[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 128 (Friday, July 25, 2025)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E729-E730]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         HONORING JOHN GHERINI

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. SALUD O. CARBAJAL

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, July 25, 2025

  Mr. CARBAJAL. Mr. Speaker, with his retirement as President of the 
Board of Directors of the Santa Barbara Mission Archive-Library on 
January 17th, 2025, John Gherini, Esq. concluded over thirty-seven 
years of distinguished service to the Archive-Library. Established as 
public non-profit educational corporation in 1967, the Santa Barbaran 
Mission Archive-Library serves as a unique repository of Mission

[[Page E730]]

Era California records, documents, and artifacts. As Professor Emeritus 
Robert Senkewicz of Santa Clara University, has written. ``SBMAL is a 
unique and indispensable resource. Its artifacts and documents tell the 
deep and complex story of California's diverse peoples--especially 
Native Americans, Latinos, and Anglos--in a way that is unmatched 
anywhere else in the state.''
  John Gherini has worked long and hard behind the scenes to ensure the 
continued operation of the Archive-Library. Serving as legal counsel to 
the Board and dealing with bequests and grants in order to build the 
endowment essential to its continued function. His membership on the 
Board, which began in 1987, has resulted in numerous acquisitions not 
only of funds, but also of the papers of such distinguished scholars as 
Norman Neuerburg, the art historian behind the construction of the 
Getty Villa, and Doyce B. Nunis, Jr., longtime editor of the journal of 
the Historical Society of Southern California.
  Besides his encouragement of other scholars, Mr. Gherini has written 
two books on the history of Santa Cruz Island, where he spent much time 
as a young man working with his family on the island, which his great-
great-grandfather, Justinian Caire once owned in its entirety: Santa 
Cruz Island: A History of Conflict and Diversity and the two volume 
Santa Cruz Island, An Illustrated History provide rich and detailed 
histories of the largest of the Channel Islands. The second work 
``explores the geological origins of the island and traces the cultural 
history from the native inhabitants, over 13,000 years ago, to the 
establishment of the Channel Islands National Park in 1980 and current 
efforts to preserve and protect the island.'' (Santa Barbara Historical 
Museum website). Mr. Gherini has been a generous benefactor and deeply 
involved with many other organizations in the Santa Barbara area, 
including Bishop Garcia Diego High School.
  On July 25, 2025, the Mission Archive-Library, at a special event in 
honor of Mr. Gherini, will name its exhibit space, which includes among 
other things large paintings by the distinguished turn of the 
twentieth-century California landscape and architecture artist Edwin 
Deakin, the Gherini Gallery. I urge my colleagues to join me in 
congratulating Mr. John Gherini and the Santa Barbara Mission Archive-
Library on this auspicious occasion.

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