Chapter 9
Siblings
This portrait was taken approximately two years before Elizabeth was killed. It is framed and always hung in our home. I’m told that I am scowling because I was corrected for pulling Elizabeth’s hair. Missing of course is John who was born in Minneapolis and Robert who was born in Long Beach.
Howard was a journeyman painter-paper hanger when he graduated from hi School and continued working with Dad. He was fortunate because in 1936 the depression was still in force and he had a good paying job as opposed to most of his friends. He married prior to the war and had three children, Linda the oldest and the twins, Patti and Betty.
He enlisted in the Navy and was discharged so he could return home and care for the children who had been taken from their mother because of neglect. They moved to Sacrament to live with Mom and Dad and he was killed by a truck that left the road to avoid hitting another car. The children were awarded a judgment against the company and Mom and Dad were given legal custody and after four boys they raised three girls.
Pattie married Bob Gilhooley and they had two sons, Scott and Chris. Patti is a flight attendant for Delta Airlines. Her son, Scott, works in construction and Chris is an architect. Bob passed away and Pattie is still flying as an attendant.
Betty married, divorced Dean Carnes and raised their children, Michael and Deanna, in Santa Rosa near Pattie. She has been the accountant for a health club with three locations in Sonoma County. Her son Michael is the Cellar Master for La Crema Winery located in Sonoma County and has a daughter Bella. Deanna has two children, Travis, and Melissa Miller.
Linda married Jim Williams and had three children, Cheryl, Traci, and Scott. Cheryl is married to Kirk Hooten and has a son Satcha and a daughter Jordan. They live in Las Vegas and work for the Police Dept. Traci is married to Chris Tomlin, a pilot and they have a son, Reilly. Linda lived with me for a short time in Sacramento and later married Frank Lemon and they were living in Coronado when she passed away. Her sisters organized a memorial for her in San Diego where the entire clan met and went out in a boat and distributed her ashes in the sea.
John, my younger brother, feared nothing. Starting when he was 13 he ran away several times because he didn’t like Dad’s disciplines. On one occasion he came back home with blisters on his back caused by sleeping too close to a boiler on Signal Hill. When he was 15 the police brought him home after running him down in Oregon in a stolen car. He was sent to the Chino detention facility where we would visit him on weekends taking a picnic dinner. The records were sealed because of his age so they never haunted his life. I mention this because I am very proud of how he turned his life around by joining the Navy and working his way up to Yeoman 1st Class and serving 2 hitches on flat tops.
He married Alice and they had two sons, Tom and Jerry. When the Korean War came along he enlisted again and wound up guarding prisoners on an island off Japan. When John left the service they lived in Riverside and he worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and later as an appraiser for a Bank. Alice worked for a law firm and died shortly after John. The last I knew Tom was driving trucks and living in the mid-west. His son, Jay, is in the Air Corps and presently serving in Iraq. I have lost track of Jerry. The last I knew he had moved to the Monterey Peninsula.
Youngest brother Bob was 14 when Mom and Dad moved to Grass Valley. He joined the Air Corps shortly after high school and then worked for the Bureau of Aeronautics maintaining airport air control and landing systems. He met and married Margaret Pace while working at McClellan AFB in Sacramento. Later they lived in Las Vegas when he worked for the Federal government doing the same type of work. He was transferred to McClellan AFB in Sacramento and bought the school house he had attended in Grass Valley that had been remodeled into a home. Nina Davis, one of my former sales agent and good friend who had opened a Century 21 office in Grass Valley was their agent. They had five children, Karen, Kristy, Kathy, Sonja and Bob. I believe some are in Las Vegas and some in the Grass Valley area. When I was in the Senate living in Sacramento we were able to visit. Margaret died and Bob remarried Nancy, a lovely lady. Although he was 7 years younger than me he was in the early stages of Alzheimer's when I visited him for the last time a few years ago. He died a year later but I was unable to attend the services because I was scheduled back surgery.



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© 2011 Oliver W. Speraw