Cowboy Museum will honor ranching family, cattleman

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A longtime Tuolumne County ranching family will be honored Sept. 19, when the Oakdale Cowboy Museum holds its 2009 dinner-auction fund-raiser. The museum also will posthumously recognize Colin Harvey, a well-known cattleman from Oakdale.

Otis Rosasco's ancestors emigrated from Italy to Central California about 1870, seeking land for farming and grazing. Otis' grandfather, Guisippe Rosasco, herded cattle for the Bill John Lord family east of Oakdale near Warnerville, where he learned how to operate a cattle ranch. Guisippe and his wife, Louisa Condé, had 11 children. They raised livestock and tended to cattle in the high country in the summer and in the valley in the winter.

Edmund Rosasco, Otis' father, started as a blacksmith before building his herd and acquiring land. In 1921, the year that Otis was born, Edmund built the historic Craftsman bungalow with the two tall palm trees along Highway 108 at Turner Flat, just a few miles south of Jamestown.

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Otis attended the one-room Montezuma School and graduated from Sonora High School. He continued his education at Modesto Junior College and the University of California at Berkeley. He enlisted in the Navy when World War II began and was sent to Columbia University in New York for officers' training. He served for three years as a naval officer, commanding a subchaser and a destroyer escort.

When he returned from the service, he resumed ranching and started his own herd. He met and married Jean Auser and they had three boys, Clayton, Edmund and Nathan. Nathan, the youngest, runs the ranch with his wife, Doni, and three daughters.

A book by Otis Rosasco, "Early Day Tuolumne County Cattlemen -- 140 years of Rosasco Ranching," is being printed. Museum director Christie Camarillo said she hopes it will be available by the time of the auction.

Colin Harvey was born in 1909 in Sonora, on his father's 150-acre ranch. By his early teens, he was working in the mountains tending sheep and cattle. When he turned 15, he and a friend hired on with the government, shooting deer during an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease. In the 1930s and early '40s, Harvey operated a pack station and riding stable in Pinecrest.

After serving in the signal corps in World War II, Harvey and his wife, Jean, bought a small ranch in the Oakdale area and started running cattle. At age 60, Colin returned to the mountains to start another pack station and riding stable in the Bear Valley area. He also competed in rodeos, specializing in roping and saddle bronc riding. Colin Harvey died in 1982.

The museum dinner will be at Rocha's Valley Enterprises in Oakdale. Tickets, $75 for museum members and $85 for nonmembers, are available by calling 847-7049.

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AcademicEarth.org, an education site established by Modesto native and Johansen High School graduate Richard Ludlow, was selected by TIME.com as one of the 50 best Web sites of 2009. Launched in January, the site offers free access to video courses from universities including Harvard, Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, UCLA and Stanford. The collection of 65 courses includes subjects from history to literature to physics. Ludlow, 23, graduated from Johansen in 2003 and went on to study economics at Yale.

Earlier, AcademicEarth.org was selected one of PC Magazine's Top 100 Web sites, and Ludlow was recognized by BusinessWeek as one of the "Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25." He operates AcademicEarth.org out of San Francisco.

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Honors: Stanislaus County's entry in the California State Fair's Counties Exhibit Program won a gold medal and two special awards (best animation and best use of product/produce). Piranha Produce provided the produce used in the display. The fair, at the Cal Expo in Sacramento, closes Monday.

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In business: Ofelia Saltos Reynoso, personnel director at the Central Valley Opportunity Center, earned certification as a senior professional in human resources from the Human Resources Certification Institute. The institute is affiliated with the Society for Human Resource Management. Reynoso lives in Turlock. Central Valley Opportunity Center has offices in Madera, Stanislaus and Merced counties.

The Accrediting Council for Continuing Education & Training voted to continue the accreditation of Dale Carnegie of Modesto for five years. The commission's action was based on a self-analysis by the Modesto firm, followed by an on-site examination and other reviews. Victor Delgado is president of the Modesto-Stockton office, which offers classes throughout the valley.

Submit news of awards and achievements for this column to local@modbee.com.