from San Jose. We went back to look at lots again and chose the one our house is on in 1972, We decided to build in 1973 and grading started on April 6, 1973 -our wedding anniversary. The house was finished in August 1973. There were a few other houses being built at the same time as ours and several blocked our beautiful city view. ln the next several years, trees grew and blocked a lot more of our city and Lake Anderson views.

We had some wonderful parties at the club house. We were mostly young people who had moved here and we had a lot of fun. Ameer became president of the board in the middle 1970s and served two years. Many of us were involved with decorating and arranging parties. We had an annual Luau. The men dug a big hole and roasted a pig. What a fun time. We also had bands come and play until midnight; we didn't have complaints at that time because most of the people attended the parties.

I went back to work in 1979 and stopped being as involved with the social committee. A few years later in the mid 1990s l became involved again with the social committee and started going out before Christmas to judge the best decorated houses. Ameer and I invited the social group and spouses to our house after the judging. Each year it started to grow and became a yearly party at the Tozys'. Covid stopped our party and then Ameer and I have had some accidents and falls that slowed us down. We also bought another small house in El Dorado Hills close to most of our family who have all moved out of Morgan Hill and Hollister. We have been spending Christmas with our family up there. We miss doing the Christmas party but with our health issues it would be difficult for us to do.

We love Morgan Hill and our wonderful Jackson Oaks and plan on living here as long as we can.