Search for celebrities on Ancestry.com!April 11, 2003
An energetic man with an engaging smile, Allen Julius Martinson was a business owner, city official and community fixture in Sonoma for nearly all of his 90 years.
April 10, 2003
Jack Morgan Carter was a young peace activist who had planned on a life of political activism.
April 9, 2003
George Menini, a lifelong Sebastopol apple rancher, often said he would be on his tractor working his orchards until "they plant me six feet under."
February 1, 2003
Maryjane Johnston
Maryjane Sullivan Johnston, a nurse in Petaluma, Santa Rosa and San Francisco whose professional skills, abiding faith and deep compassion made her a beloved figure at the hospitals where she worked, died Tuesday at her Petaluma home following a long illness. She was 60.
Johnston's death followed a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. She was diagnosed with the disease in 1997, which forced her to leave her position as director of medicine at Kaiser San Francisco Hospital. She had previously worked at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa, where she was instrumental in planning, staffing and operating the hospital's new emergency room. She started working as a nurse in Sonoma County in 1973 at what is now Petaluma Valley Hospital.
"My mother was born to be a nurse. She was brilliant, confident, unbelievably kind and always guided by her strong Catholic faith. She had this amazing ability to bring out the very best in people," said daughter Lisa Johnston Shaskan of Santa Monica.
Johnston was born Maryjane Sullivan in 1942, the daughter of an Irish-Catholic family deeply involved in St. Monica's Parish in San Francisco's Richmond District. By coincidence, Johnston and the man she would marry 23 years later -- Jim Johnston -- were baptized on the same day as babies in 1942 at St. Monica's Church. They later attended St. Monica's Catholic School, where they were grammar school sweethearts, a romance that would continue through high school and college. They were marriage at St. Monica's in 1965.
"It's an incredible, enduring love story," Shaskan said of her parents.
Jim Johnston, who was a marine biology teacher in Pacifica, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1976. Before her illness, Maryjane Johnstone was her husband's caregiver, but the caregiving roles were reversed when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and waged her six-year battle with the disease.
Johnston earned her degree in nursing from the University of San Francisco in 1965. She worked at St. Mary's Hospital in San Francisco until 1972, when the family moved to Petaluma. In 1973, she became a nurse at the old Hillcrest Hospital and then moved with the staff to the new Petaluma Valley Hospital in 1980. She became the clinical coordinator of the emergency room at Petaluma Valley.
While working full time as a nurse, she returned to school and earned her master's degree in 1989 from Sonoma State University. She then went to work for Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa, working there until promoted to director of medicine at Kaiser's San Francisco hospital.
In addition to her daughter and husband, Johnston is survived by another daughter, Laura Marie Johnston of Petaluma; two sons, Sean Aloysius Johnston of Petaluma and Patrick Francis Johnston of Pittsburg; two brothers, Michael Sullivan of Redwood City and Jim Sullivan of Petaluma; and a granddaughter.
Services will be held today, beginning at 9:30 a.m. at Parent-Sorensen Mortuary & Crematory and then continuing to St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, where a funeral Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Johnston's cousin, Monsignor Terry Sullivan of St. Lucy's Parish in Campbell, will officiate.
Entombment is private.
The family suggests memorial contributions to Hospice of Petaluma, 416 Payran St., Petaluma 94952; Redwood Caregiver Resource Center, 141 Stony Circle, Suite 200, Santa Rosa 95401; or Catholic Charities, P.O. Box 4900, Santa Rosa 95402.
Mallie Henry
Mallie I. Henry's life spanned three centuries and, in her early years especially, was pure Americana.
Born in the heartland of Nebraska, she taught school in a one-room, wood stove-heated country schoolhouse, spent 26 years in Rapid City, S.D., and enjoyed a home in Santa Rosa for the second half of her life.
Henry, who was 104, died of kidney and heart failure Jan. 24 at a convalescent home in Grass Valley.
Her longevity was due to hard work, faith, good friends and family -- and relentless exercise, said her granddaughter Nancy Conway of Santa Rosa.
Even in her 100s, Henry counted the laps she covered in her walker at a Santa Rosa board and care home, where she had lived until October.
Doing jigsaw puzzles helped keep her mind sharp, and Henry remembered to send birthday cards and gifts to all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
For holiday gatherings at Conway's house, Henry always made a cranberry ice, a sorbet-like dessert, based on a recipe she brought from the Midwest.
Conway said she learned the recipe, but "mine didn't come out as well as hers."
In 1998, just after she had turned 100, Henry attended a party for 14 centenarians and 99-year-olds at the Social Security office in Santa Rosa.
A widow for almost 20 years at the time, Henry credited her independence to the support of a large, loving family.
Born on the rural plains of Tecumseh, Neb., in 1898, Henry was the oldest of 10 children and helped her mother give birth to and raise her younger siblings. "She had a lot of responsibility at a young age," Conway said.
After graduating from high school, she taught six grades at a country school, commuting to work by horse and buggy and starting the wood stove before students arrived.
Attending business school in Lincoln, Neb., she met Eldon Henry, and they marriage in 1924. She worked as a bookkeeper.
They moved to Caspar, Wyo., in 1925 for Eldon's job at an automotive supply store, and five years later relocated to Rapid City, where they enjoyed friends, gardening, trout fishing, playing bridge, dancing and travel.
In 1956, the Henrys moved to Santa Rosa to be near their daughter, Patty, her husband, Dick Werner, and their four children, with a fifth grandchild arriving the following year.
Mallie Henry was a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Rosa and the Sisters of Hiram.
Survivors, in addition to her granddaughter, include her daughter, Patty Werner of Nevada City; two sisters, Gwen Bauers of York, Neb., and Pauline James of Lincoln, Neb.; three other grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.
Services will be at 1 p.m. today at First Presbyterian Church, 1550 Pacific Ave. Donations may be made to the church's memorial fund. Entombment will be at Santa Rosa Memorial Park.
Stage, screen star Mary Ellis, 105
Mary Ellis, the young opera singer for whom Rudolf Friml wrote "Rose-Marie" in 1924 and who later became the queen of musicals in London, died there Thursday at her home on Eaton Square. She was 105, including the three years that Hollywood publicists subtracted in the 1930s.
Her title role in the operetta "Rose-Marie," her first venture into musical theater, was one of the biggest Broadway hits of the 1920s, running for 558 performances. Arthur Hammerstein, the producer, ordered it written especially for her, and long before Jeanette MacDonald's hit version of "Indian Love Call" from the 1936 film adaptation, critics universally hailed Ellis' highly trained singing.
Her dramatic career lasted until she was 97, although she appeared exclusively in England after the 1930s, partly because of a breach with Hammerstein that kept her permanently off the American musical stage.
Her London stage consort, the composer and actor Ivor Novello, a leading rival of Noel Coward, called her his inspiration and built several hits around her. She also had a major London success with Jerome Kern's "Music in the Air."
Ellis' glamorous circle included Fred and Adele Astaire, Harpo Marx and George Gershwin, with whom she fell fruitlessly in love.
In her Hollywood career, Marlene Dietrich and Fritz Lang were her great friends. Her personal life was chronicled, husband by husband, in the press. "We were all mad and in love with life and work, and each other," she wrote in her autobiography, "Those Dancing Years" (John Murray, 1982).
Ellis was born May Belle Elsas on June 15, 1897, in New York City. Her name, considered too German sounding, was changed when she joined the Metropolitan Opera at age 18.
Her father, who had arrived from Germany with only a few coins in his pocket, eventually became president of Consolidated Paper Mills. Her mother showed promise as a concert pianist before her marriage.
Against all advice, Ellis left the Met to act in Shakespearean productions on Broadway.
That work led to "Rose-Marie." Ellis left the show after a year to appear in "The Dybbuk," a dramatic production at the Neighborhood Playhouse on the Lower East Side, where she happily traded a weekly paycheck of $500 for one of $10. Arthur Hammerstein was furious and forced her to sign an agreement preventing her from singing for any management but his.
She never sang onstage in the United States again.
During World War II, Ellis spent three years working as an ambulance driver and a practical nurse.
She retired from the stage in 1970, but continued to act on television and in radio plays. Her last role, in 1994, was in the Sherlock Holmes television series starring Jeremy Brett.
Ellis leaves no immediate survivors. Her last husband was Jock Muir Stewart Robinson, whom she marriage in 1938 after a hectic courtship. He was an enthusiastic pilot, skier and climber, and although she hated mountain climbing, she willingly accompanied him. He died in a climbing accident in 1950. She never marriage again.
January 28, 2003
Dorothy Marie Lee
Dorothy Marie Lee joined her husband in establishing and then operating Sandy's Paint Store in Sebastopol, but she was always more interested in nurturing family and friends than selling paint.
Lee, a 56-year resident of Sebastopol, died Jan. 21 in a Sebastopol convalescent hospital following a long illness. She was 87.
At her funeral service Saturday, family and friends remembered Lee as a nurturing and compassionate woman guided by her Catholic faith, her great sense of humor and love for people.
Lee and her late husband, Sanford "Sandy" Lee, a painting contractor, founded Sandy's Paint Store in 1960 and operated it until their retirement in 1974. The store continues today on Gravenstein Highway North.
Although she didn't have her husband's expertise in paint chemistry, Lee worked in the store six days a week, waiting on customers, doing bookkeeping and keeping the place spotless.
"The store was closed on Sundays, but there were many times when my mother would meet a customer who had run out of paint and needed another gallon to finish a project. She would meet them at the store and mix up a gallon of paint after she attended Sunday Mass at St. Sebastian's," said daughter Gayle Ballinger of Forestville.
Lee continued to work in the paint store even after earning a nursing degree from Santa Rosa Junior College, a member of the second class to graduate as licensed vocational nurses. Becoming a nurse was Lee's lifelong dream because of the skilled nursing care she received when she was stricken with tuberculosis as a young woman.
"She never worked as a professional nurse, but she became a nurse to every family member, friend or neighbor who had an ailment or was dying," Ballinger said.
Lee was born Dorothy Marie Wohlford in St. Paul, Minn., one of five children of the late Andrew and Mary Wohlford. She and Sanford Lee met in Minnesota and were marriage on Oct. 31, 1940. They moved to California in 1946, settling in Sonoma County. They built their own home on Gravenstein Highway North between Sebastopol and Forestville. Sanford Lee died in 1993. Dorothy Lee continued to live in the family home until four years ago when she went into a convalescent hospital because of her declining health.
In retirement, the Lees enjoyed traveling, gardening and community work. They also played cards, for years maintaining a weekly Saturday night card game with friends.
In addition to her daughter, she is survived by her sister, Ann Manthei of Black Duck, Minn., and by two grandsons.
The family suggests memorial contributions to Alzheimer's Respite Care, in care of Catholic Charities, P.O. Box 4900, Santa Rosa 95402.
John Browning
John Browning, a leading light in a pioneering older generation of American pianists of seemingly limitless promise, died Sunday at his home in Sister Bay, Wis. He was 69.
The cause was heart failure, said Shirley Kirshbaum, his publicist.
Browning studied with Rosina Lhevinne at the Juilliard School, where he eventually found himself in the same class as Van Cliburn.
Browning stole the spotlight in 1956 with a silver medal in the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Brussels, Belgium. But he and other pianists of his generation, including Leon Fleisher, Malcolm Frager, Gary Graffman and Byron Janis, were overshadowed when Cliburn won the gold medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958, becoming not only a cultural but also a political hero, bearing an American standard in the Cold War.
For various reasons, most of those pianists fell short of the heavy expectations laid on them. Cliburn has spent much of his life in seclusion. Fleisher, Graffman and Janis all developed physical ailments affecting their hands. Frager, who won the Queen Elisabeth competition in 1960, died in 1991 at 56 after a relatively quiet, scholarly career.
Browning maintained an active solo career, if never quite at the most glamorous level, and with the name Cliburn dogging his own in many a review and article. Although he lacked nothing in bravura technique, his pianistic style was reserved, elegant and penetrating, more intellectual than overtly emotional, yet eminently approachable. His tastes ranged back at least to Bach and Scarlatti, and he played harpsichord for his own enjoyment.
Browning was a guest soloist with the Santa Rosa Symphony four times, performing piano concertos by Beethoven, Brahms and Barber. He also performed a recital with the Santa Rosa Community Concerts Association in the 1960s.
"He was one of the first big artists to come here," Conductor Laureate Corrick Brown said. "We always did very well because he had quite a reputation."
He was born to musical parents in Denver in 1933. Having studied piano from age 5, he appeared as a soloist with the Denver Symphony at 10.
In 1945, his family moved to Los Angeles. He spent two years at Occidental College there.
He began his studies at Juilliard in 1950. He won the Leventritt Competition in New York in 1955. (Cliburn had won the year before.) He made his professional orchestral debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1956.
In 1962, he gave the premiere of Samuel Barber's Pulitzer Prize-winning Piano Concerto, which was written for him, in connection with the opening of Lincoln Center. His second recording of the work, with Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony in 1991 for RCA Victor, won a Grammy for best instrumental soloist with orchestra.
Browning won a second Grammy in 1993 with a disc of Barber's solo works on MusicMasters. He continued to follow the works of contemporary American composers but found relatively few to his liking.
His last performance was, by invitation, at the U.S. Supreme Court in May. His last public appearance was at the National Gallery in Washington in April.
Browning is survived by a sister, Elizabeth Witchey Ryer of Santa Rosa; two nephews; and a niece.
January 26, 2003
Leonard Jay
Leonard P. Jay, a high-profile real estate developer who built more than 1,000 homes in Sonoma County, died Friday in Antioch. He was 60.
Jay suffered a stroke, family members said.
Born in Petaluma, he graduated from Petaluma High School, attended Santa Rosa Junior College and served a short stint in the Marines.
He first ventured into real estate development with partner Mark Reis before starting his own company, Jay Enterprises, in 1977.
Dedicating himself to the growth of his hometown, he developed Boulevard Heights, which featured custom homes priced at more than $600,000; Sycamore Heights condominiums; Madison Village duplexes; Country Club Estates; Capri Court; McDowell Meadows and Casa del Oro.
In Lake County, he built Lakeside Heights.
"He was a workaholic. He would get up sometimes at 3 in the morning with a brainstorming idea and go into the office. But then he also made time for his family. He was very, very family-oriented," his sister-in-law, Lisa Jay, said.
Known for his rags-to-riches rise and lavish parties, Jay was well accustomed to the boom-and-bust nature of the real estate market. He filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection twice in five months in 1992.
"He was a survivor," his sister-in-law said. "He went from high points to low points and then gained it all back again."
Along the way he was honored at least once as builder of the year by the North Coast Builders Exchange.
In addition to building homes, he also envisioned a large strip mall in his hometown, and wound up selling a large tract of land to the New Jersey-based Chelsea Group, which built Petaluma's factory outlet mall on the property.In a 1991 article about Sonoma County builders' tightening their belts to stay in business, Jay summed up his philosophy: "We're in business to build homes. When you're not building homes or planning for the future, it has a negative impact."
When he wasn't building houses, he was often fishing or water-skiing on his boat, which he named "It's About Time." He also enjoyed watching the 49ers play football.
Jay, who had recently moved to Bethel Island in Contra Costa County, is survived by his wife, Margo M. Jay of Petaluma; six children, Bob Barnard of Connecticut, Tonya Miller of Napa, Tammy Wilson and Jodi Yeaman, both of Windsor, Ryan Jay of Sacramento and Heidi Jay of Bethel Island; a brother, John Jay of Petaluma; three sisters, Marlene Short of Tulsa, Okla., Kathy Corne of Washington and Dottie Hofmann of Petaluma; and nine grandchildren.
Funeral services will be at noon Tuesday at the Parent-Sorensen Mortuary and Crematory in Petaluma.
Donations may be sent to the Leonard Jay Memorial Fund, Exchange Bank, 2 E. Washington St., Petaluma 94952.
Norman Panama
LOS ANGELES -- Screenwriter Norman Panama, who collaborated with Melvin Frank on such films as "White Christmas," "The Road to Utopia" and "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House," has died.
He was 88.
Panama died Jan. 13 at UCLA Medical Center from complications of Parkinson's disease.
Born in Chicago in 1914, Panama was studying law and political science at the University of Chicago when he met Frank. The two decided to break into the entertainment industry because Frank already had written a novel and Panama had dabbled in playwriting.
They arrived in Hollywood in 1938 and began writing sketches for Bob Hope's "The Pepsodent Show" and the show's guests, such as Judy Garland and Groucho Marx.
The writing team eventually left the show to work for comedian Phil Baker and singer Rudy Vallee. Later, after writing a story treatment for Hope that became the 1942 comedy "My Favorite Blonde," they signed with Paramount Pictures.
The team's screenwriting earned them three Oscar nominations, for "The Road to Utopia," "Knock on Wood" and "The Facts of Life."
Among the other films Frank and Panama wrote were "The Court Jester" and "That Certain Feeling."
"Panama and Frank were one of the most successful writing teams in Hollywood history, maybe one of the most successful teams in show business," entertainment historian Jordan Young said.
Frank and Panama produced and co-wrote the book for the 1956 Broadway musical "Li'l Abner," and also produced the less successful 1959 film version, which Frank directed.
In 1966, after working together for nearly 30 years, Frank and Panama amicably broke up as a team.
Panama directed Hope and Bing Crosby in "The Road to Hong Kong" and Hope and Jackie Gleason in "How to Commit a Marriage."
Panama also directed "The Maltese Bippy" and "I Will, I Will ... For Now," starring Elliott Gould and Diane Keaton.
Panama is survived by his son, Steven; a daughter, Kathleen Williams; and two grandchildren.
Virginia Heinlein
Virginia Heinlein, who gave her husband, science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, the idea for his acclaimed 1961 novel "Stranger in a Strange Land" and inspired many of the strong women characters in his stories, died Jan. 18 at a retirement community in Atlantic Beach, Fla. She was 86.
Heinlein died in her sleep after a long struggle with respiratory illness and a broken hip sustained on Thanksgiving, said David M. Silver, secretary-treasurer of The Heinlein Society.
Her husband's muse, manager and literary guardian, she was widely known and respected in the science fiction community for her devotion to the Heinlein legacy after the prolific writer's death in 1988 at the age of 80.
She was responsible for the posthumous publication of the original, uncut manuscript of "Stranger in a Strange Land" in 1990, as well as for "Grumbles From the Grave," a selection of his letters, the travel memoir "Tramp Royale," and a political handbook, "Take Back Your Government."
Robert Heinlein was considered by many to be the most influential author of science fiction since H.G. Wells. During a five-decade career that produced 37 novels and 11 short-story collections, he won an unprecedented four Hugo awards, given by popular vote of science fiction fans for the best novel of the year.
"Stranger in a Strange Land" was his best-known work. It became, to the author's dismay, a favorite of the iconoclastic '60s generation, in part for its apparent advocacy of free love and cynicism about organized religion.
The story behind the novel began with the November 1948 issue of the magazine Astounding Science Fiction. In keeping with the speculative nature of the genre, a letter writer complimented the editor on an issue a year in the future, going so far as to mention stories by specific writers. The editor, John W. Campbell Jr., decided to fulfill the letter writer's fantasy and have the stories written for the November 1949 issue.
The letter writer said one of the stories was titled "Gulf" by Robert A. Heinlein. Heinlein accepted the assignment, then held a brainstorming session with his closest adviser -- his wife.
"Among other unsuitable notions, I suggested a story about a human infant, raised by an alien race," Virginia Heinlein wrote years later.
Her husband liked the idea, made some notes, but then set them aside. The idea was "too big" for a short story, so he pursued a different theme for "Gulf."
He returned to the notes for the other story in fits and starts over the next decade. The eventual result was "Stranger in a Strange Land," which introduced the character Valentine Michael Smith as an infant raised by Martians on Mars with a wisdom far beyond that of any Earthling.
The Heinleins marriage in 1948, a few years after they met at the Naval Air Experimental Station in Philadelphia, where she was a chemist and aviation test engineer and he a civilian engineer.
The daughter of a Brooklyn dentist, she majored in chemistry at New York University and was an accomplished swimmer and diver who reached national competitive levels in figure skating. She spoke seven languages and studied for a doctorate in biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Athletic throughout her life, she saved her husband's life once when he collapsed on a hill in Tahiti. Although shorter than he was, she threw him over her back and carried him down to the beach, where he was flown to Australia.
She was the model for many of the superwomen who crop up in her husband's stories, such as Maureen Johnson Smith, mother of the immortal Lazarus Long in "Time Enough for Love," published in 1973.
These women characters tended to have red hair, like Virginia's, as well as great wit and an ability to overcome adversity with aplomb.
The Heinleins had no children.
