by Michael S. Clark (with help from Linda Clark Rossi)
Early Years - Our Mom, Jacqueline Vere Clark (neé Bunce), the daughter of Henry John (Jack) Bunce and Sidney Dolores Percy, was born on November 28, 1927 at the old Alhambra Hospital on South Garfield Street in Alhambra, California; and baptized on April 3, 1928 at the Granada Community Church, which was probably an Episcopal church. She was called "Jackie", after her father, and her middle name came from her mother's cousin and best friend Vere Crawley (1893-1918), who had passed away ten years earlier. Her maternal great uncle Arthur Wathen Thompson (1869-1942) and his wife Gladys (who spelled her name Gwladys) are listed on her baptism certificate as godparents, even though both lived in England and probably did not attend the baptism ceremony.
Mom was the youngest of three girls. Her oldest sister Hazel Maude Bunce was born on Sept. 29, 1924 in Alhambra, but died the next day of a cerebral hemorrhage. Her other sister Rosamond Maude Bunce was born on Oct. 29, 1925 at the Alhambra Maternity Hospital. Although Rosamond was born with spinal bifida, she was able to walk in her younger years with the aid of braces and crutches, but she was always in a wheelchair when we knew her as an adult.
The Bunce family from 1925 or earlier, up until about 1930 or so, lived at 2584 Loma Vista Drive in Alhambra, which was their address when Mom was born. Next we find them in 1931 at Keystone Ave. in Los Angeles, then at Wade Street in Santa Monica a couple of years later, and by 1935 they are in Van Nuys. There may very likely have been other southern California addresses as well between 1931 and 1936 or so, but we do not know where they were.
Mom's father Jack Bunce held several different jobs during the early years of the Great Depression (1929-1935), even working for a time on an ostrich farm, but he eventually got a job in the movie studios adding sound effects and English voice overs to foreign films. He apparently was very good at matching his voice overs to the moving lips of the foreign-speaking actors in these films. His brothers Harold and Reg also worked in the southern California movie industry, and it is likely that Harold, who was a well-known projectionist at MGM Studios, helped both Jack and Reg to get their jobs.
Jack's mother and his sisters Dorothy and Madge lived in nearby South Pasadena at 609 Charter Oak Street, and Mom remembers visiting them at their home. It was always a very formal affair where grandma Bunce held court for her children and grandchildren by sitting in a chair and holding a big black purse that Jack told his daughter was filled with money. Jack always addressed his mother very formally by saying "hello Mother" as he approached her, and my Mom was always somewhat afraid of her. The house on Charter Oak where grandma Bunce lived still stands.
Even though Jack had a good job in the movie studios, finances were tight during the depression years. Mom remembered sitting in the car with her sister Rosamond on at least a couple Christmas Eves until midnight, when the stores, which apparently stayed open, would put all the Christmas toys and other items on sale. Her folks would then take advantage of the reduced prices to buy presents for Christmas morning.
Beery's Fish Camp Lodge in the 1930s
Oakhurst and Fishcamp - When Mom was about 8 years old, probably around 1936 or so, she moved with her Dad Jack to Oakhurst, which is an old Gold Rush era town in the Sierra Nevada foothills. This town, which dates back to the 1850s, was originally called Fresno Flats, but it was renamed in 1912 to Oakhurst. Jack had gotten a job managing the Beery's Fishcamp Lodge, which was a mountain resort located midway between Oakhurst, and the southern entrance to Yosemite National Park, and the Oakhurst move was so that he could live closer to his new job, while Mom was able to go to school in Oakhurst. Her mother Sidney about this time came down with polio, and lost the ability to walk, which meant that both Sidney, and Mom's sister Rosamond, were in wheelchairs. Because Jack could not care for them while working at Fishcamp, they spent much of their time in southern California, where for the next several years they were cared for in nursing homes. However, they would come up to Oakhurst often to enjoy the woods and mountain air with Jack and our Mom.
We have some old photos that Mom took of her home in Oakhurst, and these show that in the 1930s, when she lived there, it was in a very rural setting, surrounded by scattered pine trees and a few large oaks. We know that it was located somewhere along or near the road leading east out of town to Bass Lake Reservoir. We also know from her photos that the place was basically a cabin in the woods, and that it sat on a large flat at the base of a hill. Because Mom had stories about free-ranging pigs that they took care of, and because some of her photos show grazing cows, separated from the house by a fence, we can probably assume that no neighbors lived close by. Mom also used to talk about a bridge that her Dad needed to maintain, which tells us that there was probably a creek or wash somewhere near the house. Mom was very fond of living here among the pine and oak trees, and she was upset when she and our Dad many years later, just after they were married, took a road trip to Oakhurst, and saw that all of the pine trees around the old house had been cut down.
Although we do not know with absolute certainty just exactly where the Oakhurst cabin was located, we can make a pretty good guess from the above clues. This place, which probably was torn down long ago, almost certainly sat on a dirt side road that branched off of Crane Valley Road (County Road 426). Today Crane Valley is the road in the middle of town that that branches off of Highway 41 and leads east to Bass Lake. However, the main street of Oakhurst back in the 1930s was the Fresno Flats Road, which ran north to Yosemite National Park, and which was intersected by Crane Valley Road on the north side of town. We are pretty sure that the site of old house is on the edge of a flat, cleared area, with no pine trees and only a couple of large oaks, near the intersection of Hangtree Lane and County Road 428. There is on the NE corner of this intersection a modern house that was built in 1989 at address 39641 Road 428, which we think is where the old house was located. This leads us to suspect that the old house was torn down prior to 1989 to be replaced by the newer house that is there now. Today this area is a rural suburb of Oakhurst, with lots of houses, but back in the 1930s, when Mom likely lived there, the cabin was isolated out in the woods.
The probable site of the Oakhurst cabin where Mom once lived is reached today by driving down either Hangtree Lane or Road 428, both of which are now paved, but those roads were not constructed until sometime after WWII. The 1930 topographic map for the Oakhurst area shows an unnamed dirt road, a little more than a mile long, that began in those days near the old Oakhurst School and led SE through the woods, before making a 90° to the NE to cross a creek, and then dead ending at an isolated house, which we think was probably the cabin. Today the Fresno Flats Historical Village and Park is located on School Road where the old Oakhurst School once stood. If we have the correct location for the cabin, then Mom would have walked the aforementioned dirt road to attend classes at either the Oakhurst School, or at another school that is now built over by the Oakhurst Community College campus. Disconnected, now-paved remnants of this old road still exist on the west side of Yosemite High School, but you can no longer follow them to Hangtree Lane to get to where the old house probably stood.
Mom's folks for a while hired a Seventh Day Adventist couple from a nearby church, so that the husband could help her Dad build a bridge over a creek that needed to be crossed to get to the Oakhurst house. A dry creek bed on the south end of the Yosemite High School Football Stadium may be a remnant of a tributary to the main creek that this bridge needed to cross. Although neither the bridge nor the creek it crossed exist anymore, the 1930 topo map for the Oakhurst area shows that there was a creek there back then that originated just a short distance to the south of where her parents presumed cabin was. This creek then flowed north into the Fresno River, passing by a few hundred yard to west of the presumed cabin. However, the creek bed is now gone, and covered over by house lots, as two dams and a couple of reservoirs were built on this creek after WWII to capture any water that used to flow down to the river (see 1951 top map). These reservoirs, which sit between Hangtree Court and Giant Oak Road, to the south of where those roads intersect Hangtree Lane, seem to usually have water in them, which indicates that there used to be a flow of water at times down the now-vanished creek bed.
Oakhurst and Fishcamp Stories - Mom had several animals to take care of in Oakhurst. Here she had a pony, a dog named Peggy, and probably rabbits, chickens, and turkeys as well. There was also a cow named Peggy that Mom used to milk, and she learned how to make butter from Peggy's milk in a butter churn, and cottage cheese that she would curdle inside a canvas radiator bag hung outside on a tree. Milking Peggy the cow was always a challange, as she would sometimes stick her hoof in the milk pail, and spill several minutes worth of milking in just a couple of seconds. They also had pigs, who ran wild during the day, and came racing home, squeeling and snorting, when called for dinner, afterwhich the pigs were penned in for the night.
Her Dad's aunt and uncle Alfred and Mili Bouch sometimes came up from Los Angeles for visits. Uncle Alfred was "a very proper Englishman" who had lived in Tombstone, Arizona, where he said he knew Wyatt Earp. He fancied himself a poet, and he enjoyed that Mom's dog and cow were both named Peggy, so he composed a little ditty that went, "Peggy number one, Peggy number two, we have so many Peggies, we don't know what to do".
There was no indoor plumbing in the house, so water came from a hand pump. I think it was actually in the kitchen inside the house, but it may also have been out in the yard. The restroom was an outhouse stocked with phone books and corn cobs. Mom remembered that the yellow pages of the phone book always disappeared first. Her father burned the outhouse down by accident at least a couple of times from dumping fireplace ashes down the hole for odor control. She recalled that he would be in a foul mood whenever the outhouse burned down, as he had to stop whatever he was doing and rebuild it right away.
Mom had many other memories of Oakhurst. For example, she remembered being told to go out pick mushrooms, but not to pick the ones that looked poisonous. Of course she had no idea what a poisonous mushroom looked like. Fortunately no one got sick. Her Dad would also go duck hunting to bring home game for the table, and it would be a contest at dinner to she who could spit out the most bird shot from the meal. Then there were all the "Oakies" in town who had fled the Oklahoma dustbowl and relocated to Oakhurst. They arrived in pickup trucks and sedans piled high with all their earthly possesions, but they were hard-working, amiable people who quickly fit in. She said they used to give great parties with lots of games, such as gunny sack races, musical chairs, and the like.
Her Dad had a Ford Model T pickup truck that he drove up to Fishcamp and back, and Mom remembers being with him and one of his buddies one time in the front seat, which was the only seat, when they stopped and gave a ride to the town drunk. The man they picked up had to sit in back in the bed of the truck, and Mom remembers that her Dad and his friend were both chewing tobacco. They would spit tobacco juice out the windows as the pickup sped down the road, and to their undying laughter, it would splash all over the face of the drunk in the back, who was so out of it that he had no idea what was going on.
Mom and her dog Peggy among the pine trees at the Oakhurst house.
Because the road up to Fishcamp, which was Highway 41 (Old Route 125), had snow on it in winter, her Dad often stayed up there rather than drive home on icy, dangerous roads. Mom at these times would stay in town with her teacher, who we believe was named Mrs. Rebecca Cheney (1895-1990). She remembered that the Cheneys had no indoor plumbing in their house either, and Mom would have to take a bath in a tub placed in the middle of their kitchen with Mr. Cheney walking through at inopportune times. My bother Phil has a small bible that Mrs. Cheney gave to Mom. Inscribed on the inside is, "To Jacqueline Bunce from her teacher Mrs. Cheney for three months perfect attendance, Sept. 1st, 1938". We got to meet Mrs. Cheney many years later in the 1960s when, strictly by coincidence, we camped next to her, her daughter and their pet beagle at the Tuolumne Meadows Campground in Yosemite.
Mom attended school in Oakhurst in a one-room schoolhouse. Presumably this was the school where Mrs. Cheney taught, which was probably the old schoolhouse that was orignally located just east of Crane Valley Rd (Road 426), and south of Highway 41, about where the Oakhurst Community College is located today in the north part of town. This was the old Fresno Flats School (and later library), which has since been relocated to the Fresno Flats Historic Park. However, nearby there was also the old Hawkins School, which was located first in Coarsegold, then later moved up to Oakhurst, where it was renamed the Oakhurst School. It was probably located on School Road, where Oakhurst Elementary is today. Presumably the old Oakhurst School was torn down to make way for the present school on the same site. It is my understanding that the Hawkins/Oakhurst School back in the day only held 6th, 7th and 8th grade classes, so Mom may very well have attended classes at both the old Fresno Flats and Oakhurst schoolhouses.
When Mom stayed at Fishcamp during the summers, there was a boy there named Bruce whom she would pal around with. They typically ate their meals together in the lodge restaurant. Here she and Bruce would unscrew the tops of the salt and pepper shakers at their table so that the poor diner who followed them would get a surprize dump of salt on their plate when they tried to shake some salt on their food. They did the same with the ketchup bottles. The two of them would then spend the day playing around the lodge and getting into all sorts of mischef, which she said was lots of fun.
Although Mom's mother and Mom's sister Rosamond were in wheelchairs and spent most of their time in nursing homes, they did come up to stay in Oakhurst for long periods of time. Mom and her Dad Jack had to take of the house themselves, so when Jack began to feel more comfortable financially, he hired a husband and wife to help out with the household chores. They were Seventh Day Adventists, and they probably came from a nearby Adventist Church that has a modern address of 50690 Rd 426 (Crane Valley Road). The husband helped Jack rebuild a bridge that may have connected the property to the Bass Lake Highway (Crane Valley Road), while the wife helped out with cooking and cleaning in the house. Jack paid them a dollar a day, and gave them a small shack on the property to live in. Mom remembers that this couple were quite poor, and when they were around all the cans of dog food mysteriously disappeared from the house. The dog food of course was intended for Mom's dog Peggy, not for the Adventists.
Mom's parents were born and raised in England, and they enjoyed their English traditions. These included breakfasts of boiled eggs served in egg cups, along with cold toast that was cooled in cooling racks. They also saved all the leftover bacon grease to spread on their toast like butter. A common breakfast topic was how silly Americans were to cut their food with their fork in their left hand, then change the fork to their right had to eat. Her parents in the proper English fashion always kept their fork in the same hand.
Mom fishing at a Santa Cruz beach, but she may have still been living in Madera.
Madera - Mom's Dad in 1939 became the secretary and treasurer for the Madera County Fair, and Madera County Farm Bureau, which would have required him to make a commute of more than 40 miles from Oakhurst. Consequently, the family moved to a rental place in the rural outskirts of the City of Madera. The address of this house was Rural Route 2, Box 199, which I believe was located on County Road 13 ½ (Ave 13 ½), about 0.3 to 0.4 mi east of the intersection of 13 ½ with Road 28. This is in the SE part of the present-day city, just a short distance east of the 99 Freeway. We don't know what became of the place they had lived in up in Oakhurst, which was probably torn down and replaced many years ago.
The Lincoln Grammer School Choir in Madera.
When the bunce family moved to Madera, Mom transfered to one of three elementary schools in the city. We know for certain that she went to the campus of the Lincoln Grammar School, which several years earlier replaced the original Westside Elementary School of Madera. The other two schools in the city were the Pershing Grammar School, which had replaced the old Eastside Elementary, and the Washington Grammar School, which was built in 1922 for students living north of the Fresno River. There is a picture in Mom's photo album labeled "choir" that shows her standing in the back row of a group of kids, who are out in front of a brick buiding, which without question is the old Lincoln Grammar School. Also, there is a newspaper article from the Madera Tribune that lists her as a member of the honor roll of the graduating class of the Lincoln School. In addition, she must have also been a member of the Lincoln School Choir.
June 5, 1941 - Mom graduates from the 8th grade of Madera Elementary School, having attended classes at the Lincoln School campus.
Mom's family by 1945 had moved from the rural outskirts of the city to a home at 200 South Park St., which was pretty close to the city center. This greatly shortened Jack's commute to his jobs at the County Fair office and at Farm Bureau. This place was also just a short walk from Madera Union High School on L Street, which Mom definitely went to after her eighth grade graduation. The high school back then was an imposing two-story brick building, but this was torn down in the 1960s and replaced by the modern high school, which occupies the same location.
Mom participated in many activities while she was going to Madera High School. She, along with her sister Rosamond, were both members of Madera Girl Scout Troop No. 1. The Local Auduban Society was another club that Jackie was active in. She was also a Life Member of the California Scholarship Federation (CSF) at the High School, acted in school plays, participated on the school Debate Team, competed on the school tennis team, and she was a class officer at least once. She and other students also helped organize and run a carnival to raise money for the War Chest Fund. In addition to keeping up with all these activities, Mom sometimes also held a part-time job, working awhile for the Penny's Department Store in Madera, and another time at the catalog orders desk for Montgomery Wards. There were no doubt other jobs and activities that we don't know about.
June 13, 1945 - Mom graduates as the valedictorian from Madera Union High School. She gave a speech at the graduation ceremony on "Opportunities for Women in the World of Today". She was also honored as a "Gold Seal Bearer" with the California Scholarship Federation (CSF), and she received a $75 scholarship, which probably came from CSF. The picture of her below and left is probably her 1944-1945 Madera High School graduation picture.
Santa Cruz and Berkeley - Mom from the Fall of 1945 up until January 1951 attended the University of California at Berkeley. Her mother by now had recovered from polio and moved with Rosamond back home Madera to be with Jack, which precipitated in Mom's family moving to Santa Cruz, where Jack's sisters Queeny and Dorothy lived. Although Mom lived in the dorms on the Berkeley campus during the school year, she spent summers with her folks and Rosamond in Santa Cruz. They lived at first at a motel that they managed on Old Highway 1 near Natural Bridges beach on the north side of town. Back then, the motel was probably located close to where Baldwin St, which was an extension of Escalona Dr, intersected Mission St (Highway 1). Today, Baldwin St has been replaced by a line of apartments, and Escalona ends where it makes a T-intersection with Grandview St. However, we do not know for sure where the motel was located. Sadly, Mom's dog Peggy was hit by a car somewhere out in front of the motel.
The family about 1951 or so moved to the south side of Santa Cruz to a large two-story house just off Morissey Boulevard on Holway Drive. Mom's parents Jack and Sidney were known to us as Granny and Grandpa, and my ealiest memories of them are from the mid 1950s when they were still in the Holway Drive house. Grandpa loved birds, and there was always a canary in this house, along with various other birds to keep Rosamond company. He also picked up a pet monkey in the late 1940s, right around the time when they first moved into the house. Granny's favorite aunt, the actress Constance Crawley, always had a pet monkey when Granny was growing up, so she always dreamed of having one herself. This monkey was supposed to be a friend for Rosamond, but it bit her one day, then bit Granny another time, so they avoided it altogether. However, the monkey adored Grandpa, so he he kept it around, even though everyone else was afraid of it.
Mom was home from college one summer when she walked by her parents open bedroom door, and saw the monkey sitting on mother's vanity getting into her mother's make up and making a big mess. She hollered at the rascal to stop, but instead he turned around, screamed back, and came racing after her with his teeth bared. Mom took off running with the monkey in hot pursuit, and locked herself in her bedroom with the monkey hanging outside on the doorknob screeching. Granny and Grandpa thought this was hilarious, and laughed and laughed about it much to Mom's embarassment. However, the monkey one day made the mistake of biting grandpa, so he banished it to a cage in the basement. Then a short time later, the monkey disappeared altogether.
Mom pretty much supported herself in college, as her parents had little money to spare. She did this by working in the library at the University during the school year, and working in the Santa Cruz City Library during her summers off, and possibly during her Christmas vacation as well. She enjoyed college at Berkeley, and she remembered how much the student body changed when World War II ended and all the veterans returned home to enroll in classes. For example, she remembered how there was a grandstanding football quarterback who pranced around on the football field and thought very highly of himself, but he didn't even make the varsity team when the vets came back home the next season. She also used to talk about beer being the "national drink" on campus. Because she had to work to support herself in school, it took her longer than others to finish her degree.
Collection of Miniatures in Library Display - If you take a minute to look into the large glass case at the right inside Santa Cruz's public library, you will see a collection of hand-painted, ivory miniatures, part of a collection being displayed by Miss Jacqueline Bunce, assistant at the library. The miniatures were painted by Miss Bunce's grandfather, Herbert S. Percy, who is also the water color painter of the five large originals of English rural life that are being shown. The water colors have the soft, hazy finish of an early English painting. Included in the collection are a Chinese tea caddy, which is a highly decorated and lacquered box lined with a finely-etched metal casing; a baby s rattle in silver, made about 1857. and with a whistle on the end: an original candle snuffer with handles like a pair of ordinary sissors; and a hand-painted fan with a delicately carved wooden base from the Paris exhibition of 1857. All of the pieces are museum quality pieces. Anyone wishing to display his special hobby in the library's hobby case is asked to get in touch with Mrs. Geraldine Work, city librarian. From the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Santa Cruz, California), Thursday, July 24, 1947, pg. 5.
Granny made a full recovery from her polio while Mom was in college, and learned to walk again after being in a wheelchair for ten years. She also learned to drive again with Mom as her teacher. As both Granny and Mom were strong-willed women, this was a difficult task for Mom, given that they argued the entire time. To her credit though, Granny regained her driving skills, and when I knew her, I was never aware of her past disability.
Jacqueline Bunce Named to San Jose Health Post - Miss Jacqueline Bunce, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. H.J. Bunce of 3550 Old Highway 1, has been appointed health analyst for the city of San Jose. She will have the job of extract ing valuable public health informa tion from vital statistics reports. A student at the University ot California at Berkeley, Miss Bunce will work on a part-time basis until she receives her degree in biostastistics in January. During her summer vacations in Santa Cruz she has worked at the public library under Mrs. Geraldine Work, librarian. From an abbreviated version in the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Santa Cruz, California), Wednesday, November 29, 1950, pg. 8.; and a full version in the Madera Daily News-Tribune (Madera, California), December 7, 1950, p. 3.
Jan. 25, 1951 - Mom graduates with a B.S.in Health Statistics from the University of California at Berkeley, where she supported herself during school by working in the University Library. She subsequently worked as a health analyst for the San Jose City Health Department.
Mom and the monkey.
College graduation picture.
Mom and Dad at the Felton cabin.
Swimming in the mountains.
Wedding picture at the Holway Drive House.
Married Life (1952-1958) - It was while working for the City of San Jose that Mom met our Dad, James F. Clark, Jr. (1924-1999), who worked in the City Planning Department. The first time she saw him was at a meeting in the city offices where they sat across the table from each other. She remembered imagining that they were a couple, and when he asked her out for a drink afterwards, she was very excited and thought, "He likes me! He likes me!
Mom & Dad's wedding with Charlie and Mary-Louise.
They became engaged after a rather short courtship. Mom said that when he asked her to marry him, she was hesitant, as she felt that she was not ready yet, but he talked her into it. Their engagement was short as well, only three months or so, and they married on Jan. 12, 1952 at the old Episcopal Church on depot hill in downtown Capitola, California, which is on the corner of Escalona and Oakland Streets. Although this church still exists, it is in another location, and the original chapel where our parents married has been converted to a private residence. Daughter Diana on April 22, 1979 was married many years later in this same church at the original location.
Charlie Cavanagh (1923-2012) was Dad's Best Man at the wedding, and Mary-Louise Atkinson (1921-?) was Mom's Maid of Honor. Charlie and Dad had first met in Hawaii, where they were students together at the St. Louis School, which was an all-boys Catholic preparatory school. They went on to serve during WWII in the Pacific Theater of Operations, Charlie in the Navy and Dad in the rmy. Then a couple of years after the war ended, they found themselves taking classes together at San Jose State College. Then, when both gradauted, they worked together for the San Jose City Planning Department. Mom's friend Mary-Louise was a military-trained nurse, who worked with Mom at the San Jose City Health Department. Both of them may have worked for another friend of Mom's named Joan Davis (1923-2011), who was a Registered Nurse, and a supervisor at the Health Department. Although Joan did not sign the wedding guest book, she must have been invited, as she sent a wedding gift. Thus, everyone in the wedding party worked for the city.
Mom said that Mary-Louise had a dress of her own that she really liked, so she asked Mom if it would be okay to wear it to the wedding. Mom said for sure, even though the dress was a bright pink color that Mom did not particularly care for. Mom suspected that Mary-Louise was trying to show off by wearing such a loud dress, but she told her that she could wear whatever she wanted.
Because Mom and Dad had only been working at their jobs for only a few months when they married, they did not have much money or vacation time, so they postponed their honeymoon until summer, when they did a camping trip to Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite. They drove on this trip in a 1952 Ford Crestline Victoria sedan that they bought new. It was black with a white hardtop. Sometime later, this was the same car that a drunk ran into the back of when Mom and Dad were stopped at a red light. Apparently the guy who hit them backed up and rammed them several times. Mom held her foot on the brake while Dad went back and pulled the keys out of the guy's car. They got their car repaired, but Mom said it was never the same.
Our parents first home was an apartment that they rented in San Jose. It was located at 237 E. San Salvador St, which is right next to San Jose State College. They may have later moved for a short time to another apartment that was in Los Gatos, but we know nothing about it. At last, after renting apartments for a couple of years, they were able to buy a tract home in a cul-de-sac at 970 Estrellita Way in nearby Campbell. Although their San Jose apartment no longer exists and is now a parking lot, the Estrellita house still stands and looks largely the same. However, everything around it has changed, even the street address, which today is 1370 Estellita Way.
Their first child, who arrived in 1953 in San Jose, was delivered by Dr. Frank Paulson (1905-1996). He was Canadian, and he had gotten his Medical Degree in 1934 from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. Although he had a succesful medical practice in Canada, he obtained a license in 1950 to practice in California, moved there, and opened an office in Room 310 of the Sainte Claire Building at 311 1st St in downtown San Jose. He occupied this office for the next 21 or so years, until his retirement. Mom thought very highly of Dr. Paulson, and he delivered all five of her children at Doctors General Hospital at 975 Lenzen Ave in San Jose. Paulson remained our family doctor right up until 1969 when we moved out of the county.
There is some confusion between Doctors Hospital and nearby O’Connor Hospital. Doctors General Hospital at 976 Lenzen Ave. in San Jose was founded in 1946 by Dr. Milton E. Denmark (1917-1991) as a private, non-profit hospital, and it soon became known for its maternal and child care, as well as its osteopathic services. It merged in 1970 with San Jose Hospital, following some legal actions against Dr. Denmark, and it was subequently renamed the Park Alameda Hospital. However, it quit accepting new patients in 1974, when it was sold to Santa Clara County, and today it is the home of the County Health Department. O’Connors is a different hospital that was founded in 1889 as one of the first hospitals in the county. It is located at 2105 Forest Ave, only two miles away from Doctors Hospital. Today it is one of four hospitals that make up Santa Clara Valley Healthcare (SCVH), which is owned and operated by the county.
Dad and the kids in the Tetons with the 1952 Ford Victoria.
When Mom and Dad had two kids, Dad took a short-term job, starting in about the Fall of 1956, to work on building the giant Palisades Dam in eastern Idaho. This for a time was the largest earth-filled dam in the world, and Dad was palce in charge of getting equipment to and from the construction site. The entire family came along to live with him through the winter in Palisades, and some of my earliest memories are of the log cabin that our folks lived in just outside of town. It was the only place that they could find to rent, and Mom said it was pretty primative. They lived here until the Spring of 1957, or so, when Dad's job ended, and they returned back home to Campbell.
The time that our parents spent in Palisades was the first time that Mom had ever been outside of California. The winters here are very cold, with sub-zero temperatures, which were much colder than any of the winters Mom had known in Oakhurst and Fish Camp. Mom did not have a dryer in the Palisades cabin, and she had trouble getting the laundry dry. Finally someone in town told her to put the clothes outside in the cold, let them freeze solid, then shake off the ice off, and bring the clothes inside. This left them slightly damp, and letting them hang indoors after this would get them more or less dry.
Mom and Dad referred to Palisades as "hard money country", as no one there liked to use paper money, and transactions usually were carried out with silver dollars. They said that it was a bit inconvenient to buy something with a twenty-dollar bill, and then get back a handful of silver dollars in change. They also remembered the people in Palisades as not being very friendly, and distrustful of strangers who were there to work on the dam.
They returned to California when the Palisades job ended, and lived from the Spring of 1957 up until about December 1958 in the Campbell home. They must have had this place prior to the Palisades job, as there was a willow tree in the backyard that Mom grew from a stick that she stuck in the ground. The stick came from a willow tree at her parents place in Santa Cruz, and her father told her that it wouldn't grow. She stuck it in the ground anyway, and this stick by the summer of 1958 had grown into a lovely tree. This means the stick was probably planted a few years earlier. We know that the house was built in 1952, but they lived for a time in an apartment before they bought the house. I do not think the Campbell house had been lived in by someone else before they bought it.
Our folks at this time still had their Ford Victoria sedan, but it had some problems remaining from when the drunk driver nearly wrecked it. So when we returned from Idaho, they traded the Victoria off on their next car, which was a new red and white 1957 Ford station wagon, either the Ranch Wagon or Country Sedan model, we are not sure which. They kept this car for many years, and it is the one that I remember most from when we were growing up in Santa Clara County.
We next lived from about December 1958 to July 1969 in a large home in Saratoga that our folks bought out in the country, with a mailing address of 18998 Allendale Ave. However, our house was actually located a good quarter of a mile down a dirt road from our mail box on Allendale. This house also sat up on top of a hill, with our only neighbor located a ways down the hill from us. They were also other side of a small creek, called Wildcat Creek, and because lots of oak trees and poison oak grew along this creek, these completely blocked our view of their place. Although our house had been built back in the 1920s, our neighbor's place dated back to the late 1800s, which seemed really old to us. It was all quite rural, but today the city has grown up all around where we once lived, and much has changed. For example, our neighbor's place has been replaced by a fancy new house. Also, that old dirt driveway that once connected us to Allendale Ave. is now paved as well. Yet, it gets little use any more, as it is now more a less a back alley, with the main access to our old house changed to a new address at 19050 Camino Barco. The house has also been extensively remodeled so that it is almost unrecognizable compared to what it used to look like.
Summary (1958-1991) - Our folks moved to Saratoga so that our Mom's parents and her sister Rosamond could live with us, as they were having trouble making ends meet on their own. Then, there was a short, 3-month stay during the summer of 1969, after both of our grandparents had passed away, where we lived in a tract home that our parents briefly owned in the Vienna Woods subdivsion at 3851 Vienna Drive in Aptos. I remember watching the moon landing on July 20, 1969 on a T.V. in the kitchen of this house, as the movers were bringing our furniture in off the moving truck. Next, our parents had a rural home until 1977 that they bought at 3600 N. Park Ave. in Soquel. This house was on 3½-acre plot on the top of, and on the front and back sides of a hill looking down on New Brighton Beach. It was quite a place with fabulous views looking out over the ocean. They then spent a year, which was pretty much from the winter of 1977 to just before the winter of 1978, in a rural home that they bought on a lake near the corner of Floraville Road and Gilmore Lake Road in Waterloo, Illinois, before moving just before the Christmas of 1978 to 3342 Tanglewood Way, SE in Salem, Oregon, where they were living when Mom passed away.
The 1958-1991 Summary overlaps with our Dad's biography,
which has been written, and others, which we have yet to write.
So it ends for now, except for the "final years", which follow.
Final Years - Mom died unexpectedly on Aug. 4, 1991 at the age of 63 in a hospital in Salem after suffering from a stroke that was a complication of lung cancer. She never smoked, but Jim was a life-long smoker, and her cancer may have been from second-hand smoke. Her doctor at the time said such was not the case, but most doctors today would probably say otherwise. She underwent an operation that removed part of her lung, but the cancer returned about six months later, and subsequent chemo-therapy was not successful. She is buried in the City View Cemetery in Salem with husband Jim, who died from an aneurysm on July 7, 1999 at the mobil home where he lived in a trailer park in Soquel, California.
Ancestry Stories from Jacqueline Bunce
There are some family stories about our ancestry that our Mom used to tell us when we were growing up, but three stories in particular used to catch our imaginations as kids. The ultimate source for these stories were our Mom's parents, both of whom personally knew relatives in England who had paid professional genealogists, at or near the turn of the century, to trace their family trees. One of these relatives was Constance Crawley (1870-1919), who was the favorite aunt of our maternal grandmother Sidney Bunce (neé Percy). Aunt Constance was a well-known Shakespearean actress, who also acted in a number of silent movies. She had plenty of money, and she would not have hesitated to pay someone to trace her family tree. The other relative was Edward Bunce (1860-1949), who was the uncle of our maternal grandfather Henry John "Jack" Bunce. Uncle Ted for some 30 or so years was the Registrar of Births, Marriage and Deaths for the town of Tilehurst in Berkshire, England. He and his wife Fanny never had children of their own, and as a consequence they were very close to their Bunce nieces and nephews. He also apparently had an interest in the family history that was probably related to his job of recording vital statistics for the town he lived in. Neither of these "rumored" family histories survive, as far as I am aware, but our Mom had heard about the one commissioned by Constance Crawley, and our Mom's Aunt Dorothy, who was Jack Bunce's older sister, told us about the family history commissioned by her Uncle Ted. Below are the three ancestor stories to which I refer.
We descend from a daughter of King Edward I of England. We were told that Edward was known for his fierce temper, and that he actually disowned his daughter for a time. This has been confirmed, as both of our maternal grandparents descend from King Edward's daughter Elizabeth of Rhuddlan. Although she was never disowned, and she is actually thought to have been her father's favorite, her second husband Sir Humphrey de Bohun, the Count of Hereford, did greatly arouse the king's wrath for a time. However, family members convinced the king to forgive Sir Humphrey, who was fortunate indeed not to be severely punished by the king.
We also descend from the Percy Family of England, whose surname derives from a man whose eye had been "pierced by an arrow". We mistakenly thought that this story applied to our grandmother, whose maiden name is Percy. However, this story actually is from our grandfather's side of the family, as he is a direct descendant of Sir Henry "Hostpur" Percy (1464-1403), and also a direct descendant of Sir Henry's son, grandson, great-grandson, and great-great-granddaughter, who all bore the Percy surname.
Sir Walter Raleigh was an uncle. We do not know whether this story is supposed to come from our grandmother's side of the family, or our grandfather's side, so at this time it remains an interesting, but unconfirmed family rumour.
Genealogy of the Clark Family 
