ForeverMissed
Large image
Her Life

Marcia's Life: Raising a Family Garden

July 10, 2012

Marcia Bennett Chamlee passed away peacefully on June 19, 2012. She was 86, and had resided in Chino for 67 years.

Marcia Laurene Bennett was born in Alberta, Canada, on April 28, 1926, to Robert Lloyd Bennett and Verda Norton Bennett. The family, including younger brother Golden, moved to Boise, Idaho, where Marcia attended Boise High School. In 1942, she met there the love of her life, Floyd Archie Chamlee, the football linebacker who starred in the high school play, "Heaven Can Wait". They married in 1943. When they went to their 50th reunion in 1983, Floyd's high school shot put track record still held.

Marcia was seventeen when Floyd, a year older, enlisted into the Army Air Corps, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. They eloped and moved to Vancouver, WA, to work in the shipyards while they waited for him to get called up. Since he was young, he wasn't called right away. Marcia's mother went to Vancouver too, working in the same shipyards as a welder, like "Rosie the Riveter", while her father worked as a traveling salesman for Utah Woolen Mill, measuring men for suits. Floyd worked on naval electronics and electrical systems for new ships, while Marcia took care of their new daughter, Linda, who was born in 1943. 

When he was called up in 1944 for the big push for D Day, he was stationed outside of Lubbock, TX, where the family lived on the Army Air Corps base. He was in the OnLineTraining Pilot Program (OLTPP). He was the only one who was married with a kid. Linda was a year old, and she gave him chicken pox, which probably saved his life. It was such a serious case that the doctor would only pass the medicine through the window; he couldn't finish his pilot training. His unit went without him to France. He would have been flying B-17s over Germany. Over 50% of those early flyers in his unit didn't return; they were captured, wounded or killed. 

Floyd was reassigned to Bakersfield, CA after his recovery, as the big push for D Day was successfully over. He was assigned to work in the control tower on the huge airfield there until the end of the war in August, 1945.

The family moved to Chino, CA after the war, and bought a little house on Ninth Street, where they created a loving oasis, crafted with roses and lush gardens, and where they welcomed Linda's little brother, Bryan Bennett Chamlee, in 1948.

Marcia continued supporting Floyd throughout his fifty years working first as a prison guard, and then as a parole counselor at California Institution for Men, and the thousands of hours that he volunteered as an electrician for Habitat for Humanity. During the 70s and 80s, Marcia was talented and adept as a job counselor in an employment agency. She swam and did water exercise with Ability First in Claremont for over ten years.

Marcia was an honest, generous, homespun person who put people at ease and made friends at the drop of a hat. She laughed easily. She was a talented seamstress, a poet and master gardener.

Like a grandmother to everyone, Marcia raised children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, loving them, playing games (often winning, with an incredible IQ and years as a dedicated bookworm), and filling imaginations with wonderful stories and stomachs with home-cooked meals. The doors of her home were always open. She was a rock of stability, the caretaker of all family.

Marcia is survived by her son and daughter-in-law, Bryan and Leann Chamlee, of Ontario, CA; her son-in-law, Howard Hotchkiss; her granddaughter and grandson-in-law, Nancy Black and Isaac Hernandez, and their children, Diego and Quique Hernandez-Black, of Santa Barbara, CA; her grandson and granddaughter-in-law Tony and Annette Black and their daughter, Akilah Black of Asheville, NC; and step-grandson and granddaughter-in-law Robert and Angelique Barnum, and their children Willamina, Siarah and Pierce, of Claremont, CA.

She was preceded in death by her beloved husband of 65 years, Floyd Chamlee, who died in 2008, and by her daughter, Linda Chamlee Black Hotchkiss, who died in 2009.

Adored by those who knew her, we celebrate her amazing life and give thanks to have shared it. She's dearly missed.

#   #   #