By Carolyn Barnes
Hidden Villa in Los Altos Hills welcomed more than 500 people last Saturday evening to the seventh annual Josephine and Frank Duveneck Humanitarian Awards dinner. After touring the flower and vegetable gardens, sampling organic wines and viewing the art-filled Duveneck main house, the guests promenaded past cows, sheep and horses to dine in a huge white tent in the meadow.
“Some of our staff were here first thing this morning to fill in the holes the gophers dug last night,” Judith Steiner, Hidden Villa’s executive director told, dinner guests, who dined on organically grown produce and wore name tags handcrafted from paper embedded with wildflower seeds, which could later be planted in the garden.
Nell Newman, daughter of actor Paul Newman and founder and president of Newman’s Own Organics, presented three Josephine and Frank Duveneck Humanitarian Awards on behalf of Hidden Villa. She described how growing up on her parents’ Connecticut farm gave her a life-long respect for the earth and how, similarly, Hidden Villa teaches urban children about the connections between the natural environment, humans and the foods they eat.
“I wish the educational programs at Hidden Villa could be available to children everywhere,” Newman said.
Duveneck Humanitarian Award honoree Alice Waters, internationally known chef and owner of Chez Panisse restaurant, echoed Newman’s wish and presented a devastating picture of the values that children absorb when they dine on fast foods.
“They are taught that food is cheap and abundant and will always be available … that disposability (of wrappings and containers) is not a problem … that eating is about fueling up as fast as possible,” Waters said.
“They also learn that food diversity is undesirable and that food should taste exactly the same wherever you are and whatever the season.”
As an antidote to what Waters called “the miles of food franchises in every American city,” she recommended that children learn that “real food takes time and that cooking and eating are not drudgery. We need to teach our children generosity and hospitality and that cooking and eating together brings richness to human life,” she said.
Other Duveneck Award honorees included George Chippendale of Palo Alto, an ad hoc member of Hidden Villa’s camp staff outreach team, who has recruited over 1,000 children from underserved East Palo Alto to attend Hidden Villa Summer Camp; and John Francis, a U.N. Environment Program Goodwill Ambassador to the World’s Grassroots Communities, who is walking around the globe to promote environmental and social harmony.
Honorary co-chairpersons for the event were Ambassador Bill and Jean Lane, who, before dinner, were presented a “thank you” bench in the newly restored gardens of the Duveneck residence. The Lanes underwrote the landscaping project.
Event co-chairpersons were Brit Krueger of Sunnyvale and Donna Young of Los Altos Hills. The event raised $100,000 to support Hidden Villa’s programs and camp scholarships.
