DiMaggio Betta Group: Generations + Legacy; A Life Well Lived

We don’t sell homes, we share memories. We provide insight, and community, we build friendships and help our clients move onto or into, their next chapter. 

As pillars of the community we share the history, explain the many wonderful things that make up our small town, we build friendships, and share a lifetime of experience. 

When you call upon us to sell your home filled with love and memories, it’s not a number that we give that adds value, the market dictates that. What we provide is a life filled with experience and connections, resources and a history. We will prepare your home in its best possible light —depending on what you choose to do to enhance your investment. 

Our strongest and most valuable asset to any seller is our close ties to the community, first hand experience of the schools from preschool to high school over two generations, and much about the private and catholic schools from personal knowledge. Our insight runs deep; growing up in Piedmont, raising our kids in Piedmont and watching residents come and go; even sharing a backyard fence with my parents, our children’s grandparents. And calling homes by the first person we knew who resided in that home. The Christ’s, The Gallagher’s, The Loomis’, The Gray’s, The Walker’s, The Hill’s The Hoefs’, The DiMaggio’s, The Settlemier’s, Sinclair’s, Metheny’s and so on. Piedmont homes are not just an address, they are a living, breathing photo album and memory book. 

It’s pretty cool to work with your childhood friends. There’s a warmth, kindness and mutual respect that comes with working together. It’s a wonderful feeling and exciting to witness the next generation. You know you’ve hit a higher milestone when you are old enough to reference, “the next generation”. Oh dear! And that phrase, too. Now I’m really dating myself! 

As young ones are getting married, having babies and starting their families, others, sadly, are leaving us behind. Like Dr. Yarris. Dr. Joe was not only my pediatrician, but Bianca and Chase’s, as well. Or Mrs. Robb, Penny Robb. We spent a lot of time corresponding with Mrs. Robb at The Piedmont Rec Center where we registered the kids’ classes and activities; and later Penny, was one of my fellow charity members at Hill Branch, raising funds for UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland.  

Many of you reading this have witnessed the comings and goings of people through death and divorce, relocation out, and new residents in. And the changes occurring within the City like the Scientology Center to the Piedmont Center for the Arts, or our office, Corcoran Icon Properties, previously Highland Partners and before that, from Ron Morgan’s flower shop and before that, The Highlander (Gifts and Pharmacy). Ellen Hoefs (now Bullock) and I remember it as The Highlander, our candy store, where we visited many Saturday’s during our elementary school years. Standing at the counter looking wide-eyed through the glass, not to be touched, was an array of colorful gum and candy. A creature of habit, still now and back then, I’d ask Mrs Lee for the Jolly Rancher stick, either apple, watermelon or fire –pure sugar that if bitten into, and not slowly licked, would lodge into your teeth, sometimes making our gums bleed. Oftentimes, I’d get both – a watermelon or fire stick, and a red licorice rope. 

Upon return, we would either walk back through the Piedmont Park, past the Guilford Tennis Courts to her house where we’d have our weekly, weekend sleepovers. And later we might meander through the Park or down Wildwood Ave to play tetherball or four square on the upper playground at Wildwood School to bother Delvie, and Denise Herrerias. (We were so young, and if memory serves, annoying!) If you don’t know who I’m referring to, I bet you do, when I say Delvie is Mark Delventhal. It was astounding to me that when we moved back into town to raise Bianca and Chase, Mark was one of many from my childhood still working  for the district, just like Christine Petersen, from a middle school student to a long career at Wildwood, Mr. Morrison, my favorite principal, and Tom, who we ordered our cheerleading sweaters and Spirit Letters from, was just a young man working at Montclair Sports, only to buy and run it later. As soon as Adam and I moved to Piedmont in 1995 (I sure wasn’t gone long— having left for college in 1982.) When Adam met Tom he never purchased on Amazon or shopped at any big box retail stores. He was, and still is, Tom’s biggest fan. Adam calls him, The (ski) Boot Whisperer. 

Over the last few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to work with more of our Piedmont friends as we have over the years. Just the other day I was standing in our buyer’s new home talking with her mom whom I hadn’t seen in almost 40 years. But it was as if no time had passed. I was in awe of how much her daughter, our buyer/client, looked like her. As our client walked in with her adorable baby, I was swept up with emotion as my life flashed like a movie time lapse – the next generation, where myself and my friends now sit, at the top of that pyramid. Standing in front of me in that house was grandma (my friend), her daughter, and her daughter’s daughter. I was only disappointed I did not get to see Mr and Mrs Hoefs, Ellen’s parents, who would be the great grandparents of baby Taylor. 

Piedmont. A beautiful community, a life well lived, a wonderful place to raise a family. How can we help you move into your next chapter? Contact The DiMaggio Betta Group, Corcoran Icon Properties. Get In Touch.