AUGUST 1995 - KEVIN AND STACI’S WEDDING This was the 5th day of August 1995 that Kevin and Staci got married before family and friends in Bozeman Montana. It was a beautiful wedding with a farmer cutting alfalfa in the background. The minister was an eighty-four year old Jew who had turned catholic and then non-denominational. He was still working as a skiing instructor. It was the first time we met Staci’s parents. Kevin and Staci wrote their own wedding vows. When Jean told Kevin he didn’t speak louder, because she couldn’t hear, Kevin said “that’s ok, they were for Staci anyway. I think our families merged well together. Kevin was a little difficult (he was a pain in the neck) for a short time, but no harm no foul. Kevin did good. I have one regret, we should have dragged my dad out of Beaver to the wedding. My mother wanted to go, but dad was being difficult. They would have loved the whole gig.

AUGUST 1995 - WHAT WE DID AFTER THE WEDDING We shot the rapids on the Gallatin River and toured Glacier National Park

NOVEMBER 1995 - OUR 30th ANNIVERSARY We celebrated our 30th anniversary at the Heritage House, a five star hotel on the coast in northern California south of Fort Bragg. It’s a fabulous hotel and restaurant on the old coast highway. The hotel consists of a main lodge with the five star restautant and a series of bungalow’s on the cliff overlooking the Pacific. You may recall a movie filmed in 1978 with Ellen Burston and Alan Alda title “The Same Time Next Year”. The movie was filmed at The Heritage House

CHRISTMAS 1995 We had a wonderful Christmas this year. We had my mother and dad, Jean’s mom and Kevin & Staci back from Bozeman. The kids just couldn’t make a living in Bozeman. It turned out to be a timely return. Jean was able to get both of them to get a job buying text books for Follet. I also happened to be working for them at the time. We had an in. We knew the people at the Citrus College book store including Jean Martin. Over the three weeks of the holidays the kids made several thousand dollars to allow them to start a new life in the Pacific North West.

Kevin and Staci were searching for a place to land and build their nest. First they tried Seattle, but it was not quite a fit. From there they moved on to Portland. It seemed to me that they immediately knew this was home

FEBRUARY 1996 - OUR FIRST RIDE ON THE COAST STARLIGHT Jean and I decided to try the train ride L.A. to Portland. The train was called the Coast Starlight, and turned out to be fabulous experience. In fact it hooked us on train travel.

1997 MY MOTHER DIED

ELSIE MERLE (SHIPP) MARTIN
b. November 20, 1912 d. June 21, 1997
My mother passed away June 21st 1997. The first time we noticed something was wrong with was during the holidays at the end of 1996. We were up in Beaver visiting my mother and dad. I was setting in the kitchen with mom, and she turned to me with a totally confused look. It was a look I had never seen before. It was something simple, but it caused me some concern. Louise had also told me that she had noticed some confusion with my mother. She went in and had some tests and an MRI. There was not a qualified specialist in Southern Utah, so Jean and I took the MRI results up to a Neurologist in Provo. He looked at the film for about fifteen minutes. He then told us that my mother had a brain tumor that in his opinion was not operable. He said she would have no pain; she would slowly lose the use of the right arm. He estimated that she had three months. We returned to Beaver and informed the family. We then went to work to arrange for Kevin and Staci, Rick and Michele and Jean and I, to get together in Beaver to say goodbye. That doctor in Provo was amazing. She followed his script exactly. I don’t think she was afraid of dying but she was really afraid of suffering a lot of pain. I told her that the doctor in Provo assured us that she would have no pain and he was right on the money.

She was a wonderful mother. She was the leader of my fan club. No matter what I did, I always knew she was on my side. Mothers are like that. I could have been a mass murderer and she would still be there defending me. Fathers on the other hand stick with you, but just might look at the evidence

She loved to have fun. She loved to dance and was good at it. When we had the water fight in ELA, It’s a good bet she was the instigator. When they lived in Carson City, they had a group of five couples that would hit all of the dance clubs in the Reno, Tahoe and Reno area on Saturday night and boogie all night, ending up somewhere for breakfast. When they moved to Carson in 1957, they made friendships and formed this little dance group, each couple put $300 in the pot and made my mother the banker and made a rule that if anyone won at gambling they must put half in the pot. All expenses were paid by the banker. When the group broke up about ten years later they had not added a single dollar to the pot.

One thing I know for sure, my mother would have loved The Colony and The Colony would have loved her. I loved her and miss her every day. Dads are our heroes, moms are our connection to life.

MAY 28,1996 AUNT NINA DIED

NINA RAE MARSHALL (MARTIN)
b. May 15, 1923 d. May 28, 1996 Nina was the fifth of nine siblings born and the fifth to pass. She lived in Minersville and we somehow missed the opportunity to really get to know her like we should have.

THE FALL OF 1997- THE END OF THE BEGINNING Peggy Lynn Rhodes died at the age of sixty. She was my ex-wife and the mother of my two oldest boys. She collapsed with a brain aneurysm while waiting for a plane to Las Vegas at the Sacramento airport. She loved to gamble. At the time Peg was married to her fourth husband, Bob Webb. He was in her class at Rosemead, and lived just down the street from her when they were in high school, and I think he dated her a couple of times. I knew who he was, but he was not a friend. Apparently he pined for her for years. They met again at a Rosemead reunion about 1994. The story I got was he was engaged to someone else at the time, but he broke off the engagement and they ended up getting married. Bob owned a ranch in Galt just south of Sacrament that he inherited from his parents. Mark, the youngest of our two boys moved up there and lived on the ranch. Bob was very good to Mark and tried to lead him in the right direction, but Mark was not leadable. Mike, our oldest, had sadly passed away in 1992. I feel a great sadness for Mark who lost his mother. I feel sad because, I have had so much luck and she had none.

1997 WILMA GOES INTO ASSISTED LIVING We moved Wilma into an assisted living facility in Grand Terrace. She was living with Michele, but it proved to be a more than Michele could handle with us moving to Murrieta.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1997 - OUR FIRST TRAIN TRIP AROUND THE COUNTRY I’m not sure where we got the idea, but we decided to book a train trip across the country on Amtrak. We got first class accommodations, which included a private compartment with sleeping facilities and meals. The meals were served in the dining car and the food is very good. We began our trip at Union Station in L.A. and traveled through New Mexico, and across the plains of Kansas, with stops in Chicago, Washington D.C., New York, Niagara Falls, Toronto and back to Chicago. In Chicago we took Amtrak on the northern route west to Portland and back to L.A.

We were only in Chicago for about four hours, but we toured the city on foot and got to view the city from the top of the Sears Tower. We then proceeded to D.C. where we joined up with Gary and Phylles who arrived on the train from New Orleans

We spent a couple of days touring our nation capital before heading for New York. This was the Big Apple and we spent a couple of days just enjoying this crazy city. The stop in New York included renting a car and driving through New England to Lake Placid and Saranac Lake to view the changing colors. The plan was for Gary and Phylles to continue on with us for the rest of the trip, but Gary was not feeling well, so we dropped them off at the airport on our way to Lake Placid, and they flew home.

After dropping the car off in Manhattan, we boarded the train for Niagara Falls. We got off the train and got a beautiful room at The Falls View Hotel. We were on 4th or 5th floor and the view was spectacular. I’ve always said that in your travels there are a few things that are beyond anything you expected. Niagara Falls is in that category. The Falls are truly a wonder beyond my expectations.

Our next stop was Toronto where we visited Grant and Ann Parson’s (Kevin’s in-laws). Grant picked us up at the station and took us to their home in Nobleton, just north of Toronto. The next day we toured the city, and that night we had dinner with the Parson’s at the restaurant at the top of the CN Tower. The Tower is like the space needle, but 3 times higher. They have a glass floor at the top that is 1599 feet above the ground. It’s quite a sensation to stand on it and look down.

We had a good visit with the Parson’s then boarded the train back to Chicago where we would connect with our train to Portland. We visited with the kid’s for couple of day’s, then we returned to L.A. on the Coast Starlight.

DECEMBER 1997 GLENDORA GOING AWAY PARTY We lived in Glendora for 30 years, so it was painful to move. So we had a little farewell party

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 1997 - COLONY HOUSE UNDER CONSTRUCTION It was a lot of fun watching our new house being constructed. I did all of the exterior features such as the patio, walks, planters, sprinkling system. All of the concrete work was done by my son-in-law at the time who was a concrete contractor. My mother had passed away in June, so while I was in the process of putting in patio and stuff, I drove up and got my dad and brought him down to give me his experts advice He was a building contractor by trade.

CHRISTMAS 1987 My mother dying and leaving my dad alone was not supposed to happen. According to his plan, the man is supposed to go first. Men are not meant to take care of themselves. They don’t handle being alone as well as women. With that thought in mind, that Christmas Jean and I and Rick, Kevin and Staci and Michele and Scott went to Beaver to be with my dad. The afternoon of Christmas we all headed home to Glendora and the kids helped us move to The Colony in Murrieta. We were settled in our new home two days after Christmas 1997. I would like to add that my mother would have loved the Colony

1998 THE BROTHERHOOD REUNITED Thirty-seven years had passed since Gary Nelson, Jerry Traylor and I had come together as a brotherhood for support when we were all going through the breaking up of our marriages. A very difficult time for all three of us. Other than one time when Jean and I went to dinner at he and Doris’s home on Mercer Island, it had been almost 38 years since we had seen our old friend. At that time he was an executive for Crum and Forester and he was doing very well. In June of 1998 Gary got a call from an old friend of Jerry’s, his high school girlfriend, Nancy. She told us that Jerry and Doris had moved from Seattle to Tucson, Arizona and bought a Day Care Center. They were doing great when out of the blue Doris was diagnosed with a rare/fast moving form of Alzheimer’s. She ended up in a care center. She was still physically very healthy, but totally gone mentally. He apparently stayed with her until the doctors told him she was never going to get any better, and for him to get a life. He left Arizona and just traveled around for a while and one day ended up in Reno, where he had gone to high school. After he graduated from high school he joined the Army as a paratrooper. He was going with Nancy at the time, but he never returned to Reno after the Army. When he got out of the Army he went to USC on the GI Bill and earned a degree in business. Since he just happened to be in Reno again after 56 years he decided to drop by Nancy’s folk’s house to see if they still lived there. It turned that they were in the same house and it just happened that Nancy was there visiting. She had lost her husband a couple of years earlier. She had just sold her house in Salt Lake and was thinking about moving back to Reno. One coincidence led to another and over the next year Jerry and Nancy ended up buying a house together, about 100 miles above San Francisco, in Point Arena, California. During that year his wife Doris passed away. The reason Nancy contacted Gary was to invite us to Jerry’s 75th birthday party. Gary and Jean and I jumped in the car and hustled up to Point Arena as fast as we could. Nancy said that he had some pretty serious health problems. I couldn’t believe Jerry was seventy five. Of course Gary and I were just kids at sixty-three. It was really hard to think of Jerry as old. He was always the one with the most energy. It was wonderful to see Jerry and Nancy together. They were a matched set. They were like a couple of kids, so happy to have this time together. Jerry’s son, Jerry Jr, came up from L.A. while we were there. The last time we saw him he was about five. Apparently he is doing quite well in the production end of the movie business. We visited for a couple of days and then we headed home. Time seems to get away from you if you don’t hold on tight. The next thing we knew it was 2012 when Nancy called Gary to tell us that our old buddy had passed. He was 87.

A NEW WAY OF LIFE BEGINS

We got settled in The Colony just one week before we ushered in 1998. We celebrated the New Year with our new friends. It did not take long to confirm that our decision to move here was a good one. We anticipated that we would make a few new friends. We had no idea. We met people playing golf, bowling, playing paddle tennis and at the Monday Mead Social hosted by Jim and Michele Mitchell. The Monday Social was a good place to meet new people. Everyone would bring an appetizer or snack to share and whatever they wanted to drink. About two months after moving in we had a party with our new friends. We had 40 guests.

That summer I drove to Beaver and brought my dad back to see our new home. I don’t recall how long he stayed, but it wasn’t long enough. We tried our best to fill that void. But it wasn’t us he was lonely for. We thought we had talked him into moving to a very nice assisted living facility across the street from us. We had it all arranged. You could see his room from our patio. It was only about a three block walk from us. He would have had his own private room. At the last minute his sister Louise and his brother Dan talked him out of it. We went to Beaver as often as we could.

We looked at the Colony for three years before we made the move. When we decided to make the move , we still had that little apprehension. But after we moved in, there has never been a doubt that it was absolutely the right choice. We have been active members of the community. I served on the Board of Directors three times and served and chaired several committees. Jean has chaired the Social Committee and Design and Decorating Committees foe years and presently on a couple of committees. The more we get involved the more you feel like you belong. But like I’ve said many times, my mother would have had a ball at the Colony.

MARCH 1998 - THE COLONY HOUSE WARMING We were in our new house, and I drove to Beaver and brought my dad down to help celebrate. We invited Gary and Phylles, George and Carole, all of our old friends from Glendora and the new ones from The Colony. My only big regret was that my mother was not here. She would have loved The Colony

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