Headline May 10, 2015/ '''SILICON VALLEY!"' SAID THE GREAT STUDENTS ON !WOW!

'''SILICON VALLEY!"' SAID 

THE GREAT STUDENTS ON !WOW!

FOR JOHN'S HIGH SCHOOL senior class photo, the broad shouldered, 165 pound, 6 foot 4 inch teen couldn't afford:

A jacket, dress shirt, and tie, so he borrowed them from his chemistry teacher. The sleeves were six inches too short. Graduating from Morningside High in 1955, Arrillaga attended:

Stanford on a basketball scholarship, juggling several jobs, from delivering campus mail to the odd-gardening gig, to cover expenses. 

So many unusal things unusual enough, there is one aspect to the man that runs counter to the tech industry's  star-centered ethos:

The  look-what-I-did mantra of founder-folk like Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Ellison: John Arrillaga doesn't want to be known.

Famously private, the developor detests awards, won't do ribbon-cuttings, and never ever talks to the press.

Though his family name graces several buildings at Stanford, Arrillaga reportedly does the vast majority of his giving anonymously. Interviews with dozen of associates, relatives, and business partners:

Many of whom requested anonymity as well   -paint a portrait of a man who is so modest that he looks downright pained when receiving a compliment. He will listen with a kind of gentle frustration-

As two longtime friends who were classmates of Arrillaga's at Morningside High School in Inglewood, Calif. ''He just has no place in his life to put admiration,'' says one. 

For months it has been a popular parlor game among the tech cognoscenti: speculating on the identity of company X,-

The mysterious tenant slated to move into the 2-million-square-foot office park planned near Mineta San Jose International Airport. Some insist that it's Apple. spreading its cash-laden wings beyond Cupertino and Sunnyvale.

Did we mention the scale: 10 seven-story buildings, 7,000 plus parking spaces, a complex twice the size of Facebook's current quarters in Menlo Park?

Others say Samsung  -or Google. Note the Googley underground pool. the skyways, the soccer field sketched out in the blueprint. Still others claim Company X is Qualcomm, decamping at last from the outback San Diego  -or EMC, or SAP.

Hey, San Jose Mayor slipped that it's a Fortune 100 company..........Then Microsoft? Or Cisco, maybe?

Of all the names connected to the development, though, there is one that says more about the project, about the mystery surround it, about the history of Silicon Valley and perhaps even its future   -than any other.

And that, remarkably, is one that most people outside the Valley have never heard of: John Arrillaga Sr., the 77-year old co-founding partner of the site's developer, Perry Arrillaga.

Sure the modern tech industry was created by visionaries like Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, the semiconductor entrepreneurs who put the  ''Silicon'' in the Santa Clara Valley-

By like of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, the computer whizzes  who burnished the romance of starting a company in a one-car garage.

By Steve Jobs, who, well, was Steve Jobs.

But Arrillaga   -who also, happens to be the father-in-law of the Valley's venture capitalists,  Marc Andreessen  -is the guy who built the tech corridor where it all happened.

He and business partner Richard Perry are the  real-estate developers who had the foresight in the 1960s to buy up the Valley's fruit-orchards and turn the farmland into thousands of acres of low-slung office parks and campuses that have come to house:

Intel, HP Apple, Google, and more. All told the duo has erected more than 12 million square feet office space and sold or leased tens of billions of dollars in property.

An effort that has made Arrillaga, worth more than  Dollar 2.5 billion. perhaps the richest man in Silicon Valley who  didn't make his money by starting a tech company. [Perry is also billionaire]

Seemingly in lockstep with these development projects, Arrillaga has remade, brick by brick, his Alma Mater Stanford University   -contributing millions of dollars to the school and donating-

An additional  160 buildings, including Stanford Stadium, which he demolished and rebuilt in 2005 and 2006. There are even those who credit Stanford's unprecedented run of championship NCAA teams 

In June, 2014, the school collected its 20th consecutive Legerfield Sports Directors Cup, awarded to the nation's best college athletic program overall  -in large part to Arrillaga's dutiful, hands patronage.

[The claim is hardly outlandish].

The Honour and Serving of the  ''Technology Operational Research'' continues.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of Stanford University. See Ya all on !WOW!    -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless":

''' A Smarter Vision '''

'''Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless