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Dave Brubeck, one of five entertainers celebrated by President Barack Obama on Sunday at the 32nd annual Kennedy Center Honors, isn't just a jazz legend: He also happens to be the great grand nephew of Mountain View pioneer Henry Rengstorff.

Sunday's widely reported event (which is scheduled to air Dec. 29 on CBS) drew numerous celebrities and luminaries to Washington, D.C. as the nation's highest honors were bestowed on Robert De Niro, Mel Brooks, Bruce Springsteen, opera singer Grace Bumbry, and Brubeck.

A few weeks previously, following a concert at the Fox Theatre in Redwood City, Brubeck met with two board members of Friends of the Rengstorff House, who later posted on the group's Web site that they were impressed with Brubeck's knowledge of his Rengstorff ancestry.

His great grand uncle, Henry Rengstorff, was a German who came to California during the Gold Rush and eventually settled on 164 acres of what is now Mountain View's Shoreline business district.

Rengstorff built a ship landing on the Bay at what is now Shoreline Park, which fostered early development of Mountain View in the late 1800s. His 1867 home -- the city's iconic Rengstorff House -- still stands at Shoreline Park, where it was restored in the 1980s after being moved from its original location farther south on Shoreline Boulevard (then Stierlin Road).

The last family owner of the Rengstorff House, from the 1920s to the 1950s, was opera singer Perry Askam, a cousin of Brubeck's and one of several Rengstorff descendants who were musically talented. When they met him at the Fox Theatre, Friends of the Rengstorff House board members Ginny Kaninski and Mary Boudrias gave Brubeck a picture of Askam and a CD of his performances, some recorded as far back as the 1930s. The CD is among the memorabilia sold at the Rengstorff House.

In a thank you letter, Brubeck said he hoped to visit the Rengstorff House next time he's in the area. The Friends of the Rengstorff House promise that the home's piano will be in tune.

Brubeck has been designated a "living legend" by the Library of Congress. As a pianist, composer and band leader, he helped bring jazz to the mainstream after World War II, writing several jazz standards and the songs for "This is America, Charlie Brown," among numerous other accomplishments. He is also known for the Dave Brubeck Quartet's "Take Five," a mega-hit written by his longtime collaborator Paul Desmond.

Brubeck still plays today at age 89, and his birthday coincided with Sunday's event.

During the ceremony, President Obama said that when his father took him to see his first jazz concert as a boy, it was to see Brubeck. "I've been a jazz fan ever since," he said.

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