WRITER FOR THE MARINES

My dad was drafted into the Marines in 1943 and served 'til 1945.  He was stationed on one of the atolls in the Marshall Islands.  I wanted to post this fact.  The photographs below are a few of the things that he had on his desk when I was a kid.  While in the Marines on the Marshall Islands, my dad wrote articles and drew cartoons.

The cap above, a khaki tan garrison cap, was worn by WWII Marine servicemen.

ABOVE: U.S. Marine Corps. Eagle Globe Anchor pin, Black; 1 3/4”.

BELOW: U.S. Marine Corps. Eagle Globe & Anchor pin jewelry.

Men's lariat bolo tie.  My dad had a few of these, given to him by his father.  His dad used to wear them.  

Add to that the ritual of going to train yards in downtown at 5am to pick out a tree and get a hot dog from the catering truck. Nothing was more special. My dad would pick a tree that was still stacked in the train car with ice. He never failed to get some extra boughs for the nativity scene. It was a religious ceremony for me.

CONROY'S LA TIMES OBIT, AUGUST 2012

CONROY, William M. Age 87, retired Inspector, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, passed away on August 22, 2012. Bill joined the Sheriff's Department on July 1, 1952, and retired from the Sheriff's Information Bureau on October 3, 1973. A funeral Mass will be held at Calvary Cemetery, 4201 Whittier Blvd., Los Angeles, CA on Monday, August 27, 2012, at 12:45 p.m. Interment will immediately follow.

Here is Conroy's obituary in the LA Times:

Dad, Conroy, his wife Gerry, and Mom.  This looks like 1984.  Conroy was spokesman and writer for Sheriff Peter Pitchess.

Conroy is standing, hands folded, at the far right.  Bill Conroy is survived by his wife Gerry, his son Michael, and daughters Kathleen and Maureen.

Another friend of Dad's, Joe Sullivan, worked for the LA County Marshall's Offices, where he was mainly responsible to the courts perhaps as a bailiff.  My brother, Dan, explained that the County got rid of the Marshall's Office in the late 90s and merged the marshalls with the sheriffs.  He added that marshalls used to serve subpoenas. 

HOME IN SAN GABRIEL, 1943

Happy Birthday, Mom!  July 15, 1920.  Is there a more beautiful day!

I liked this sentence by Jon Morrow, Associate Editor at Copyblogger, "Because, let’s face it, your ideas are your children. Their future is as tender and delicate as that of any newborn."

This picture is taken on her door step of her Alhambra home, 1943.  She was 23 years old here and probably just had Charlen. 

LILY & PA, 1959

Sally and Mary in front, Chuck in the middle, Dan, Lily, and Pa at the back.  It is nice to see how they're so proud to be connected to Pa and Lily.  They were our grandparents.  With Pa, I remember his large hand around a tumbler with ice and bourbon and stories about him abandoning a job.  At his apartment in Temple City below, he used to give us 10 pennies that I considered my first real capital.  A stack of 10 sticky copper wheat pennies from the '40s and the '50s.  He and Lily preferred macaroon cookies.  There was a dishful on his table and the light from a window in his south-most wall shone through provided the consolation when I was alone with old folks.  Pa died on August 19, 1966, and it absolutely crushed my dad.  The funeral service was held at St. Luke's on Broadway & Cloverly.  The parking lot was full and framed with tall pines.  

There was one moment a few days after Pa's passing, where we had just left church on a Sunday morning.  Dad drove to a local liquor store to get a Sunday paper and some 7-Up.  Tom, Joe, and I waited in the car, while my dad went inside to get the Herald and the LA Times.  He'd parked the car in the back alley of the liquor store, which had a backdoor entrance.  The car was actually parked under a cover.  The shipping dock against which Dad parked was only a couple of feet high.  He'd backed his '62 bug that I think he purchased in 1964 from a weeping seller in Monterey Park, CA up against the low-lying dock.  [I thought the owner lived up on Cresta Vista or Kingsford, west of Atlantic, south of the Cascades Park.]  He returned to the car and began to weep over the loss of his father.  His grief was inconsolable.  I tried to find the place, that liquor store because Dad had parked in the store's docks with the front of his car angled up, facing the back alley.  I thought that that store was in Temple City.  It may be in Alhambra.  I drove through the back alley of the liquor store in Temple City, the Cigarettes for Less, but no ramp in the back of the store.  Was it Cappy's Liquor store on Mission Drive in South Pasadena?  I know they have a dock, not a raised dock, but a ground platform for deliveries.  And they had a back door; I used to go through it whenever I stopped in that store to get a drink and a snack.

This is where Pa and Lily lived in the early 1960s before they moved to the upstairs apartment over on Golden West across the street from Temple City Park.  Click on the picture to enlarge it.  The address is 5633 Noel Drive, Temple City, CA.  

BUENA VISTA AVE. BUS STOP, DUARTE, CA

I wanted to get a picture of this bus stop because my mom would rely on the local Duarte shuttle to maintain her independence from her busy sons and daughters.  One day when I still owned my 1986 Toyota pick-up truck, I drove past this stop and saw my mother waiting for the shuttle.  But I didn't stop.  I didn't stop because I saw how she was enjoying her conversation with the other women waiting for the shuttle.  I wanted to stop.  I thought to stop, but when I saw her enjoying herself so much, having friends and cultivating a good vibe that I didn't want to interrupt that joy.  In fact, I drove right to her house.  Fifteen minutes later, she stepped through the garage door with a couple bags of groceries from the Ralphs, from the Big Lots, and other nearby stores.  Shopping was her favorite activity.  Independence was her ethic.  And shopping was when she felt the freest.  Stores gave her choices.

MOM'S COOKING
Mom would love to cook her boys breakfast.  Her breakfast would consist of a short stack of pancakes and bacon or sausage, always with a pot of fresh-brewed coffee.  She enjoyed mixing the batter, its sound, and the viscosity of whipping.  There may not be a more comforting feeling than to see one's mother standing in the kitchen, herself warmed by the heat of the pan, preparing breakfast on your behalf.  All was right.  All was love.  She would time the cooking of the pancakes by boiling a pan of water in which to place the syrup and heat it so that it would pour thinly over the pancakes.  She always purchased Mrs. Buttersworth syrup.  Though we knew that the ingredients were probably not the best, I felt that her hand transformed everything she touched.  She'd place the bottle of syrup in the boiling water and let it thin.  Taking it out, she'd place the bottle on a saucer, next to the plate of butter from which we'd slab generously.  As I see my mother cooking in the kitchen I can't help but think of her cooking in Aunt Gertrude's kitchen on Clarkson in Denver, where she was domesticated right out of high school.

MEMORIES OF MOM

I miss Mom.  I miss seeing her in the kitchen cooking her famous mushroom chicken and spaghetti with meat sauce and her signature chili.  I think that that was John Larkin's favorite.  Mom would fix a pot of chili with the knowledge that John and Charlen were stopping over.  John loved Mom's chili!  He'd scoop himself a bowl and add Fritos Corn Chips, cheese, and onions, souping it up, adding I believe hot sauce as well.  That's one memory I miss of Mom--working in the kitchen.

My second memory is watching Mom ironing our clothes.  Her ironing board was up at all times.  She'd lay out the shirt and spray water over the garment to maximize the effects of her ironing efforts.  I remember thinking to myself when I first saw her do this, "Wow!  That was smart."  And it was.  Mom was a smart woman, a smart soul.

On Sunday, February 12, 2012, I wrote:
Mom would ask occasionally how my apartment was coming along.  I told her fine.  I could tell that she hoped that my place was comfortable and clean, which it was.  I told her one time that I was thinking about purchasing a leather chair.  That idea filled her with images of a man sitting in a deep and comfortable leather chair next to a floor lamp with a pipe and newspaper.  With that one image, she built up in her head a man of independent means, enjoying a quiet life at home surrounded by books, classical music, and good food.  She couldn't have been more right.  My mom loved furniture.  I remember going with her one year to Sears in the Hastings Ranch of Pasadena to pick out a living room set.  This was back in the '70s when ranch style furniture was big.  Mom loved wood too.  In fact, the last pieces of furniture that she purchased were those big wood dressers in her room.  And then she absolutely loved that wood China cabinet in the dining room.  She took great pride in her furniture.

Thursday, June 28, 2012
Mom also loved gardening, or should I say, she loved organizing her garden.  One of the plants that she loved to have both in her front yard and in her backyard was the agapanthus.

A few times I think I heard her refer to them as the "Lily of the Nile."  The back story on that title is funny.  But she loved these plants.  She had them lined against the fence in the backyard and around a tree in the front yard next to the mailbox.

In the front yard, at the northeast corner of the property was a section that we shared with Frank and Brenda Flannigan.  We used to park our metal trash cans in the street for pick-up.  But on the lawn in that section were planted two crape myrtle trees.  Linda across the street liked them so much that she went ahead and planted one near her mailbox, perhaps to match the trees that Mom had out in her front yard.

Also in the front yard, Mom had planted a pine tree.  What kind of pine tree?  I believe that it was a Khasi Pine Tree that is native to the Philippines.

In the backyard, Mom had a variety of plants and trees planted.  One small tree that she hadn't even planted but whose branches sprawled into our yard was Frank and Brenda Flannigan's Bottlebrush Tree, which was to me one of the strangest trees I'd ever known.  The tree did attract a lot of hummingbirds for some reason.

Mom also had a White Angel's Trumpet tree or Brugmansia that produced scores of flowers in each bloom.

Mom also had a row of Calla Lillies planted along the back fence.  They were beautiful when in bloom, stalwart stems with beautiful white cups.  Sitting at the dining room table, sipping coffee, eating breakfast, or reading the newspaper, they were always nice to look out at.  Evocative of blessed days somehow.

Mom enjoyed our fairly productive but gnarled apricot tree.  Its growth was deformed it seemed.  And family pruners splintered the poor tree, leaving it to look like some ancient thing.  For some reason, I always wanted to touch the tree's sap.

Its early bloom was always beautiful to me.

One of my favorite trees in the backyard was the plum tree with its dark wood and white spring blossoms.

I loved the different shades of red on the plums. 

Then of course perhaps my personal favorite was the Chinese Elm tree, which is ubiquitous in the southwest.  Mom didn't like it too much because of all of the tiny leaves on the ground that had to be raked.  But I loved the shade that the tree provided.  I loved its large, scaly trunk.  It was one of my favorite trees.  Its branches always grew into a uniform umbrella.  Pictured second below is the bark of the Chinese Elm that Mom hated raking.

Though Dad appreciated the fruit trees more than anyone because he could feed his kids with them, Mom didn't like the mess of leaves or the overripened and unpicked fruit that fell to the ground.  But she did enjoy the fruit.  At one point, we did have in our backyard a hearty and productive peach tree, and Mom loved a sun-ripened peach more than any other fruit.

We even had a banana tree.  My dad must have liked its exotic island look and reminded him of his stay on the Marshall Islands in the Pacific.  The one we did plant in our backyard never produced a single banana.  Not one. But its purple flowers were quite beautiful.

Though I enjoyed the Elm Tree's thick, scaly trunk, its magnificent form into an expansive umbrella, perhaps the tree I loved more than any other primarily for its beauty is the beautiful magnolia Grandiflora tree that Mom planted at the southeast corner of the backyard.