Daily Drive in Camarillo pays homage to three brothers—Charles (“C.J.”), Erastus, and Wendell Daily—who were early settlers of the Pleasant Valley. Yet Hueneme can boast a connection to them as well. At least two brothers were gainfully employed at the 6,000-acre John Patterson Ranch—C.J. as a manager—during the late-1890s. By 1916, the Daily brothers would own thousands of acres in the fertile Pleasant Valley, where they would introduce lima beans, sugar beets, peas, lettuce, avocados, walnut, and citrus that would eventually end up being shipped out of the Wharf at Hueneme.

Joy Todd, who has resided in Camarillo for more than 50 years, comes to us from the Pleasant Valley Historical Society, where she presently serves as president. Her research in the historical society archives—sometimes only short newspaper clips—led to further research.

A Southern California native who grew up in Northridge, Joy graduated from San Fernando Valley State College (CSUN) with a degree in Political Science and History. In 2014 she received the honorary title of Doña from the Pleasant Valley Historical Society for her volunteer service in the community and served on the Ventura County Civil Grand Jury for two years.

During the course of his career, Dr. Mark Fleischman assisted local police in skeletal identification, analyzed a slave burial ground from the late 17th Century in Jamaica and helped in a skeletal analysis of a poor house/sanitarium burial ground in Rome, New York. He did the fieldwork for his Ph.D. from in the Orinoco Delta in Venezuela with the native tribe of Warao Indians. If anybody can draw thoughtful conclusions about the nature of human diversity, Dr. Fleischman, a longtime friend of the Museum, is the man.

Dr. Fleischman received his BA in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1962, and his MA in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1964. With a doctorate in hand in the field of Bio-Anthropology from UCLA, Fleischman entered the field of higher education—teaching courses for a couple of years at Los Angeles City College as well as what is now California State University, Los Angeles. He would accept a position at Syracuse University in New York in 1970 and would remain there for 32 years, retiring from the university in 2002.

Dr. Joan K. Peters is a Professor Emerita in the Literature and Writing Department at California State University at Channel Islands. She earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago.

During the 2nd Wave of the Women’s Movement, she created some of the first Women’s Studies courses and programs, she was a founding member of Sagaris, A Feminist Think Tank that brought together women from all over the country to work on a unified political platform, and she’s written two books on working mothers: When Mother’s Work: Loving Our Children Without Sacrificing Ourselves and Not Your Mother’s Life: Changing the Rules of Work, Love, and Family.

Not only was she Coordinator of The Creative Writing Program but in addition to offering creative writing and literature courses, she team-taught “Narratives of Southern California” and “The Sixties and Seventies in America” with Prof. Frank Barajas from the history program.