Decades of history unite with merger of two firms
San Jose’s HMH Engineers was founded in 1976, but now the company is going to be the steward of legacies that stretch back decades further.
Gerry de Young and Michael Sheehy, the principals at Ruth & Going, had been in discussions for the past year with HMH about its employees and clients coming over to them. The Santa Clara engineering company opened in 1949 and in recent decades worked on numerous residential subdivisions and retail centers including Almaden Ranch and Coleman Landings, as well as being the civil engineering company responsible for transforming the former IBM location on Cottle Road from a 1950s campus to Western Digital’s world headquarters today.
And just as an agreement was
being hammered out, Charles W. Davidson Co. Vice President Peter Smith told the HMH crew — led by David Wilson and six partners — that his company’s legendary founder had decided to close the doors of the company, which was founded in 1960 and had recently provided work for some of the high-rises sprouting in San Jose including One South Market.
Smith, who has more than 30 years of experience in the business, joined HMH as a land development manager. De Young and Sheehy, who started at Ruth & Going in 1973 and 1979, respectively, also will be land development managers at HMH, where their former Ruth & Going employees also started this week.
Though it’s unfortunate to lose two key companies very entwined in the growth of San Jose and Silicon Valley, their names will be around as long as their buildings stand. And it sounds like HMH — which has worked on Westfield Valley Fair’s expansion and Google’s Downtown West project in San Jose — will keep its legacies alive as it adds to its own.
A SONG FOR OUR TIMES >> San Jose singer-songwriter Maddy Michaels has a new single coming out Friday called “Sanity,” and that sounds like something we all could use a bit of right now. Michaels said she hopes sharing her own experience with anxiety through the song brings awareness to the stigma surrounding mental health, as well as the emotional and mental obstacles people are facing today.
Michaels, 23, wrote the song during her sophomore year at the Berklee College of Music. She started recording it on the East Coast in November 2019 but didn’t finish it until the end of 2020 in California because of the pandemic. “The COVID pandemic has absolutely increased anxiety across the world, making the song especially relevant,” she said. The track will be available on streaming platforms if you want to check it out, and you can find out more about Michaels on her website, maddymichaels.com.
LESSONS IN KINDNESS >> Pamela Craig’s fourth grade class in the Cambrian Virtual School Program could teach the rest of us a thing or two about helping others.
One student, IIliya Ghaderipoor, completed more than 1,200 math lessons on an online program and contributed his $100 prize for being tops in the state to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Not long afterward, the entire class won the platform’s national weekly math contest and passed up a $50 gift card for pizza and voted unanimously in favor of donating the money to Second Harvest of Silicon Valley.
“Due to the impact of COVID-19, our school district is focusing on the social-emotional well-being of our students — learning about empathy, compassion and managing strong feelings,” VSP and Sartorette Elementary School Principal Debbie Stein said. “Mrs. Craig’s class not only reached an academic achievement worth celebrating; they applied the social emotional lessons to benefit the community, empowering themselves in the process.”