Doug’s Sonoma Journey
This is the first of three stories about Doug’s relationship with Sonoma.
🟩 Rafts, Parades, and Growing Up in Sonoma — Chapter 1 (You are reading this story.)
Click on “I Never Found Another Place Quite Like Sonoma” to discover why Doug made Sonoma his family’s home.
🟨 I Never Found Another Place Quite Like Sonoma — Chapter 2
🟥 Giving Back to the Town That Raised Me — Chapter 3
In Doug’s final chapter, he shares how community service, sports, and delivering meals keep him connected.
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Doug Lobsinger was born in Sonoma in 1950. After several childhood moves, his family returned around 1957. He remembers a town full of children, familiar shopkeepers, homemade parade costumes, and adventures on Sonoma Creek.
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Rafts, Parades, and Growing Up in Sonoma
I was born in Sonoma in 1950, when the hospital was up on Castle Road. But we moved around quite a bit before we settled here.
My father was in construction, and he tried different locations and businesses in that line of work. We lived in Napa, San Bernardino, and Colorado for a short time. We also spent a year in Michigan, where my father was born and his family lived.
After one Michigan winter, we realized why he had left the first time. It was too brutal. So we came back to California and Sonoma.
My mother’s parents had purchased property here, and my grandfather was a contractor in town. We settled back in Sonoma around 1957, when I was about six years old.
It was a wonderful place to grow up. There were kids all over town, and it was a very supportive community, both in school and in the activities available to us.
I went to Prestwood Elementary and later my children went there too. I played baseball when I was young. In high school, I started playing tennis and ran cross country. Sports were a part of growing up here.
My friend and I used to build rafts and take them down Sonoma Creek. We also participated in the town parades. One year, we made big wine-bottle costumes out of chicken wire and paper. Another year, I was tarred and feathered, and he was the sheriff running me out of town.
Those were the kinds of things we did for fun.
You could go downtown, walk into the different stores, and know the owners. And they knew who you were. There were two hardware stores on the Plaza when I was growing up. The businesses were different, but that feeling of knowing people made it special.
My mother raised seven children here—five boys and two girls. She was an amazing woman. Later, she worked in the finance department at Sonoma State Hospital and became a docent at Jack London State Historic Park.
My father served on the City Council for a long time and was also mayor. So being part of the town was something I grew up around.
I still know people who were born and raised here, people I went to high school with and have known for many, many years. Those friendships are a big part of what Sonoma means to me.
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Doug’s childhood memories show how belonging developed through everyday familiarity: merchants who knew the children, schools shared across generations, and celebrations residents helped create themselves. His family’s involvement in local government and public service also placed community participation close to home from an early age.
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This story was created from an interview with Doug Lobsinger conducted by Don Lundgren. Doug’s words have been edited for length and clarity while preserving his voice, experiences and meaning.
