The three pictures shown here sit in frames on the table next to my bed. Each night before I turn out the light, I take a look at each photo and contemplate each of “my boys” as I think of them. The pictures are of my dad, my son, and my grandson. The picture of […]
Monthly Archives: October 2012
One of my favorite memories of Tom is a bike ride I took with him and G a few years ago in the Elwood area, not far from Goleta. That area includes a large reserve for hiking and biking, and some scenic trails along the Elwood Bluffs overlooking the Pacific. We had a great ride […]
Grandma Wilson was my dad’s (Phil Marton’s) maternal grandmother (the mother of his mother). She was my great-grandmother, Tommy’s great-great grandmother, and Sadie and Garrett’s great-great-great grandmother. She was born Johanna Bergleiter in Europe in 1873 and lived in the German town of Hermannstadt then located in Austria-Hungary. (The town is now called Sibiu and […]
My grandpa, Howard Blair Rose (my mom’s dad) was born in Illinois in 1888. He died in Los Angeles in 1985 at the age of 96. I spent a lot of time with him throughout my childhood and early adulthood, mainly at his home in Culver City CA, and I knew him well. He had a […]
Today is my mom’s birthday. She was born in Colorado in 1922 to Howard and Lillian Rose (my grandparents) and died in Los Angeles in 1996. Today would have been her 90th birthday. Tommy called her “Grandma Ida”, and he spent a lot of time at her home on Breeze Ave in Venice and at […]
I was reminiscing today about some of the outings I took with G when he was little, and it reminded me of similar outings I took with Tom many years before. One of the things G and I did was to go to In-n-Out burgers for lunch. They have great burgers and fries there, and […]
The last hike Tom and I took together was on the Jesusita Trail above Goleta. G went with us also, and the memory of that hike is especially meaningful to me. Tom had already been diagnosed with lymphoma at that point, although he hadn’t started his really difficult treatment yet. He loved the mountains and trails […]
Tom graduated from college in May of 1991. One of his first projects after graduating was to research, and then start, a bicycle repair business in San Luis Obispo. Although the business ultimately did not prove profitable, it was an interesting adventure for Tom, and one he approached with his usual energy and enthusiasm. That […]
During most of Tommy’s childhood I was working as a ship’s officer in the merchant marine. I sailed on oil tankers, freighters, containerships, passenger ships, and even one ship that carried bulk sugar from Hawaii to California. Going to sea was an important part of my life, and the memory of it still is, but […]
Tom and I discovered the old batteries one day when we were exploring around on the Marin headlands. These are gun emplacements from decades past, which were installed for the defense of San Francisco against an attack from the sea. They are obsolete now and have long since been abandoned. Tom was fascinated with these […]
memories of tommy 