Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of stories profiling the 10 ‘Women of Distinction’ being recognized during the Feb. 17 Manteca’s Women’s Leadership Conference.



Evelyn Prouty and other volunteers were setting up for the annual chili cook-off fund-raiser for the Manteca Historical Society when someone handed her a long slender box.

Inside was a letter congratulating her for being chosen as one of the Top 10 Women of Influence in Manteca. The letter further informed her that she will be honored at the 10th Annual-Diamond Anniversary Women’s Connection 2012, a Women’s Wellness and Leadership Conference, to be held Friday, Feb. 17, at the Calvary Community Church in Manteca.

The letter came from Beverly J. Marlow, chairperson of the Women’s Connection and the members of the committee.

“I can’t imagine how I got picked,” was Prouty’s reaction to her selection.

“It’s probably something to do with the cemetery,” she added after a short pause during a telephone interview on Monday.

The Manteca Hall of Fame Class of 2010 member was referring to historic East Union Cemetery, resting place of many of the area’s pioneers and movers and shakers. Prouty was largely instrumental in saving this sacred four-acre plot on the southwest corner of Louise Avenue and Union Road from becoming a weed patch after the state froze all the bank accounts of the cemetery association due to alleged mismanagement. While the state continues its investigation, which essentially left the historic cemetery unable to sell burial plots and without funds to keep up its maintenance, Prouty and Bill Good, the current cemetery association president, along with the Friends of East Union Cemetery and a slew of volunteers, stepped up to the plate to rescue one of Manteca’s historical gems.

In addition to helping mow the cemetery, a task that used to take two former employees to complete in two to four days, Prouty has spearheaded the landscaping of the area especially the places around the building and flag pole where the annual Memorial Day ceremonies and other events are held.

And while the cemetery is as yet unable to sell burial plots, funeral services for those who have plots that have been purchased and paid for are allowed by the state. But with no money to pay for cemetery workers, the task of digging the graves and taking charge of before- and after-funeral services had been undertaken by Prouty and Good plus a handful of volunteers. Prouty even had to use her own mower and other tools such as a pry bar to do her volunteer tasks at the cemetery. Last year, the pry bar that belonged to her grandfather and other items at the cemetery were stolen.

Prouty’s influence does not end with her continuing work at the cemetery. She is also the executive director of the Manteca Historical Museum located at 600 W. Yosemite Avenue. That job is part time; her volunteer work there is full-time.



Prouty authored Manteca history book

Prouty is also the author of a book that is, to date, the definitive history of Manteca. The book is titled “Manteca: Selected Chapters from its History.” It was written when she was working in the People Section of the Manteca Bulletin when Bruce Wright was the publisher. The articles she wrote which were later compiled for the book were serialized in the Manteca Bulletin. Prouty recalled that she had to produce a story for the Bulletin every week.

And, she added, “I did the history (book) on my spare time.”

The scarcity of the words in that one sentence does not even begin to tell the whole story of how all of the information in her stories – names, dates, locations, and events that she had to scour from the archives of the Bulletin, people and families that she had to contact and interview – were obtained. Sometimes, she had to drive to Stockton to do all that research. To access the Bulletin archives, she came in to the building in the evenings after her kids went to bed and worked from 9 to 11 p.m. “every night, seven nights a week” to create what she called “an index of the Bulletin.”  This was in the mid-‘70s when the press room was still located in the back of the Manteca Bulletin.

“The press would be running, and I would sit down in front of the microfilm reader and I went page by page. I wrote down what I thought I might need (for the book), like the obituary of a pioneer. Matter of fact, I still have the index somewhere around. I indexed from 1910 up to 1940. Oh, it was a nightmare,” she said.

The first year she did all that, her stories were published gratis in the Bulletin. But she soon realized that volunteering her time for the task was costing her money, so the publisher “decided he’d give me 32 cents a column, and that’s when he decided he was going to put it in book form.”

But the first year, she said, “They didn’t pay me anything. They said ‘thank you,’” Prouty said, laughing at the memory.

She was already working part-time for the Bulletin at that time. She worked on the stories for the book after her regular office hours.

She still recalls vividly the first two stories she wrote after she was hired at the Bulletin. One was about a wedding. The other was a birth announcement.

On the wedding story, “I described the bride’s dress as having a yoke that had the pearls,” she said.

In her story about the birth announcement on the same page as the wedding, she wrote that “the kid was born 222 inches long,” and didn’t catch the error.

The baby’s mother called the day the story was published and chewed out Prouty over the misprint.

“So I had to do it all over again,” Prouty said.

After those two errors, “I didn’t put my byline (on) for months,” she said, laughing.

After her stint with the Bulletin, Prouty went on to work as editor for the three papers in the foothills owned by the Golden Web Publication – the Amador Ledger, the Amador Dispatch, and the Ione Progress News. After the papers were bought by McClatchy, the three were consolidated into the Amador Ledger -Dispatch. The Ledger was started in 1852; the Dispatch in 1855 .

After the sale of the three newspapers to McClatchy, the Golden Web publisher asked Prouty to work in his new publication venture, the Valley Buy and Sell Press in Lockeford. After working there for about a year, Prouty and Good started publishing the now-defunct Fickle Nickel, a shopper advertising publication with a column written by Prouty appearing in every edition. In 2007, they stopped publication of the Fickle Nickel which was printed by the Bulletin.

Prouty is, in a way, still involved in publishing. As museum director, she is responsible for the publication of the Historical Society newsletter.