Blanchard Elementary School, Blanchard Street and, of course, Blanchard Community Library named for the son the Blanchards lost so young, remain constants in Santa Paula. As does Elizabeth, who said her earliest memory of Santa Paula is the home the Munger family had at 537 N. Mill Street.“Santa Paula is home.... I was born in Bardsdale, which is not a community,” and her very early years were spent on the family ranch where apricots and walnuts - among the area’s first famous crops - were grown.Elizabeth’s activism was modeled after her mother’s interests. “Community service was pretty much second nature to me,” she noted.Elizabeth has a considerable resume: an active Santa Paula High School graduate - like her parents before her - Elizabeth graduated from Stanford with three degrees. When asked in the 1960s to join the county Juvenile Justice Commission, “It opened the door to me... it was the big thing that propelled me further into public service” that had already included volunteering as a Cub Scout den mother, Blue Bird troop leader, and progressive religious teacher at First United Methodist Church.Elizabeth’s service is too long to list, but includes Ventura County Grand Jury foreperson and an elected trustee and/or president of many boards such as the Santa Paula elementary and high school districts and the family’s namesake Blanchard Community Library. Elizabeth was also active with Las Patronas of the Assistance League and Santa Paula Housing Authority, among many others.Selected Santa Paula Citizen of the Year in 1983, she was also honored by Caregivers in 1991, in 1999 the focus of the Interface Children Family Services Tribute Dinner, which established an annual scholarship in her name, lauded in 2000 by the SPUHS Alumni Association, and in 2005 Elizabeth was honored by the Boys & Girls Club of Santa Clara Valley. Elizabeth was also a popular docent for the Ventura County Museum of History and Art and the Santa Paula California Oil Museum.“I didn’t consider public service a duty; I enjoyed it too much,” but Elizabeth said she “had to realize the importance in saying ‘No!’ I had to learn to say it to a lot of things.”Overall, she noted, “I just thought what I did was natural,” and Elizabeth remains modest - and somewhat surprised - at the accolades she has received throughout her life, which now include the Grand Marshal of the 2008 Citrus Parade.
Elizabeth Blanchard: 2008 Citrus Parade Grand Marshal has own history
July 09, 2008
Santa Paula News
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By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula Times“Citrus, The Beginning of Santa Paula” is the theme of the 41st Annual Kiwanis Club Citrus Festival and Parade that will recognize and honor Santa Paula’s roots, both literally and figuratively, with an admired community activist whose name reflects not only the city’s founder, but who has made quite a bit of history on her own.Elizabeth Blanchard, the granddaughter-in-law of Nathan Weston Blanchard, has been selected the Grand Marshal of the 2008 Citrus Festival Parade to be held July 19 on East Main Street. The gala parade will stretch from 7th to 11th streets when it begins at 10 a.m.“Elizabeth is the perfect representative of the Blanchard family and its legacy,” said Citrus Festival Co-Chair Bill Grant. “Citrus was the beginning of Santa Paula, and when we decided on the theme we thought, ‘Gosh, who would be a good person or people to represent the very beginning?’ Immediately, someone said the Blanchards... after all, Nathan Blanchard was the one who began the area’s citrus industry. And Elizabeth is recognized countywide for her volunteer efforts and is a devoted Santa Paulan... who else would we ask?”“Oh, the Blanchards were latecomers compared to the Mungers,” said the former Elizabeth Munger, with a twinkle in her eye, during a recent interview after genealogist Cathy Robbins presented Elizabeth with a Munger family history. “It’s taken me 91 years to find out my own family had a history,” noted Elizabeth, a native of Bardsdale who moved to Santa Paula as a girl, married Eliot Blanchard, had a family and a career of good works.“Mom will be riding in Pepe Gonzalez’s 1937 Cadillac convertible,” and 22 relatives, including Elizabeth’s son Jim and daughters Betsy and Angela, are “coming to honor Mother” by riding in Limoneira’s vintage fire engine, said her son, John Blanchard. The president/CEO of the Santa Paula Chamber of Commerce, Blanchard said the parade would “create such a memory for the kids!”“I was surprised, absolutely,” Elizabeth said of her selection as Grand Marshal. “All this time, so many years have passed.”Elizabeth packed those years to the fullest with family and volunteerism. “Elizabeth has been so active in the community and throughout Ventura County, devoted to the Santa Paula community,” a legacy of volunteerism that Grant said is also demonstrated by her son, John and daughter, Betsy Chess.Nathan Weston Blanchard, born in Madison, Maine in July 1831, came to Northern California during the Gold Rush in 1854, but he turned his interests to meat butchering and later the lucrative lumber trade. Elected to the California legislature in 1861, Nathan married Ann Elizabeth Hobbs in 1864. In 1872, after the death of their first child Dean, they moved to Ventura County.Blanchard’s success as a merchant enabled him and his partner Elisha Bradley, who remained in Northern California, to purchase 2,700 acres of the Rancho Santa Paula y Saticoy and recorded the town site of Santa Paula on a portion of it in 1875. On March 4, 1893, Blanchard and Wallace Hardison signed the incorporation papers officially creating Limoneira Company, which remains an international agriculture powerhouse.
