Chapter 36
It Ain't Over Till It's Over

    This writing is nearly over, but my life as of this moment still goes on, so I want to touch on some names of grandkids, friends, and incidents I probably didn't cover before. I also want to have a goodly portion in the conclusion of this book about my spirituality, my imperfect life, my shortcomings, etcetera.

Daniel

    Our oldest son Daniel is and has been a lifelong student of various subjects. Although he's no longer taking college courses, he searches libraries (and now the Internet) for answers to questions he (or others) may have about the physical universe, history or other topics. He continues in Bible studies of all sorts. He was seldom, if ever, seen without his briefcase which contained (I think) diverse books related to the Bible and of course the Bible itself (maybe more than one version). He is quite knowledgeable in the Bible, and Eleanor almost always has a question or two for him when we get together or when writing or phoning him.

    Daniel was an electronics technician for Xytron, a company in Sylmar, California, [from 1981 to 1994]. Xytron made vector-graphic monitors and projectors of varying sizes; one of the early monitors had been produced for the Boeing "E-3 Sentry" (one of the AWACS planes) and other military branches. Evans & Sutherland (one of Xytron's biggest commercial customers) and universities also had uses for them. Xytron often produced monitors for use in aircraft flight simulators during Daniel's time there, but the company was put out of business, having been sold to their main competitor by its majority investor (who decided he wasn't making enough money)! This was a short time before the Northridge Earthquake of 1994, so some customers first thought its demise was due to the quake.^{[1 ]}

    Daniel's activities included bike riding, backpacking and hiking up to the peaks of mountains; at times he would 'free-climb' various cliffs and rocks in the mountains and deserts of California. He has gone on numerous bike rides with large groups and small, sometimes having gone as far as a hundred miles in one day. He is also pretty well acquainted with the heavenly bodies which surround planet earth, and telescopes are not foreign to him.

    He has been atop Mt. San Jacinto (at least twice), Mt. San Gorgonio, Mt. Whitney^[2] (a real high one), and others, I'm sure. He has made many steep hikes at Yosemite and took pictures galore there and at these other places.

    He has taught "Fundamentals of the Faith" classes at Dr. John MacArthur's Grace Community Church (in Panorama City, California). Eleanor and I were members of that church for approximately five years ([including both] before and after living in Florida).

    He is still a bachelor, having said, "I don't want to just marry someone I can live with, but someone I wouldn't want to live without!" so he's still looking for that ideal girl. We pray often he will find that woman one day!

Tim

    Our second son, Tim, and his wife Ronda have three sons: Steven, Michael, and Matthew, and a daughter, Rachel. They resided in the City of Orange near Santa Ana (before Rachel was born). Tim was the Systems and Materials Manager for Ironclad, Inc., Tustin, California. He worked for a plastics manufacturer in Illinois which later built that plant in Tustin. That company, North American Plastics, was sold to Ironclad and they kept Tim on as an employee. He had about 13 years with the company (at both their old and new locations), but on May 6th, 1991, Tim was terminated from Ironclad—costs and being replaced with a lower-wage employee from the other company which bought out his company was the cause.

    Tim and Ronda were active in Calvary Church of Santa Ana (the church at which we were members before my retirement in 1988) in a singing group (called The Joyful Noise) and in a young people's group. Steven attended school there. And I covered Ronda's adventures at Disneyland earlier.

Jack

    Jack is our youngest son. He, his wife Terri and their two sons, Kevin and Justin, moved to Fresno shortly after we moved to Banning in 1988. They purchased a new home in 1992 on the north side of Fresno, where they added two daughters, Lauren and Megan, to their family. Jack worked for Terri's stepfather, Terry Hedrick, at Triple-A Transmissions; which was located on Blackstone Avenue. Jack had worked for Terry since 1978 at various businesses and locations, including the Memphis, TN area when they moved out there in 1996.

    Terri is an ambitious individual who babysits kids. Loving youngsters as she does, it makes the job less of a job. She is stern with the kids and they know who is the boss—those she babysits and her own.

    When their oldest son Kevin was very young, Eleanor babysat him while Terri worked. We got to be with him when he learned to talk and sing, and Eleanor has a very special place in her heart for Kevin—who was a young man of ten, going on eleven [at the time John wrote this].

Brother Phil

    My brother Phil worked for Sears, Roebuck and Company at their Tower Store headquarters in Chicago for some time, later transferring to the Cicero, Illinois store where he spent a number of years. He then moved on to a new store in Oak Brook, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. It was from that store he had retired after something like 44 years service. You may recall that Phil and I started working at Sears at the same time back in 1941.

    After retirement in around 1984 or '85, Phil and Charlene moved to Arizona, having lived in a retirement community some miles south of Tempe. They then moved to Prescott and were there for some time. After that they moved to Fountain Hills northeast of Scottsdale, staying for a year or so, and then moved back to Prescott where they are now. Their son Denis^[3] became a television director for a company [ESPN] on the northeast coast of the U.S., traveling all over the country to put on various events. He is married and has two sons, while his sister Deanna was a nurse who now is at home raising a child. She and her husband live in or around Phoenix.

[Editor's Note: Phil died on September 24, 2017 at 95 in Peoria, Arizona; he was the eldest child, but died last, apparently of natural causes.]

Sister Marie

    Sister Marie is one you've seen mentioned from time to time, she and her husband John Mednansky. They live in Glendale, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, where they've been since 1975. Their son David lives and works in and around San Diego, being one who lives on his own boat in or near San Diego. He has done numerous things of interest in his lifetime and is very talented in many fields.

    Their daughter Linda is married to Darryl Williams, and they live just north of John and Marie. They have two daughters. I believe Linda is a college graduate.

    Another daughter, Debbie, is married to Ed Hospodar, having had a son with him and a daughter from a previous marriage. Their home is in a western suburb of Chicago.

[Editor's Note: Marie died on June 26, 2007 and our author attended her funeral along with his brothers Phil and Ed. This is a nice photo of all three brothers from that day:]

Brother Ed

    Brother Ed and his wife Mily, their son EJ—all that was covered pretty well earlier, but I should say something about Ed's work history.

    Ed spent something like 35 years working for Otis Elevator Company and others, ultimately retiring from Otis in later years (as I recall). He was a mechanic who worked on maintenance and construction jobs, the former mostly. His job was on the dangerous side in smaller buildings, but it was especially so in the skyscraper types. He suffered many cuts, bruises, and near loss of limbs on that job—and, I'd guess, the danger of electrocution, too.

    Ed, Mily and EJ lived in Countryside, Illinois (another west, southwest suburb of Chicago); Roswell, New Mexico; Phoenix, Arizona; and now in Tucson.

[Editor's Note: Edward died on March 12, 2015; apparently due to the result of head trauma after falling earlier that week.]

Conclusions

    Eleanor felt I should have included more data about our sons and grandsons in the book. But I told her I'd already made this reading too boring by including data about friends and relatives (who visited and when, etc.) without expanding the boredom by including such details. In other words, just about everyone out there has children and/or grandchildren, and without some particularly interesting facts or stories concerning those individuals, "This is too much for me" might be the average person's evaluation of the material written.

    Sure, there are many interesting facts and data I've left out. That's mainly because I forgot to include them, or I listed them and then didn't put them into print. Many times I'd asked Eleanor if she remembered reading this or that account way back, and I got the same answer I came up with, "I don't remember!"

    Then she's come back with, "You didn't mention...." See what I mean?

    When she didn't like the way I'd written certain things, the only recourse I had was to say, "Why don't you write your own book? Then you could list those things as you feel they should be." That wasn't very nice, was it!

    Knowing now that Eleanor saw so many things so differently from the way I had, I can imagine how some of my relatives will see them, especially those things which pertain to their lives specifically. Try doing one of these autobiographies and see if what I've said and I am saying isn't so!

    If you have read just about everything written to this point, I want to thank you for your patience and perseverance. I also want to encourage you to read the Epilogue which follows.

Chapter 35B

TOC

Epilogue

¹[Return to Text]   Since the quake occurred around 04:30 AM, many people, including Daniel, were sound asleep. He was very briefly aroused by the quake, but then was knocked unconscious for some time by a lamp or dresser that hit his head; no stiches were required, but there was a rather large bump on his forehead for many days! Fortunately, the brick wall was far enough away to fall down just short of the house and not through his window; nor was it the tall bookcase with glass doors that struck him. It was a few days before he could return to work.

²[Return to Text]   Mount Whitney is the highest summit in the contiguous 48 states; 14,505 feet, but there are about 10 peaks in Alaska that are higher, with Mount McKinley being the tallest (at 20,236 feet). It should also be noted that Mount Elbert in Colorado and Mount Rainier in Washington are both less than 100 feet short of Whitney's elevation. Apart from long bicycle rides and hiking up to Mission Point (with or without his mountain bike) when he could, as part of his training to reach the Mt. Whitney summit, he backpacked up in the San Jacinto Mountains; arriving at a 9700 foot campground in 4 hours, and on the next day, July 3, hiking up San Jacinto Peak (10,834 feet). Two weeks later, he started backpacking towards Mt. Whitney from Whitney Portal at 7,851 feet. And on July 20, 1988, Daniel made it to the top of Mount Whitney.

³[Return to Text]   Denis (born as "Dennis") preferred spelling his name with only one 'n' since he liked hockey, lived near Québec, Canada and worked for ESPN; and the French spelling is, Denis. Tragically, Denis died on December 16, 1997 in a hospital (of some kind of quick acting cancer) at only 46 years old.