At 95 years old, Lucille Lorge still calls the same Castro Valley home she and her husband, Ray, built more than seven decades ago. To generations of residents, Lorge is more than a longtime neighbor, she is the living memory of a town that grew from chicken farms and rolling hills into a thriving community.
Born on Grove Way near Hayward, Lorge’s connection to Castro Valley began long before city lines were drawn. “I went to Hayward High. There was no high school in Castro Valley then,” she recalls with a laugh. Her roots, however, go deeper than her own lifetime. “My great-grandfather, Henry Thomford, had the first inn in Castro Valley in 1883,” Lorge told the Forum. “It was a way station for people driving horses and cattle to market in San Francisco. It stood where Trader Joe’s is today.”
That pioneering spirit runs in her veins. When she married Ray Lorge in the early 1950s, the couple became part of the area’s once-booming poultry industry…