Santa Cruz Sentinel

San Jose Mercury News

Lima Family Santa Clara Mortuary

Santa Cruz Sentinel, December 2014 - "Aptos great-grandmother, 98, stitches Christmas hats for children with cancer"

Told by Kathilie Gruggett (Hodges), daughter.

My mother was born February 4, 1916 in Hollywood, California, long before there were movies made there. Her parents, A.R. & Grace, moved to California from Indiana around 1910. AR worked for Wayside Farms in Hollywood maintaining their fleet of milk trucks. (Back then milk was delivered right to your door.) The fog in Hollywood bothered AR’s asthma so eventually the family moved to Burbank  to get above the fog.  They had a nice house there on Providencia Avenue on a very large lot with an enormous avocado tree (which I used to love climbing), fig trees, a grape arbor, etc. An elementary school was built across the street.

My grandparents, AR & Grace Boles were instrumental in founding Burbank Foursquare Church which was dedicated in 1927. They had originally been part of the congregation at the original Foursquare church Angelus Temple founded by Aimee Semple McPherson. This church was a big part of my mother’s life. She met 2 husbands there and even as we moved around the country she kept in contact with all her friends there and later on in life traveled with them around the world. We attended there as a family in 1959-60 while my dad was in Korea and we were living in Burbank. Typically we attended services Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday evening. Mom & I sang in the choir and we would come in early on Sundays so she could arrange flowers for the service. She also occasionally helped out playing the piano or organ.

From what she has told me my mother was a tom boy and sometimes gave her little brother Don a hard time putting his face in the dirt. She had an older sister Norma with whom she was very close. Norma died of appendicitis in 1941 at the age of 28, leaving behind 4 children. She lingered for 3 days in the hospital while my mom held her hand. They didn’t have quinine then to save her.

Mom married Clarence Armstrong at Burbank Foursquare Church in 1934 when she was 18. They were very much in love, but unfortunately in 1946 he succumbed to cancer at the young age of 31, leaving her with a 7-year-old son, my brother, Ed.

After a year, my mother met my father, Robert Hodges, also at church. They were married in June of 1947 and 10 months later I was born. For a while we lived at Balboa in a trailer my Uncle Don (founder of Boles Aero Trailers) had built especially for us with a crib, etc. built in. Then lived in a little tiny house up at the top of Olive Street in Burbank. When I was a year old, my father joined the Air Force, which meant my mother was embarking upon a lifetime of moving a lot and of having to at times raise kids alone while he was away at flight school or stationed overseas.

We moved to Enid, Oklahoma to be near my dad as he trained. In 1950 my brother Gary very nearly became an “Okie” but my mother made it back to California in time driving all the way pulling a trailer while very pregnant. My father had been stationed at Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento. We stayed there long enough for my brother David to be born in 1952.

Then my father was sent to Korea during the war. When it was over, we moved to Japan, near Tokyo, where we lived until 1955. It was quite an experience. Unlike many families stationed there, we embraced the culture and traveled around the country extensively. We also had missionary friend from the Fourquare Church who were assigned there and we would visit them from time to time. My mother took doll making classes where she learned how to make those lovely dolls you see encased in glass boxes. The one she made for me was called Peach Blossom. She also learned flower arranging and loved to make Bonsai trees.

In 1955 my mother’s father died, and my father wangled a transfer back to the states. We came back before him to attend the funeral, and I went to school in Burbank for a month. My dad was transferred to O’Hare Field in Chicago so we moved to Elgin, Illinois. (This meant we went to school in Japan, Burbank, & Elgin all in one year.) After a year & a half, my parents, thinking that we would be there awhile bought a house in the country, Cary, Illinois, on the Fox River. It was great living there, swimming in the river and playing in the woods, but then my father got transferred to East Meadow, New York, on Long Island. My parents were devastated, but we kids were excited about moving to New York.

We lived there until 1959, when my father was transferred back to Korea. While he was there, we moved to Burbank and lived in an apartment across from the huge Burbank Park. There was a public pool and many activities to be had there which kept us busy. We attended Burbank Foursquare and every Sunday after church we would go out to eat in a restaurant with my mother’s mother. We were always running into people who my mom had gone to school with at Burbank High.

When my father’s year in Korea was up he tried to get transferred to Riverside so my mom could be near her mother, who was getting pretty old. But we ended up in northern California at Beale Air Force Base, near Marysville. We were actually there the longest. I got to go all through high school in one school, the only one of us four kids who managed that.

My mother was always very creative. Through the years she took other classes in cake decorating, ornament-making, and hat making. She used to make very nice hats which she wore to church since all ladies wore hats and gloves to church in those days. She sewed all my clothes and often made matching outfits for the whole family. She knitted and crocheted all the time. I still have several baby dresses she made for me which I foist on the grandchildren when I can. We were always hanging out it craft supply stores. At least they were more interesting than the shoe stores she frequented. She loved shoes, liked to have a different pair for every outfit, and she had tiny feet, size 4 ½, which were hard to find.

Mom was always busy with Officers’ Wives Club activities, and active in her church. (I especially remember the booth I helped he set up for some missions fair at church. We had to go all over trying to find music for this African country she was showcasing. Everything had to be right.) She was very gregarious and got along with everybody. She was very funny. She never wanted those touchy feely birthday cards. She wanted the funny ones.

Mom loved plants and animals. Because we moved around a lot we really couldn’t have pets, but my mom started collecting lizards. Whatever magazine she ordered them from called them chameleons, but they were just little bright green lizards. She kept a bowl full of mealy worm and the beetles that give birth to them on top of the frig. Yuck! They were supposed to live in her terrariums but of course there were escapes. One day the mailman showed up at our door with a mailbag and said “These are for you”. The “chameleons” had got loose in his bag. And tropical fish were a big item with her. Mom always had lots of plants about. When we were in a house she would have a magnificent garden. Even her little room at Aegis was full of plants and fish tanks.

Mother loved to read. She especially like reading about the lives of missionaries. She also loved jigsaw puzzles. She was a horrible navigator, though. My father would get crazy because she was holding the map upside down and couldn’t figure out where we were going. I took over that job very early.

We were always driving across country, camping all the way. We were always living a long way from California so we would make the annual journey to see my grandparents in Burbank (and my dad’s parents in North Hollywood) via Route 66 or maybe a more northern route for one direction. We visited most all the states, stopping at all the national parks and historic land markers along the way. And any goofy tourist stop. It was great. My dad was a boy scout and he had us all set up with a kitchen in a footlocker and everything we needed for a nice camp. Being in the service, he had 30-day leaves so we could take our time.

My mother went back to school to become a practical nurse in 1966 as her marriage started to fall apart. We were actually going to Yuba College at the same time for a while. After the split with my dad my mom decided to move to Mt. Herman, near Santa Cruz, where my parents had been looking at vacation property. She got a little house in the woods and the boys finished school there while she worked as a nurse. Eventually she got a job at Agnews State Mental Hospital. working with mentally disabled male patients. It was hard work but I’m sure those patients appreciated her sunny personality. That state job also provided her with excellent medical benefits and a good retirement package (after she confessed to being 10 year older than she had told them—she always looked younger than she was). She really go her money’s worth out of the state of California, living to 99.

Since she was working in San Jose she moved to Milpitas and started attending a large unmarried senior singles group at Bethel Temple. She dated several different men before meeting Irven Hanneman, whom she married in 1974. Eventually the moved to Winchester Blvd in San Jose to be near Bethel Temple. They were happy for a while but then he developed Alzheimers. She took care of him longer than she should have, endangering her health, but he eventually needed to be placed in a full care facility. He died in 2004 and is buried at Los Gatos Memorial Park, where she will join him.

After living on her own a while, Mom decided she should move in to the Aegis assisted living facility in Aptos where she could be near her sons who were living in Santa Cruz. She was there longer than she expected, 11 years. She maintained her sense of humor and keen senses. She enjoyed visiting with all her grandchildren and still loved going to the beach with family, although in the last few year she decided to skip camping in the tent. She was active in the knitting group making hats for kids with cancer until almost the end.

My mother was a firm believer in God. She attended church regularly and she didn’t confine her bible study and prayer to church. She was always kind to others. I never knew there was anything like prejudice until I learned about it in school. I know she was really looking forward to meeting Jesus.

She will be missed.